Historical Portraits Project

In partnership with StandardVision, we've produced a series of digital art pieces for the Central Library Video Wall. This project involved creating cinematic moving "portraits" of Los Angeles historical figures, portrayed by library patrons and community members.

Read more about this project.

Generative Animations

A series of generative digital animations which draw inspiration from the art and architecture of Central Library, especially the decorative ceiling patterns painted by Julian Garnsey. There are roughly 6 or 7 unique patterned rooms in the Library—each with their own color palette, shapes, and compositions. The generative pattern system is organized as a series based on these various rooms—freeing the ornament from the bounds of ceiling decoration and reintroducing it as dynamic digital content. The final result is a piece that illustrates a systematic approach to decoration, placemaking, and interior design—both new and old.

Learn more about this project.

Universum

Universum is the first product of Substrate, a LACMA Art + Technology Grant project by artist Nancy Baker Cahill, which examines the equitable distributive properties of mycelial networks, and how they relate to emerging data-sharing technologies. Substrate connects civic institutions, cultural resources, and data storage systems as a collaborative test case for civic hubs citywide, including the Los Angeles Public Library, LACMA, and Long Beach City College working in tandem, imagining new ways of eliminating barriers to access, of structuring permission, and of producing and sharing knowledge. Using blockchain, Substrate connects these public resources as metaphoric "Mother Trees" with the potential to nourish communities through distributed networks of multi-stakeholder cultural initiatives.

Ikebana Paradox by Connie Bakshi

Connie Bakshi is a Los Angeles-based artist, classical pianist, biomedical engineer, and digital shaman. Working predominantly with artificial intelligence, she probes post-colonial narratives that emerge on the boundaries between the synthetic and organic, material and immaterial, the human and nonhuman. Her works often re-code language, lore, and ritual to unfold the binaries of colonial canon.

HOS Artifacts by Dev Harlan

Dev Harlan is a New York based artist working in sculpture, installation and digital media practice. His work explores a range of themes including landscape, anthropogenic change and technological consumption. Harlan often uses technology to question itself and the narrative that human societies and technology are somehow separate from the natural world.

Incomplete by Dalena Tran

Dalena Tran designs systems and builds platforms to propose new models for collective knowledge and creative worldbuilding. Her body of work explores the interplay between media and emerging technology in constructing urban imaginaries. A reverie of our increasingly virtualized world and composed of a single take, Incomplete invites us to traverse an endless choreography of bodies in perpetual free- fall and updating images that reflect a world in constant change.

Drive Time by Casey Kauffman

Casey Kauffmann is an interdisciplinary artist working in a variety of digital mediums. Her piece Drive Time is a video collage artwork combining found and original material of Hollywood freeways. Exploring the diverse terrain of LA via a quintessential LA experience— spending time in our cars—the work juxtaposes the commonly perceived glitz and glamour of LA with the authentic, unpolished beauty that is inherently known and appreciated by its residents.

Love Letters (Summer) by Yuge Zhou

A Chinese-born Chicago-based interdisciplinary video artist, Yuge Zhou creates video collages and sculptural video installations that portray 'urban dispositions' and explore the complex interactions between humans and their environment. In addition to her art practice, she also directs and curates the 3300-square foot 150 Media Stream, a uniquely-structured public digital art installation in Chicago. In this capacity, she has worked with over fifty media artists and cultural institutions to create innovative programming each month that engages a cross section of diverse communities.

The Alluvials: Chapter 1 by Alice Bucknell

Alice Bucknell is a North American artist and writer based in London and Los Angeles. Working primarily through game engines and speculative fiction, she explores interconnections of architecture, ecology, magic, and non-human and machine intelligence. They are the organizer of New Mystics, a platform exploring magic, mysticism, ritual, and technology.