Sunset Bronson Studios/ICON Building Netflix Offices, Hollywood, CA
Client: Hudson Pacific Properties
Lead Artist: Kyungmi Shin
Stainless steel, programmed LED video screen
30 ft x 6 ft x 15ft (WxDxH)
This sculpture created for the new Netflix headquarter building on Sunset Blvd in Los Angeles commemorates the site's historical landmark location as Warner Brother's original Los Angeles location where the first talkie film was produced. The stainless steel sculpture created in the shape of four curved film strips is lined with more than 50,000 LED bulbs to create a video screen. The screen plays thousands of clips lasting 6 seconds in duration each, shuffled randomly, resulting in an artwork that is always in motion and is never the same. These clips were created from early technology test films including animation of the sound technology used for the Jazz Singer, color tests done by Thomas Edison and Kodak, and movement studies by Muybridge, among others. Analog noises were added by distorting the original footages to create colorful abstract sequences that refer to the digital future while looking back at the history of film industry's technological evolution.