outernet arts announced Dotcom séancea major public project by the artist Simon Denny installed on the world’s largest wrap-around screens in London’s Soho, free of charge and open to the public, launching on Sunday, October 16 at 12 p.m.
The commission is organized by Outernet Arts, a new initiative that announces the largest digital exhibition space in Europe dedicated to showcasing contemporary art over a year-round program in central London. The art program takes place at Outernet Londonat the heart of which is a brand new media and cultural district The Now Buildingthe most advanced immersive space to date, featuring 23,000 square feet of 360-degree 16K floor-to-ceiling screens over four floors.
Dotcom Seance at Outernet Arts brings the ghosts of the internet’s commercial past to a spectacular business portal in meatspace to speculate where the internet meets the future of culture.
Simon Denny
Denny’s exhibition to launch Outernet Arts coincides with Frieze London 2022 and references the newly formed partnership between the two organisations. To mark the occasion, Outernet Arts will host a private panel discussion moderated by Daniel Birnbaum With Simon Denny, Maria Paula Fernández, Guile Twardowski and Marco Brambilla on Thursday October 13th. Following this special preview, Dotcom Séance will air every Sunday between 12:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. from October 16 to December 4, 2022.
Dotcom séance is an expansive digital installation reflecting core aspects of Denny’s work, which examines the enduring impact of technology on global cultural and political development, with a particular focus on the technology industry. For this project, the artist has selected 21 dot-com-era companies that were declared “dead” after the alleged dot-com crash of the early 2000s, with the aim of “reviving” their existence in a contemporary setting. By bringing these companies back to life, Denny seeks to reassess their relevance in the context of Web3, motivated by today’s resurgence in popularity of many dead companies’ business models. Denny underscores the cyclical nature of business strategies throughout the history of the technology industry.
Marco Brambilla, Director of Outernet Arts said:
“The Outernet Arts program has at its heart a desire to create an intimacy between the viewer and the artist, while presenting work on an unprecedented scale using cutting-edge technology.”
Each company received a set of new logos produced by text-to-image artificial intelligence and created in collaboration with Cosmographia, demonstrating the relationship between Web1 and Web3 through a visual manifestation of those companies’ “ghosts” and their respective histories . These new logos, in the form of NFTs, entitle their holders to register an ENS subdomain and serve as “employees” of the revived company. The artist Guile Twardowski also designed a bespoke new logo for each company based on the AI results. The first iteration of the project went live via the Folia.app online gallery.
©2022 Simon Denny, Outernet Arts
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