Now I don’t hide the fact that I’m conflicted when it comes to notions of digital art, with the coldness of digital art, not the coldness of poetry mind, Sasha Stiles is as much a poet, she has a way with words, with the shape of words, letters, she is essentially though, I think she’d say, a digital artist, a champion of the future shock, she talks of block chains and who knows what and as I have said many times on these fractured pages, I still have problems with the idea of power looms, I am with Ned Ludd and marching on Nottingham and I much prefer how Organ looked and felt back in the broken typewriter and backstreet photo copier hand painted days of the last century.  I prefer cut’n paste to copy and paste and so far Outernet over by Tottenham Court Road has done nothing for me, all those flat screens, those over-saturated colours, I’ve walked through it, past it, around it a number of times in recent months without those screens ever engaging with me. Yesterday, I purposely jumped on a train out of a cold wet Hackney, headed for the future via Liverpool Street and the high speed Lizzy Line (how quick was that journey!) to a gleaming science fiction version of Tottenham Court Road, past the ghost of a million adventures that was the Astoria, just to go to Outernet and those giant screens.    

Artist Sasha Stiles says she is “really pleased to share that my five-minute poem-movie “Cursive Binary: Fragments” will be playing throughout the day tomorrow, Thursday April 25, on Outernet’s stunning 4-story LED screens, right across from Tottenham Court Road Station, as part of Digital Art Week. If you’re in town, please do stop by….” 

Now you see, another slice of conflicted thought, I love Sasha’s work, it excites me, the way she shapes things, her ones and zeros, her script, her glowing greens, the bigness of it all, the bold dynamic, I love her arguments, her poetic use of technology, well not her arguments, her well argued point of view, I won’t be throwing my paint brushes away anytime soon. it wasn’t hard to force myself out in the rain on a Friday afternoon, I am now a Sasha Styles fan. Actually “Lifelong language artist” is how she describes herself on her social media

My timing was perfect, the right Elizabeth Line exit selected (for once) and there it was, in all that green glory, running on the giant screens without me having to wait, there looming large (yes looming) as I came up on the escalator, right there, big, massive actually, all black and fluorescent green, pulling me in, a breath of contradictory digital fresh air in the middle of all the glass-fronted cashless consumerism and Adam Smith on his pocket computer phone buying things and taking selfies all at the same time. This is brilliant actually, if you are going to do this kind of thing then this is surely where it should be, and yes, there’s hundred of people in here just standing watching, gazing, smiling, phones out, pointing, sharing, just lots and lots of people positively engaging with the art, excellent – hang on I haven’t posted an image of one of my paintings on my social media yet today – I can’t deny being in here as the red buses flow by is exciting, it is engaging, it sounded good as well, was it just Sasha’s style? Her film was running for five minutes three times every hour, the next film really did nothing much, I drifted away after a couple of minutes of slick cold growing flower cliché. Cursive Binary: Fragments was warm, fuzzy, sharp, beautiful, attention-holding, and not just my attention. 

The film was only running for one day, you missed it (we did run a news story, we did tell you), pleased I went. Right then, off to Cork Street…

Sasha Stiles

Previously on these pages – ORGAN THING: Sasha Stiles, Binary Odes at Annka Kultys Gallery. A brave new story, or is a beautifully poetic take on an old one? Whatever the point (missed), a rather recommended art exhibition once more…

See, I had my phone out as well, there’s a #43Secondflim up there and coclick on an image here to see the whole image or to run the slide show…