The Library will be closed on Monday, October 14, 2024, in observance of Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

The Library's catalog, e-media, databases, and cardholder accounts will be unavailable for several hours beginning Monday, October 14 at 6 a.m. for maintenance.

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.


Collaborations

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.


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.

Still from Incomplete by Dalena Tran: a color abstract image of three mountains and a horse.

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.

Still from Drive Time by Casey Kauffman: A color collage of a natural scene with grass and boulders, a decorative windmill, a poster of clint eastwood, and a woman with long hair.

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.

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.

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.


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
  • Kristen Roos
  • 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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