Sound and vision on Charing Cross Road
New works by Samia Halaby, supported by Tate, have arrived at Outernet
What do you think when faced with the sensory onslaught that greets you when you come out of Tottenham Court Road tube station exit 4? You know the one, where you come up the escalator and you’re faced with those massive screens, with whatever it is, vast jellyfish floating across the walls or an oblique film for some brand made in the Californian desert with sullen women and interchangeable men in impractical clothing.
It is, on the one hand, a terrible, manic symptom of our drastically digitised, image-saturated world - too much, too loud, too bright; just endless sound and vision. But, I feel honour-bound to mention, it’s also a home for art. I need to be in a decent mood to confront it, but I don’t hate it.
As well as the marketing nonsense that is their bread and butter (and let’s face it, we all need that) the Outernet screens host an ever-changing programme of digital artworks - and right now, in celebration of Tate Modern’s major new exhibition, Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet, which opens later this month, they are collaborating with the gallery to show the colourful abstract art of Palestinian-American artist Samia Halaby.
Halaby, whose work is included in Electric Dreams, is recognised as one of the early innovators of digital art in the 1980s, known for creating dynamic geometric paintings that explore the relationship between art and technology. Two new site specific works, Tottenham Court Road, and After the Green and After the Black Dune 2024, have been specially commissioned for Outernet’s floor-to-ceiling wraparound screens, accompanied by the experimental soundscape of the electronic musician Four Tet.
They’ll be shown alongside Halaby’s Brass Women 1995/2019, an iconic piece from her Kinetic Painting Group series, which consist of vivid, brightly coloured geometric shapes and slanting lines which shift restlessly in all directions, accompanied by layered soundtracks.
I didn’t know much about Halaby, but apparently she began creating her kinetic works after teaching herself how to code on a Commodore Amiga 1000, one of the first widely available personal computers, released in 1985. Which I find quite impressive. Reimagined for the five 23,000 sq ft screens at Outernet, the works presented were made using a computer programme that Halaby developed between 1990-96, which allowed her to push the boundaries of painting and explore new forms of language.
I’m intrigued by Electric Dreams, where more work by Halaby will be on display alongside an international network of more than 70 artists working between the 1950s and the dawn of the internet age; groundbreaking figures from across Asia, Europe and the Americas who responded to the growing presence of technology in our lives by finding new ways to work with machines, from '“mesmerising psychedelic installations” to early experiments made with home computers and video synthesisers (so I’m told).
It runs from from November 28 to June 1. Until then though, you can find a taste of it just outside TCR tube station.
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