Serpentine R&D Platform: from venue to metaverse

Serpentine Galleries’ R&D Platform focuses on the role of technology in the future of the arts institution. In this micro case study, we present an introductory video featuring examples of its work and an interview with Kay Watson, Head of Arts Technologies at Serpentine Galleries, and outline the innovative way in which the platform engages with all aspects of the gallery’s work.

The R&D platform began with the question ‘What might the art gallery of the future look like?’, and now focuses on a range of complementary future-facing activities including:

Strategy development. The R&D Platform aims to guide digital strategy for the Serpentine itself, and to provide a conduit for the art sector more widely to develop wider digital strategies. To this end, it publishes an annual strategic briefing entitled Future Art Ecosystems, created in collaboration with artists. FaE2: Art x Metaverse was released in August 2021. FaE 3: Building Hybrid Worlds will be released in September 2022.
Knowledge-exchange. The platform also hosts discussion and innovation around the role of emerging technologies across the art sector. This knowledge-sharing functions along multiple vectors – for example The Serpentine shares its own discoveries; it convenes conversations between artists; and it convenes conversations between the art and tech sectors. It uses Twitch as a platform to share talks, workshops, and projects; and it hosts digital and in-person workshops for artists and other arts organisations. All activities are captioned and include BSL translation.
Artist-led research. Support for artistic research that might not be able to take place in a traditional sited context, including prototyping infrastructure for technology-driven practices involving sited, online, or hybrid activities.

Artist-led research. Support for artistic research that might not be able to take place in a traditional sited context, including prototyping infrastructure for technology-driven practices involving sited, online, or hybrid activities.
Commissioning activities and artistic production. R&D has also commissioned online, sited, and hybrid works that often don’t provide an easy fit with the gallery-focused norms of artistic curation, and has ensured these fit within the broader goals of the institution. Its aim here is to provide a site for an artistic practice that doesn’t fit within what Weston calls the ‘legacy exhibition model’ of the sited art gallery.

The platform’s focus on strategic development and knowledge-exchange is currently channelled through the work of four laboartories: a Creative AI Lab, a Blockchain Lab, a Legal Lab, and a Syntheric Ecologies Lab.

Watson notes two key elements to the platform’s success: firstly buy-in from senior management, and secondly the freedom to initiate projects that extend across other departments within the organisation.

It’s important to engage with gaming because the games industry has been prototying the technology that will form the backbone of the metaverse going forward – and they’ve been doing that for decades.