LUMINEX, the award-winning outdoor digital art exhibition, returns to the South Park District of DTLA on the evening of Saturday, September 17, 2022, from 7:30 to 11:30 p.m. The exhibition is free to the public. Register to attend at luminexla.com.

This year, LUMINEX 2.0: Projected Realities explores the meaning of ‘Projected’ in step with the artists’ perceived ‘Realities’ – addressing the medium itself, attributing their emotion or desire to the audience, promoting a particular image or view, and providing commentary based on forecasts of data and trends. Through augmented reality (AR) installations, immersive artworks, digital drone activation, live performances, and sound and video feeds, cultural consumers will traverse between IRL and augmented realities.

The artist-led exhibition will expand to feature 12 internationally acclaimed and leading artists across 12 site-specific installations scaled to the architecture of the urban facades — all within a 5-block walkable radius (W Pico Blvd, S Hope St, W 11th St, S Olive St, S Broadway). The artist line-up includes Refik Anadol, Nancy Baker Cahill, Sarah Rara, Luciana Abait, Akiko Yamashita, Carole Kim, David Van Eyssen, Leah Smithson, Nate Mohler, Ryan P Griffin, Mark Hashimoto, and Elizabeth Leister. LUMINEX is a platform for these artists to tell their stories and reach a diverse public audience.

New this year is an exhibition-wide Augmented Reality experience. A QR Code will direct residents and visitors to the LUMINEX Channel on the Hoverlay AR App. The AR App will power an interactive map, as well as activate holograms of each artist, and enhanced reality at select installations. This feature will extend the LUMINEX experience and guide audiences on a sense of discovery of art, culture, technology, and the artists who are leading the digital art scene in LA. The App is easy to use and will bridge first-time AR users with power users.

LUMINEX 2.0 is presented by Show Imaging in partnership with Panasonic Connect, Arup, Hoverlay, Snap Inc., Downtown L.A. Proper Hotel, the South Park Business Improvement District, and NOW Art.

WHEN:    

Saturday, September 17, 2022. One night live, then accessible via Hoverlay AR App.

7:30 to 11:30 p.m.

Download the Hoverlay app here

WHERE:  

South Park District of DTLA

This is a self-guided exhibition accessible to all. Sites are 2-5-minutes walking distance apart. Attendees should plan approximately 1-hour to experience all installations on foot.

Site #1: 427 W Pico Blvd / Van Eyssen Studios

Site #2: Morrison Alley / Nate Mohler

Site #3: Morrison Alley / Leah Smithson

Site #4: 1225 South Grand / Carole Kim

Site #5: Morrison Alley / Ryan P Griffin

Site #6: 1225 South Grand / Akiko Yamashita

Site #7: South Park Commons / Elizabeth Leister (AR Enhanced Performance)

Site #8: 1066 S Hope St / Nancy Baker Cahill

Site #9: 420 W 11th St / Luciana Abait

Site #10: 1119 S Olive Street / Refik Anadol

Site #11: 1155 S Olive St / Sarah Rara

Site #12: Downtown L.A. Proper Hotel / Mark Hashimoto (AR)

WHO:      

LUMINEX 2.0, luminexla.com, is presented by Show Imaging in partnership with Panasonic Connect, Arup Americas, Hoverlay, Snap Inc., and Downtown L.A. Proper Hotel. LUMINEX 2.0  is produced and curated by NOW Art and hosted by South Park BID, with the support of Pro Lab Digital, Power Trip, and Nongshim Communications, Inc.

LIVE STREAM:

A global audience can access a live stream program of LUMINEX at luminexla.com.

SAFETY:  

This is a family-friendly public art exhibition created for the community-at-large to experience world-class art outside of the four walls of a gallery. Social respect and appropriate distancing must be practiced. Together, we can keep our community safe and healthy.

“It’s been a personal goal to unlock a new wave of conceptual, highly acclaimed artworks that can make their way into the sphere of the general public,” says Carmen Zella, Founder & Chief Curator of NOW Art. “Through LUMINEX and how this community has come together, I believe the vision of an urban environment that embraces creative expression is possible.”

SOCIAL:  

Instagram: @nowartla

Artists: @refikanadol @nancybakercahill @raraspeaks @lucianaabait @akikoyamashita3d @shinealighton @the_eyesite @leahsmithsonart @n.mohl._r @projectedvisions @mach_tw3lve @elizleister

Hashtags: #luminex #projectedrealities #luminex2022 #losangeles #dtla #augmentedreality #immersiveartworks #digitalart #losangelesartists

Sponsors: @showimaging @panasonicproavusa @arupamericas @hoverlayar @downtownlaproper @southparkla @nowart_la

LUMINEX 2.0 ARTIST STATEMENTS:

Refik Anadol | @refikanadol

Refik Anadol will participate in ‘Projected Realities’ with a dynamic AI Data Sculpture that will exhibit an

aesthetic conceptualization of nature-themed data sets in a digital play of light, color, and movement.

Anadol is approaching this year’s theme by contemplating many meanings of data as a common

language in both explaining and creating communities in the 21st century. For Anadol Studio, data as

medium or as material is not mere numbers. He and the Studio look at them as memories, as the

meaningful clusters of important moments are transformed into digital entities and stored in the mind of

a machine. Anadol believes that when we focus on collective memories and detach ego from data, we

are left with something transformative for the future of humanity.

Nancy Baker Cahill | @nancybakercahill

Slipstream 20, seizes the idea of altering reality toward constructive, rather than destructive ends. In

this artwork, Cahill summoned the mutative powers of 3D software and projected a new reality, one

related to pre-cinematic cave painting, drawing, and entangled human and botanical life. Her process

is a project of mutable translation; she transforms graphite drawings on paper into sculptures, then

scan, light, and animate them. Information is lost and gained as the drawings journey through the

software that supports their new incarnations. Cahill’s hope is that the surface projection dissolves and

becomes a living, breathing hybrid entity; and that for a moment, we are spared invective and invited

into communal transfiguration.

Sarah Rara | @raraspeaks

Through a series of extreme close-ups, Screen Lovers (2022) examines the way we modulate ourselves

between onscreen and offscreen realities — as attention, intimacy, and surveillance operate across

digital and physical space. Tracking the gaze, Screen Lovers (2022) attempts to discern forms of shelter,

thought, and fluid time that are produced via screens and projection. Screen Lovers (2022) questions

how we might participate in these hybrid encounters authoring greater agency for ourselves – navigating

welcome and unwelcome forms of visibility, and fissures between identity, technology, and the body.

Screen Lovers (2022) includes a voice-over / libretto collaboratively written with the large language

model GPT-3, in a back and forth correspondence between artist and AI over a period of several months.

Luciana Abait | @lucianaabait

An immersive video projection, The Glass Wall will draw our attention toward water as a resource, and

the realities and metaphors involved in the struggle to control it. There is a kind of “invisible wall”

between us and reality, and what we perceive is not always the real truth. In this work, spectators brace

for the possibility of being swept by the rushing waters, the water is blocked from them by an invisible

wall, like a plate of glass. This illusion will make viewers realize the threat towards humanity from natural

catastrophes and it will be felt as the water rushes towards them, like they will be swept away. Water's

forceful movement and then its invisible barrier is a reflection on humanity’s power over nature; we can

change its course, in a good and bad manner.

Akiko Yamashita | @akikoyamashita3d

Full Spectrum projects an immersive world of hidden spectrums of light and sound that viewers can

step into. This artwork explores the world view from nature’s vantage point. Bees, birds and butterflies

can see ultraviolet light. Flowers attract pollinators with hidden patterns that are invisible to the human

eye. On the other side of the spectrum, snakes, salmon, and mosquitoes can see (sense) infrared light,

allowing them to detect prey in the dark. Light and sound, both forms of energy, play a dominant role in

creating the color and tone of the “world” in our minds. Our sensory systems are limited in the range of

7 frequency we can perceive and our brain forms what we call our “reality”. This artwork inspires viewers

to “see” the hidden world all around us.

Carole Kim | @shinealighton

CHOOSE. From a deep state of listening a constant unfolding in the moment, a series of decisions,

choices sound breath movement image defines the collective OTHER. In real time, time bends the

physical, mediated, shadow casting body materializes. Above, below, behind, through. Imperfect

symmetries engulf, exert an undertow, a destabilizing pull to parts unknown. CHOOSE is a multimedia

durational performance directed by visual artist Carole Kim. Jumping into this live urban canvas will be

a stellar performance ensemble including, dance: Roxanne Steinberg, Morleigh Steinberg, Oguri, Hyoin

Jun; sound: Luisa Muhr; voice: Patrick Shiroishi; saxophone: Christopher Garcia; percussion

instruments of Asia, Europe and the Americas; live videography: Theo Rasmussen and Anthony Puente.

David Van Eyssen | @the_eyesite

Drawing directly on startling video reportage of climate change in the U.S., the war in Eastern Europe

increasingly informed the evolution of In Case I Forget To Remember. Mapped to the historic Morrison

Hotel, the projection is architecturally split across three towers, stitching together over a hundred

intersecting video sequences. Devastating images of the California wildfires simultaneously reference the

burning, bombed-out buildings of the Ukraine, and the record of countless wars stored in the collective

psyche. Van Eyssen uses technology against itself to examine the experience of impermanence and

mortality. In Case I Forget To Remember suggests that remembering means remaining conscious of our

part in history, and the capacity of the individual to affect global change.

Leah Smithson | @leahsmithsonart

Our personas in the physical and digital worlds are sometimes at conflict. In one reality we may hide

parts of ourselves which we may freely lay bare in another reality. This truth is becoming even more

apparent with the rise of Web3, metaverses, and NFTs. This installation, WAGMI (We’re All Gonna Make

It), uses the architecture of South Park as a portal to explore the push and pull of these two worlds that

are ever more converging. The choreography of the figures are in a loop, creating an endless,

mesmerizing re-imagining of bodies in rhythm as we may re-imagine our own movements between both

digital and physical dimensions. WAGMI is an acronym used in the Web3 community as a sentiment of

hope that blockchain technology along with certain tech, such as the 3-dimensional Internet, called the

Metaverse, will make the world a better place.

Nate Mohler | @n.mohl._r

Entanglement uses a combination of experimental technology and natural elements to change our

perception of reality and pose a question of what the future holds. Frozen in blocks of ice are

suspended in space and illuminated with light. As the ice melts, the refraction evolves and changes

over the course of the installation casting shadows and caustic reflections across the floor. Miniature

drones respond to the light and sound mimicking the flight patterns of curious creatures exploring the

space. The hum of the drones and the dripping of the ice create a unique soundscape, later forming a

pool of water offering another moment of reflection. The temporal nature of the ice is intended to

represent time while precariously suspended in air as a distorted window for viewing.

Ryan P. Griffin | @projectedvisions

Present Paths premiers a one of a kind performance incorporating both physical and digital processes

to transform the site through a live projection process. In a synchronistic dance across mediums,

performers will interact with Griffin as he creates his signature flowing marks that build and evolve

throughout the evening. Utilizing an application on the iPad to paint layers of looping animations, these

waving lines will weave and pulse across the architecture leaving a history of the artists’ paths. As

physicists seek to frame the mystery of reality rooted in the observation of waves, so too will the artists

be present grounding the work in a loving awareness of vibrations. An extended hand across the soft

oscillating bridge between the digital and physical divides.

Mark Hashimoto | @mach_tw3lve

Daydreaming fuses concrete objects with simulated actors as an exploration of dissociation. By

introducing familiar objects and contextualizing them in unfamiliar ways, the scene aims to evoke a

sense of surrealism and the uncanny, leaving viewers in a state of tension between reality and fantasy.

The use of augmented reality as the chosen medium highlights the merging between the physical world

and its digital counterpart; and stresses the increasing presence of imaginative manifestations into our

everyday lives. Peering through a window into a world constructed from imagination, we recall what it

feels like to daydream.

Elizabeth Leister | @elizleister

Sleep Mode denotes the body’s various phases of rest and unrest in sleep mode, specifically as many

struggle with anxiety stemming from pressing realities. Sleep Mode employs the screen to present

holographic bodies in an AR experience, magnifying the space between awake and asleep; a state of

restlessness as a near perpetual disruption to being. Agitation and surrender are reflected in

choreographed movements, heightened through editing and presented as AR in South Park Commons,

a quiet oasis, framed by urban residential spaces where one presumably finds rest. A vocalized

soundscape cycles through the textures of sleep states and a live performance will reflect the space of

dreams and reveal interactions between the digital bodies and real bodies of the performers.