Just a few months after the Giant Wave went viral in Korea – a massive outdoor screen with a right angle in it, capable of amazing tricks for the eye – London has announced that they’re creating an immense outdoor art program of their own. Being called the largest digital canvas in the world, the so-far unnamed 21 thousand square foot 8k resolution suite of screens will be part of a $1.4 billion redevelopment taking place in Central London. The Denmark Street area, also known as Tin Pan Alley, used to be the core of the city’s music scene. The developers hope to make it that again. The entire project, called Outernet, will feature retail, bars and restaurants, offices, homes, recording studios, and the largest live music space built in London since before WWII, a 2,000-set underground vault of a concert venue.
But above-ground, the central feature of the new district will be a large, open cube structure, with screens showing immersive art with a clarity never before possible on such a scale. Curated by Marco Brambilla, an artist himself, one for the first works to be shown on this impressive canvas will be the art of performance artist Marina Abramovic, from Belgrade. Another will be Bruce Conner’s film Crossroads, which is made up in part of declassified footage from the 1946 hydrogen bomb tests carried out at Bikini Atoll. If any subject is due to be played on such a grand screen, perhaps it is that.
“The technology just keeps better better and better,” said Brambilla. “And I think it’s got to the point where the technology is not part of the conversation, it becomes about whatever material we want to show.”
“Outernet Arts,” says Philip O’Ferrall, chief executive of Outernet Global, “is about creating somewhere works can be displayed that is inclusive and accessible for everyone.”
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