Margaret Atwood art installation goes live this week

Margaret Atwood's retelling of The Tempest, part of Vintage's Hogarth Shakespeare series, has inspired a new digital art installation at London’s Southbank Centre, created in collaboration with Penguin Random House.

The animated artwork by American artist Zach Lieberman is based on words and themes in Atwood's new book Hag-Seed and is to be exhibited at the Royal Festival Hall on the book's international publication date on Thursday (6th October).

Atwood will be live on stage at the Royal Festival Hall while the novel is brought to life on screen as part of the London Literature Festival. This London appearance will be the first in her UK Hag-Seed tour, which visits Manchester, Stratford-upon-Avon, Bath, Dublin, Edinburgh, York, Ely and Oxford.

The public will have the opportunity to interact with a version of the artwork at the Level 2 Display Space 4 at the Southbank Centre. The interactive artwork will be exhibited throughout the opening weekend of the festival from 6th to 9th October. The theme of this year’s festival is "Living In Future Times".

Zach Lieberman's installation inspired by The Tempest and Hag-Seed

Atwood said: "I can’t wait to see this gorgeous, inventive art installation about The Tempest and Hag-Seed in all its glory at the Southbank Centre! If Shakespeare – one of the world’s greatest innovators – were alive today, I’ve no doubt he’d be using these technologies in his plays!"

Artist Zach Lieberman said: "I’m ecstatic to be collaborating with Margaret Atwood and Penguin Random House for the Southbank Centre’s London Literature Festival. My art form is animation, which is about bringing things to life, and it seems like a great fit for Atwood's new book, Hag-Seed, which is about theatre and illusion. As I was reading it, I kept imagining the words leaping off the page and forming the costume of the main protagonist. It's a joy to make those imaginations real."

Becky Hardie, deputy publishing director of Hogarth Shakespeare, said: "We can’t wait to see what new worlds artist Zach Lieberman will make from Margaret Atwood’s inventive, magical box of surprises. Mixing the great innovator himself, Shakespeare, together with these two 21st-century innovators and Penguin Random House’s industry-leading digital team adds a whole new dimension to the Hogarth Shakespeare series. It’s incredibly exciting to see it evolve in this way."

Hag-Seed is the fourth novel in the Hogarth Shakespeare series, an international publishing initiative in which contemporary novelists retell the works of Shakespeare to create "timeless stories for a new generation". Jeanette Winterson’s The Gap of Time, Howard Jacobson’s Shylock Is My Name and Anne Tyler’s Vinegar Girl have already been published.

Atwood is this year's PEN Pinter Prize winner for her work championing environmental concerns. She will collect the award at a ceremony at the British Library on 13th October.