By Elisabeth Sweet for NFT Magazine
London has lucked out this year with two editions of Digital Art Week. The April edition held exciting moments for Fellowship, theVERSEverse, Gretchen Andrew, and Gazelli. In a showcase at Outernet on Thursday April 24, DAW Co-Founder & CEO Shaina Silva announced that the organisation would be back in October with a robust program to signify their official move to an autumn schedule.
Following the long Easter weekend, Fellowship kicked off on Tuesday the 22nd hosting an open house with artist Grant Yun for his latest collection SPACES. Yun’s work thoughtfully investigates the profound transformations in our built environments driven by technological innovation, automation, and shifting labor paradigms. Grant spoke in depth about how experimenting with AI for this collection invited reflection and new perspectives on his practice as a whole and on his role as an artist. A heartfelt congratulations to Grant and the Fellowship team for the successful sale of the works!
On Wednesday April 23rd, over a hundred people gathered at Ladbroke Hall for re:VERSE, the poetry symposium with theVERSEverse, co-hosted with the Tezos Foundation with partnership with The Collectors Club, Muse Frame, Digital Art Week, and The Disruptive Gallery. Two powerhouse panels and three curated performances provided the audience different paths to explore the evolving dialogue between poetry, art, and technology.
After opening remarks from Co-Founder of The Collectors Club Leila Khazaneh, theVERSEverse’s Elisabeth Sweet introduced the first panel, poem = work of art which doubles as the mission of theVERSEverse. Co-Founder of theVERSEverse Ana María Caballero led the conversation, seeking to contextualize the recent trajectory of digital poetry within the broader contemporary art context in an effort to understand what has really been accomplished and where there is room for growth. Melanie Lenz, Curator of Digital Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum, said that in looking at the Museum’s collection of poetry, “I put digital poetry within the networks and histories of what’s come before, but I don’t think that necessarily shapes the direction it’s going in. There are some really interesting, innovative, and exciting new developments, especially when it comes to performance and hybrid works which come not only with new technologies, but also with the artists and how they are using them.” Insights from Aleksandra Artamonovskaja, Head or Arts at Trilitech shed light on aspects of the technological progress and challenges when it comes to marketing poetry on blockchain, while Abigail Miller, Artist and Partnership Lead at Avant Arte at Avante Art discussed the importance of community when poets consider how they might commercialise their work and evolve their practice. Poet and artist Arch Hades discussed the ways her painting practice helped her poetry gain the significant traction it has in the wider art world.
The second panel, poem = code, delved into the ways in which poetry is a creative technology that encodes and expresses what theVERSEverse Co-Founder Sasha Stiles calls our “human data – our stories, data, emotions, memories, beliefs – in forms we can save, transmit, and share.” Stiles moderated the panel which invited rich perspectives from Jen Roebuck, Chair of the Lumen Prize who highlighted the prioritisation of the art itself over the technology which might drive it, and from poet Mark Webster who leans heavily on code as the language which articulates his artistic vision in its truest poetic sense. Dyl Blaquiere, CEO of Muse Frame & Sedition underscored that display technology enhances artists’ abilities to create and show their work across media. The conversation synced with themes of AI as an interwoven method of developing a poet’s voice and how these technologies can break barriers within artists and around institutions. From the audience, Harry Yeff asked how these technologies have expanded artists’ reach to new audiences, institutions, and galleries. Eva Jäger, Arts Technologies Curator and Creative AI Lead at Serpentine gave example through The Call by Holly and Mat Dryhurst which invited the audience to become part of the work itself, engaging them in new modes of data governance.
Poetry performances by Arch Hades, Christian Bök, and Elisabeth Sweet closed the evening. Arch Hades wowed the audience with two cantos from Arcadia, an epic, narrative poem which examines our modern existential crisis of alienation and anxiety. Christian Bök, winner of the Griffin Prize for Poetry, linked the mythic past of Homer’s Iliad with daring feats of poetry’s preservation long into the future. Bök read FIFTY DAYS AT ILIAM, his generative collaboration with Sarah Ridgley curated in theVERSEverse’s GenText series, and excerpts from THE XENOTEXT, a forthcoming book about Bök’s endeavor to encode a poem in the DNA in a bacterium which will outlive the explosion of the earth. Elisabeth Sweet debuted a new work called enough, a one-word poem made ritual through art. She performed a verse of the work in a chant meditation, accompanied by a shruti box.
Ana María Caballero gave the final remarks and ended with a new poem “To Myself on My Fortieth.” The crowd migrated to the after party hosted by The Disruptive Gallery where works curated by theVERSEverse showed throughout the night.
The symposium served as a milestone moment for theVERSEverse, the digital poetry gallery founded in November 2021. Four years of experimentation, collaboration, and exhibition culminated in the coming together of thought leaders and doers in the arts to discuss the myriad ways poetry goes beyond the page.
For more about re:VERSE, check out the event page at theverseverse.com.
Outernet Takeover
Throughout an entire week, the Outernet's Now Building featured a "Takeover" event, transforming its immersive floor-to-ceiling screens into a large-scale canvas for digital art. This public display showcased works from a diverse group of artists, including Sasha Stiles, ThankYouX, Bryan Brinkman, Xin Liu, Matteo Zamagni, Jesse Woolston, Zach Lieberman, Brendan Dawes, Aerosyn-Lex Mestrovic, Yoshi Sodeoka, Ryan Koopmans and Alice Wexell.
The art explored various digital forms like motion graphics, AI-generated art, and interactive experiences. The event utilized Outernet's advanced digital technology to create an enveloping environment, allowing visitors to experience digital artworks in a uniquely impactful way.
TAEX Presents FLOW by MAOTIK for Digital Art Week 2025
As part of Digital Art Week, the curated digital art platform TAEX presented MAOTIK’s series "FLOW." Specifically, the artwork "FLOW - Brighton" was exhibited on April 24th in Now Pop One at the Outernet. This piece was created for the event, using geographical data from the Brighton seashore to generate an audiovisual composition inspired by tides. The artwork, driven by live weather data in its original conception but recorded for this exhibition from a specific time and place, offered visitors an immersive sensory experience of changing sea levels. The sound design complemented the visuals, expressing wave movements and natural phenomena.
GAZELL.iO Meetup - Digital Art Week Edition
Gazelli Art House in London hosted the third edition of the GAZELL.iO Meetup as part of Digital Art Week celebrations. The event brought together a notable group of past residents from the GAZELL.iO program and artists currently exhibiting with the gallery. Attendees had the opportunity to engage with these artists in person. Featured artists making appearances included Ben Cullen Williams, Marshmallow Laser Feast, Gretchen Andrew, Gibson/Martelli, Liliana Farber, Alison Goodyear, Entangled Others, and Matteo Zamagni.
