Marco Brambilla’s Heaven’s Gate in the vast Now Building at the Outernet.
Post-lockdown, city life is a different beast. Amid greater demand for the delights of accentuated physicality, meaningful civic engagement, and spaces with more contemporary cultural clout, real-world flagships (shops, museum, galleries, hotels) have an unofficial mandate to raise their game – including evolving historic local legacies.
Aiming to sate those appetites, and spur a load more, is the Outernet. Arguably London’s ballsiest venue of any kind (it calls itself a district, no less) it opened today, following over a decade in gestation, at the edge of Soho – one of the city’s most storied neighborhoods – with a sprawling agenda encompassing public art, private events, mindful media, the showcasing of new creative talent and supersized advertising.
If that weren’t enough, sizeable chunks of it are wrapped in architecture so technologically progressive it’s modestly referred to by property developers The Consolidated Group as “the world’s most advanced public building” and is the largest digital exhibition space in Europe. AR
After several soft launches piloting new formats, tech, and audience affinity it’s now in the business proper of ensuring enough big, sticky ideas to continue to warrant the whopping £1bn ($1.16bn) price tag. Here’s how it’s rolled so far, and some of the imminent opportunities for brands and cultural organizations.
Phygital brand Cult & Rain’s teaser concept in July brought the metaverse directly into the physical … [+]
Philip O’Ferrall, The Man with the (Grand) Plan
Helming the project is British multimedia mogul, Philip O’Ferrall. Bred on a familial diet of pioneering entertainment industry maneuvers (his father was Antony O’Ferrall MD of the legendary Rank Organization entertainment conglomerate in the 1980s – think: Odean Cinemas, Pinewood Studios and the Carry On films) he was formerly EVP of Viacom (Paramount) where he worked across brands including MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central & the UK’s Channel 5. The business is practically in his veins.
If it’s storytelling on a screen of any size, it’s likely that O’Ferrall will have seen it coming. Like the building itself, O’Ferrall comes with enough front to make embryonic ideas that seem bonkers a legitimate cultural reality: “Even as a 20-year-old [early 1990s] I understood how ubiquitous technology would be, that our phones would become a TV, a broadcast channel. I signed off early VR recordings of music events [at MTV] for the EMA’s when everyone was asking why do it. We were playing with Codec [streaming technology] before 3G. It may have just been ads stitched together but it was prescient.” He joined as CEO in 2017, “because I saw this as the next generation of audience engagement,” and has been brokering key concepts and partnerships ever since.
Democratized Spectacles & Cultural Programming
Screens, and their associated spectacle, are a dominating force – unapologetically commercial but also with the promise of a powerful cultural bent. Enormous OOH digital billboards are the first thing you see on exiting the new Elizabeth underground line, designed for big, longer form ads.
Next is the walk-in Now Building bearing “staggering audio and ultra-high-tech screens for high production scheduled content from behemoths like Burberry, Amazon
It will also house Outernet Arts, the company’s weekend-based public arts initiative; despite sponsorship (currently from BMW) from 12-8pm every Sunday it will be only art, no ads. Supporting O’Ferrall’s claim that “art will be fundamental” to the Outernet’s perspective apparently 40-48% of the overall Outernet content will be purely creative, a major shift from the rumored 10% initially.
Unique retail/brand activations live in the smaller Now Trending space (more on these shortly), while A subterranean space will host events and installations. The outer screens can retract, opening its monolithic innards to the public. O’Ferrall describes it as a “deep screen experience” that will happen sporadically, without notice: “It’ll be for moments that matter, but unplanned. Turn up and watch. I want to create intrigue, to continually fuel the conversation.”
Outside the Outernet.
Temples for Atheists, Mindful Media
Outernet Arts, as homed in the Now Building, and the Now Trending space both have the potential to be one of the Outernet’s defining and publicly positive features, aligned with everything from new filmmakers to mindful media. Consider it The Tate Modern’s turbine hall on steroids, but with reach beyond a traditional arts audience; according to Zenith Media’s predictions, when all components of the building are open, it could be subject to as many as 300,000 eyeballs every day, many of whom will come from the mega mainstream thoroughfares of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street.
During Frieze (October 2022), NY-based Italian artist Marco Brambilla, who is the guardian of the arts programming, showed his epic work Heaven’s Gate in the Now Building – a vast and unceasing audiovisual bricolage of material from classic Hollywood movies, described as, “ so maximal that it takes you to the edge of saturation” induced by the “intoxication of working with new technologies.” Experiencing its visceral power recalled Alain de Botton’s Temples for Atheists – inspiring secular spaces conceived to deliver the same level of awe or even respite as their religious counterparts (“as he said in 2012: ‘You can build a temple to anything that’s positive and good. That could mean: a temple to love, friendship, calm or perspective”).
It’s evident, albeit in a minor way, in Room to Breathe – a 15-minute total multi-sensory experience (teased in the Now Trending space, about to move to the bigger NOW building) teaching people how to use breathwork to reduce anxiety in just four minutes. Designed and developed with a clinical psychologist and mindfulness coach (presented by Panadol and technologists Pixel Artworks) tracking circadian rhythms the colors and lights rise and fall alongside the movements of the sun, in real time.
Notably, the space has also already been used for social awareness projects from photographer Rankin and creative Jordan Rossi’s The Pride Sessions film series – a celebration of 50 years of Pride and the LGBTQ+ community in London, and a Holocaust memorial.
Other upcoming art projects include the Lovin’ London exhibition curated by Take More Photos (a community of new image makers) that celebrates London life via the lens of local artists and director Alice Bloomfield’s ‘Sister’ – ‘an immersive 360° music video for artist TSHA.
Room to Breathe, an immersive interpretation of mindful media in pursuit of public wellbeing.
Evolving Heritage, Cultivating Contemporary Culture
The venue’s location encircling Denmark Street – whose glorious, oftentimes nefarious, and much beloved music history includes the 12 Bar Club, the NME and Melody Maker’s former HQs and Malcolm McLaren’s office where the Sex Pistols once lived – has triggered an early/consistent battering from some quarters. Back in April the Financial Times was incensed by the hulking modernism of the architecture, referred to it as resembling a ‘garish provincial nightclub’ (and that was one of the more charitable comments) while The Guardian has repeatedly suggested that experiences backed by brands could only ever be tantamount to having one’s soul extracted through one’s private parts (not in those exact words).
Indisputably, the space (created by Orms) is more Dune Dream Voyager than charmingly decrepit London – and bringing a sense of soul to a space largely grounded in transient spectacle will be one of the Outernet’s biggest challenges – but to adjudicate on the premise that historic legacy must remain mausoleum-style intact is to shoot wide of the mark.
Aside the new pedestrian arcade, the retention of the original facades and the fact that tenants of Denmark Street must still be music industry related Outernet also includes a 2000-person live music venue, HERE at Outernet (the largest London venue since the 1940’s), which, alongside Camden’s glowing Koko, is a lifeline to a scene in freefall. See the aforementioned Alice Bloomfield X TSHA film for a taster of the promise of greater public exposure for rising talent.
Meta-Physical Retailing: Keys to the (Web3) Community
The other big opportunity is ‘meta-physical’ worlds – real-world spaces which afford access to the metaverse (always-on, shared, interactive virtual environments) for which Outernet, effectively a ‘plug and play’ space that brands without a hefty in-house metaverse team, is fully primed. A major draw for digital natives these worlds will soar as the value of the metaverse beyond gameplay (as a tool for decreasing loneliness, engaging better health and more) emerges more clearly.
In July, the idea was trialed in the Now Trending space with US phygital luxury streetwear brand Cult & Rain (which connects NFT art to physical goods) in collaboration with American metaverse builders SwivelMeta. The two-day event (first day ticketed, second open to the public) saw attendees watch a livestream of the brand’s CULTR LOUNGE proto-metaverse broadcast, in real-time, on the surrounding walls. They could enter that metaverse as an avatar via VR headsets or tablets as a Cult & Rain avatar wearing the brand’s digital varsity and sneakers. Those with a Metamask crypto wallet housing an existing avatar could join with that; anyone without a wallet was guided, if desired, through the process of setting one up. Virtual attendees (500) entered remotely.
Phygital NFTs (digital artworks that could be redeemed as physical sneakers) were purchasable via a link that appeared when hovering over the NFT artwork in the CULTR SHOP, redirecting fans to a listing page on NFT marketplace, OpenSea. The next iteration, later this month, will mean purchasing in-metaverse thanks to a partnership with Spotify. The was also a free POAP – a Proof of Attendee Protocol, basically a virtual of badge of honor (in this case a Cult & Rain sneaker wearable that could be worn in Decentraland
If it sounds complex it sort of is (it’s a nascent sector) but the salient issue is the emergence of a different breed of consumption with a radically altered power dynamic. Notably, the free POAP gave Cult & Rain a direct link to its fanbase, a crumb to return to later. As SwivelMeta CEO and founder Scott Harmon says: “NFTs be relatively prosaic, basically a members’ [club] key, like having the brand in any wallet. If people sell the item the brand ties are cut, putting the power back in the hands of the consumer, which means that the rewards will come from the brands that genuinely consider their fans as a community.” Cult & Rain founder George Yang describes it as “about access and inclusion – the only route to mass adoption.”
SwivelMeta is currently working on other projects in which remote attendees will be able to make their presence felt physically, by controlling aspects of the ambience; introducing ‘token-gating’ (those people provided with a digital token would be able to come to another or receive access to another part of the project); and add in VR suits so people can control an avatar more intuitively, effectively becoming one with it as opposed to directing it.
Reinvention, The Mother of Success?
What does O’Ferrall feel will be the ultimate key to success? “The Outernet has to be constantly reinventing itself or it will fail, which means listening to the wisdom of crowds. Social media is a great vehicle for understanding sentiment and has to reflected in the programming, alongside observing key cultural communities – art, music, dance – and we can be nimbler than most. We’re a format factory at the bleeding edge of technology but none of that matters if you don’t listen to humanity, and every single day.”
Rankin Live X Outernet – an original concept of films and still celebrating 50 years of Gay Pride in … [+]
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/katiebaron/2022/11/01/inside-the-outernet-how-the-billion-pound-concept-plans-to-make-its-mark/