Together with Sota and Gabe, Saturday saw another attempt at penetrating the depths of the old access tunnels below the city of Los Angeles.
It failed.
The Linda Vista Hospital, shooting site of many a horror movie, was quietly purchased and is being torn down or renovated to make apartment homes. It was sealed up tight and the crew was only able to gaze longingly at the ruin from a nearby hilltop in the adjoining park.
At least some exterior photos were had.
Oh, and one of Sota regarding a nearby fire of unknown purpose.
Oh, and one of Sota regarding a nearby fire of unknown purpose.
A perimeter check showed several points of forced entry; people had gone under the front fence, thrown rugs over the barbed wire around back, and kicked in sections of fence doing the parkour thing on their way over. None of these appealed to us, despite Gabe espousing the idea that at the beginning of each expedition he fully anticipated being locked up somewhere and it was always a pleasant ideal that we remained outdoors by nightfall.
As a backup, we traveled back to downtown and made another go at the archive entrance to the tunnels. Unlike the previous holiday where the place was wide open, this time the elevators were shut off.
The crew was reflecting on this double failure when a small protest wagon rolled up right outside of city hall, parked itself, and a group of screaming Mexicans started shouting... something about immigration reform. Since it was all in Spanish, the audience was rather select. I try to avoid editorializing overmuch, but that kind of barrier is either more about reinforcing your own views to like-minded people or its just missing the point entirely.
Man, I've got no ass.
Man, I've got no ass.
On to recover and replenish from the morning's disappointment, the crew ambled back to its base camp in Little Tokyo and partook in some stone bowl katsu at Curry House. The stone bowl is a monster dish for the truly hungry that keeps the meal hot as the first bite the whole way through, with crispy rice waiting for you at the bottom. Gabe assumed the warrior monk pose as he inhaled the steam that never once abated, and made at least five O-faces during the meal. Sota shrugged. "It's alright." Heavy praise where he's concerned.
Afterward it was time for Sota to go home, and Gabe and I decided to salvage the day by taking in the final night of downtown's Skyline exhibit. Gabe, busy bee that he is, anticipated that he had time for one or two. Me, knowing downtown and how far out these were spread (from 4th to 11th Street over ten exhibits) figured I could cajole him into doing as much as possible, probably half of them in one night.
Like maddened art warriors, we blazed through all ten, excepting the one that was closed down that night. Here are their stories.
Exhibit one: Other World Ceiling
By: Natasha Bajc and Samy Kamkar
A... thing. Hopefully the audio in the video is coherent enough, because I didn't quite catch everything. Motion sensors inside an old bank track everybody in the room and project the flow of money they represent through the room and into virtual bank vaults as projected on the glass ceiling. Hold on, let's check the website...
Okay, apparently there's something about a ghost taking your money and putting it in the Other World vault and it's all kind of kooky but endearing, so go ahead and read about it here.
Exhibit two: The Passenger
By: Two guys who totally dropped the ball.
Busted. Not working. Five hours of life out of ten days of the exhibit, and the artists couldn't be arsed to come down and fix it. From the website: "The Passenger (Moon) proposes a celestially enabled interactive micro-planet that engages passing-by inhabitants through releasing its own moody mediated weather system for an experience of immersion and communication with a new planetary logic."
Basically it was a big ball of polystyrene sitting in an awesomely ruined room.
Exhibit three: Cerebral Hut
By: Guvenc Ozel
Web: Click click
A big breathing wall that looks like somebody cut off part of Epcot Center's Spaceship Earth and then two-fisted all the LSD they could find, this piece was explained by a docent as concerning the effect of our living environment on our mental state, and how it might be if it were the other way around.
On the first night that I came, the exhibit was still lit but shut down for the night.
On the first night that I came, the exhibit was still lit but shut down for the night.
And finally, some video of the piece in action.
At this point it was also clear that the donated spaces for these
exhibits were just hot slices of awesome downtown real estate, and they
only got better.
Exhibit four: Cocoon
By: amphibianArc
Web: Spider
A big fat video accompanied this bunch of things all tied together to make a bigger thing, but the real attraction to me was the space it was in. Another old bank that was recently restored to magnificent form. Gabe and I spent more time admiring the workmanship of the ceiling than the exhibit, so you'll have to check the weblink to really figure on what it's about.
Exhibit five: Pump Your Hood
By: Joanna Shaw, Helen Cheuk, Christian Prasch
Oh for crying out loud, you know the drill.
We'd been on our feet for a while, so it was time to stop and play with some balls. In this case, big balloons filled with little LED lights inside an inflatable piece of plastic of the sort you dump bodies in the river with. The idea as presented to us was that you emerge from an experience to witness Los Angeles anew. And it really works, the rooftop garden we were situated on gave great views of the skyline from a completely new angle than what most are used to, and the time spent inside (again, playing with balls) makes you forget about it until you make your way out.
Exhibit six: The Living Wall
By: Behnaz Farari
A very cool exhibit that allows you to reshape a wall at one end of the room with a gesture or a touch, most people had some difficulty getting the wall to respond without a lot of hand-waving. The artist, Behnaz, was on-hand to show people how to make it work, and in fact was the first artist out of all these exhibits we actually met that night (out of a total of two). Next to that, she's somewhat unique amongst artists in that she saw discussion of her work as a learning experience, and engaged with people enthusiastically with questions of her own.
The real prize of the exhibit came with a group of children, a rarity in downtown's evening scene. Behnaz lit up when they arrived and eagerly showed them how to use the wall.
Exhibit seven: Liminoid Garden
By: Filipa Valente
Ever wanted your own pet GLaDOS in vaguely bird-like form? This is where to find it, or rather was. A series of interactive sculptures were powered by a couple of sensors; one reacted to your movement, another was attached to the window to detect traffic and general movement in the city. The result; these "birds" would be more active and colorful during the busy points of the day and more serene when the city was less active.
I'm not sure how it worked out compared to Filipa's plan, because they were also supposed to act in a rather uniform manner but it seemed like they each had a distinct personality and reacted differently to different people. This might seem a bit diminutizing, but they really came off as the ultimate next step in the evolution of the artificial pet.
And the view from this loft, down in the garment district, was awfully Blade Runner.
Exhibit eight: Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre
By: Someoneorother
Conducted sporadically in the same penthouse as Liminoid Garden, Gabe and I completely lucked out in catching the very last performance of the week just minutes after we entered the exhibit. Two dancers in Tron-Lite costumes pranced about the vast space and did their thing. I say this as a person who is typically very bored by interpretive dance; I totally got a semi.
Exhibit nine: This freaking thing (Evaporative Fault)
By: John Umbanhowar and Elizabeth Umbanhowar
This one was initially aggravating. It appeared to be a room full of epsom salt cast under blue light and that was pretty much it. The space was locked and no docent was there to explain. Worse, the literature at the site was nigh-unreadable because of crap like this:
"Evaporative Fault seeks to reveal the slow/fast erosions/accretions of chronology and place at the interface of inside/outside in the urban environment. Using ephemeral/fluid materials -light, salt, time- the project engages passersby in noticing ineffable, sometimes ineluctable, processes that define and reflex the converging geological and cultural histories of Los Angeles."
Maybe that's not bullshit, but it reads like it. No, I'm pretty sure it's bullshit. Somebody had a lot of big words and was just so damn determined to use them.
Exhibit ten: Mirage
By: Raymond Salvatore Harmon and Mirage
A pretty cool idea that didn't quite work for me, Mirage was a mural on the side of a building that required a smartphone app to interact with. When viewed through the phone's camera, the mural was overlaid with augmented reality art that you could interact with, spinning shapes about or changing the color, transparency, and texture of other shapes. It was definitely interesting, but I just felt the 3D material could have been stronger and the two sides didn't seem to interact at all, as once you looked into the phone's display the mural was basically forgotten.
Video for this one is neglected as I brilliantly turned my camera on then completely forgot to hit the record button.
This was another hard to find installation, as it was behind the address in question with no indication at the door to go around. Gabe and I wound up running into a rave line with a bunch of club kids, to which Gabe insisted we turn around. "Art introverts and raver extroverts. Two different groups entirely, and never in the twain shall the two meet."
The God of Irony heard Gabe's words and said "SEND HIM MY AVATAR!", for as we turned around, there he was. A scrawny youth in a full-length red bodysuit, carrying an Adventure Time bag. So getting laid with some girl in hot pants and a fright wig later on, I'm here to tell you.
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