Group Trip to ‘Outernet’

‘The Summer Palace by Agustin Vidal Saavedra at the The Now Building (opposite the Elizabeth Line entrance to Tottenham Court Road tube station), takes visitors through time and space as they immerse themselves in a unique and uplifting experience. Featuring a combination of Renaissance paintings, animation, particle simulations and 3D visuals, the immersive experiences will be on show daily from 10 am twice every hour until 11:30 pm and is free to visit.’

Me, Juice, Maria and Hanifa went to the Outernet/Now building. I had not been before. Me and Juice got there quite early compared to the others, so looked at everything they had to show there.

I was surprised by how busy it was really. Groups of people, mostly looking at the massive screens through their phone cameras.

Most of the current display was made up of generative patterns, that transitioned between other designs. The patterns were nice but once you’d seen it once then you kind of got the idea. There was supposed to be an interactive element to one of the patterns. A camera that would sense your presence and disrupt the space of the pattern in front of you with your silhouette but it wasn’t working for some reason.

When ‘The Summer Palace’ played it disrupted these patterns for a brief couple of minutes.

I found it to be a bit of an aesthetic mess, very glossy and over-produced. The

I found the whole experience to be a bit too novelty for my liking. I couldn’t help but think of the power required to light these screens, and I guess the light pollution too, not that it would make a difference overall. Towers of light and the navy glow of a starless night sky.

I do like the idea of public spaces being open and free with installations though. I think it would be nice to have to have quiet sound sculptures like this.

The most engaging and interesting display was the showcase for the Royal College of Arts MA in Digital Direction. This one, in particular, was very good, to the extend that I took a photo of it apparently.

Walking through one of the screened tunnels led to Denmark Street which was quite cool, I’d not been there before either. Here’s a photo of a very expensive piece of wood with strings on it that is 167 times the price of my guitar.