Central Library Video Wall

The Central Library Video Wall is a 28-foot video screen located in the library’s Tom Bradley Wing. A component of the S. Mark Taper Foundation Digital Commons, the video wall is a space for storytelling—about our community, our institution, and our world. Video Wall content is intended to delight, inform and educate library visitors with compelling visual stories.


Commissioned Work

Historical Portraits Project

black and white portrait of a man seated in a parlor with playing cards

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

still from Pages

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.


Curated Selections

In addition to original content, the video wall features original art, films, and animation. Current selections include works by the following artists:

color still from the video Ikebana Paradox by Connie Bakshi

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.

Color video still of abstract imagery from HOS Artifacts by Dev Harlan

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.

Color video still from the video Cuboid Vortex City by Kristen Roos.

Cuboid Vortex City by Kristen Roos

Kristen Roos is an artist and educator based on the unceded territories of the Tsleil-Waututh, Musqueam, and Squamish people, also known as Vancouver. His practice includes a wide range of mediums including electronic and electroacoustic music composition, sound design, sound installation, animation, printmaking, textiles and media archaeology.

Color video still from  Machine for Living by Sabrina Ratté.

Machine for Living by Sabrina Ratté

Video artist Sabrina Ratté investigates virtual environments generated by analog technologies, largely relying on impersonal and formal spaces such as malls and offices to create new worlds that defy our conventional perspectives. The combination of both digital software and conventional modes of analog video art production are essential to each piece she creates, bearing new luminous and vibrating architecture.

Still of the digital art video Library Monitor - Exterior by Ainslee Robson

Octavia's Haunts I and Octavia's Haunts II by Ainslee Alem Robson

Ainslee Alem Robson is an award-winning Ethiopian-American director, writer and media artist, and current Sundance-NEH Fellow. Her interdisciplinary practice involves an alchemy of working with film, archives, VR, and emerging technologies in digital art to create counterimaginings and emancipatory narratives speaking to the liminal spaces between Africa and its diasporas.

Color video still from The Alluvials: Chapter 1 by Alice Bucknell

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.

Color video still from Love Letters (Summer) by Yuge Zhou

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.


Past Artists

The following artists have previously exhibited work on the video wall.

  • Enrique Agudo
  • Sean Capone
  • Tom Carroll
  • Dan Chen
  • Andreas Fischer
  • David Guerrero
  • Leo Isikdogan
  • Dirk Koy
  • LIA
  • Lifeforms.io
  • Johnathan McCabe
  • Andrew Bryce Myers
  • Danielle Parsons
  • Sabrina Ratté
  • Casey Reas
  • Christy Lee Rogers
  • Robert Seidel
  • Pascual Sisto
  • Teun van der Zalm


If you have a comment, question or suggestion related to content on the Video Wall, contact us below:

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