This week: Time travel down Ed Ruscha's Sunset Blvd in a new digital archive; see the work of NOT REAL ART grant recipients at Helms Design Center; see Maria Moyer's stoneware at Bulthaup; join a discussion about the future of Mobility as a Service (MaaS); participate in the City of Beverly Hill's design for its public spaces.
Image: Courtesy Getty.edu1) 12 Sunsets: Exploring Ed Ruscha’s Archive
Cruise down the Sunset Strip through artist Ed Ruscha's lens, from your desk. "12 Sunsets: Exploring Ed Ruscha’s Archive" is a newly launched, interactive website, designed by Stamen Design working with Getty Digital. It allows users to “drive” down Sunset Boulevard in 12 different years between 1965 and 2007, as well as to view, search, and compare the more than 65,000 photographs of this key urban artery.
As explained by Eric Rodenbeck of Stamen Design, "Ruscha and his team took photos of the entire length of Sunset Boulevard (about 22 miles) and some other streets in Los Angeles. On top of that, he didn’t just do this in 1966, but he did it more than a dozen times, every couple of years from the ’60s to today. The Getty acquired the archive in 2012 and turned it into something else." That "something else" is a "digital archive of vast conceptual and digital spatiality...Each of the images has been geotagged by the Getty, run through optical character recognition software (so we can read the signs!), and had machine vision analysis done on it. We’ve designed a series of interfaces that let the public explore this archive, many of which will be seen by the public (and Ed!) for the first time." Learn more about Ed Ruscha and his archives at the Getty here, more about the use of AI to tag and organize the images here, and more about digital spatiality generally in this DnA interview with Stamen Design.
When: Available now
Where: Getty Online
Tickets: Free
Image: Courtesy of Helms Bakery District2) NOT REAL ART at Helms Design Center
NOT REAL ART, cofounded by Scott "Sourdough" Power and street artist and muralist Man One, offers a mix of podcasts, ebooks, movies, exhibitions and educational experiences devoted to helping artists tell their stories and promote their work, especially those who might fall outside the traditional art school and gallery ecosystem. Now they've teamed up with Helms Design Center to display the work of their recent grant recipients: Gershon Kreimer, Kiara Aileen Machado, Miki Yokoyama, Paloma Montoya, Jacqueline Valenzuela and Tijera Williams. You can view their work here or see the street view projection in front of the Helms Design Center. This is part of Projecting Possibilities, a video installation at Helms Design Center featuring a new artist each week for 52 weeks, produced in partnership with the Culver City Arts Foundation.
When: Through Thursday, Oct 15, Sunset - 2 am
Where: Online and at Helms Design Center (street view projection), 8758 Venice Blvd, Los Angeles 90034
Tickets: Free
Image courtesy of Art Gray.3) Maria Moyer “The Scent of Light“ at Bulthaup
The German kitchen showroom Bulthaup has created 'Kunsthalle* b', an exhibition series featuring the work of local artists, architects and designers. The latest, “The Scent of Light“, features 23 works by sculptor Maria Moyer. Of her work, which the L.A. based ceramicist describes as "teasing the boundary between beautiful and ugly," Moyer says she likes to "explore the tension of opposites - industry and nature, refinement and coarseness, and that which is simultaneously fragile and robust. All of the pieces in the series are made from stoneware with a surface treatment hailing from ancient Rome, called terra sigilatta.K unsthalle* b' is curated by Tibbie Dunbar, former director of A + D Museum; her goal is for the pieces to engage organically with Bulthaup's signature luxe minimalism throughout the showroom.
When: Through Nov 2
Where: Bulthaup Showroom, 153 South Robertson Boulevard, Los Angeles 90048
Tickets: Free. By appointment only. (310) 288-3875
Transportation providers and cities are working with credit card and digital technology companies to make trip planning and payment easy and secure.4) CoMotion LIVE: MaaS (Mobility as a Service) - A Solution for a Mobility Industry in Flux?
Just as transportation in Los Angeles seemed poised to catapult into the 21st century with every option from mass transit to micro-mobility, COVID sent everyone home, and safety concerns put the revolution on hold. Now, as we find ways to safely navigate a disinfected and socially distanced version of urban mobility, CoMotion asks if it is time for MaaS. MaaS, or Mobility as a Service, refers to the integration of various forms of transport services into a single mobility service accessible on demand, preempting the need to own personal vehicles.
CoMotion, a convener of conferences and events around transportation, has brought together a group of mobility leaders to share their thoughts: Sampo Hietanen, founder & CEO of MaaS Global, creator of the Whim app; Piia Karjalainen, Secretary General of MaaS Alliance, a public-private partnership facilitating MaaS deployment across Europe; Miroslav Katsarov, CEO of Modeshift, a technology company working with small and mid-sized transit agencies around the world to provide intelligent transportation services; and Professor David King, who explores transportation policies such as parking management, taxi services, microtransit and land use at Arizona State University.
When: Wednesday, Oct 14, 10 am
Where: Online Webinar. Connection information provided with registration.
Tickets: Free.
You can help the city of Beverly Hills decide how to place street amenities. Photo: Courtesy of Connect Beverly HIlls5) Connect Beverly Hills Virtual Design Charrette: Meet me on Wilshire and La Cienega
Speaking of mobility (above), the City of Beverly Hills will undergo quite a change when mass transit arrives in the form of two new “D Line” (aka Purple Line) Metro subway stations.
That means an influx of pedestrians into the city known for luxury cars and shopping. In anticipation the city brought in cicLAvia cofounder Aaron Paley and his company Community Arts Resources (CARS) to help develop a streetscape plan for Wilshire Boulevard and La Cienega Boulevard within Beverly Hills.
CARS is trying to get input from a wide swath of stakeholders. They held a virtual design Discovery Charrette in June and will hold a second this Wednesday. The city will share their ideas for the streetscape plan and design standards based on public input received so far, and you’ll get the opportunity to advance the draft designs and amenities for Wilshire and La Cienega boulevards. The goal is to help determine what amenities are needed for people traveling to and from the new rail station. It is also instructive for anyone curious about how streets are designed.
Incidentally, cicLAvia marked its tenth birthday this past Saturday. Check out Paley's reflections, here.
When: Wednesday, Oct 14, 5 - 7 pm: Street Design and Amenities; Thursday, Oct 15, 4 - 6 pm: Mobility Hub
Where: Connection information provided with registration. You can register here.
Tickets: Free