What happens when an essential artist’s work meets immersive technology? Well, you might get something like 12 Sunsets, a new project from the Getty Research Institute that takes its cue from Ed Ruscha’s archival photos of the Sunset Strip — and uses them as the basis for something utterly hypnotic.
The project’s origins date back to 1966, when Ruscha used a motorized camera on a pickup truck to photograph the buildings on each side of the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. Ruscha then used the photographs in his 1966 book Every Building on the Sunset Strip; from there, the proverbial die had been cast. Ruscha and his collaborators returned to this project again and again in the years that followed.
As Sebastian Smee writes at The Washington Post, Ruscha’s work “anticipated what Google Street View would do on a much bigger scale in the 2000s.” So it’s not shocking that the Getty’s project would put a digital spin on Ruscha’s very analog project, scanning in over 60,000 negatives to create a transformative take on Ruscha’s work.
The article neatly summarizes the project’s appeal. “Perched three floors up in my East Coast apartment this winter, I’ve found Ruscha’s photographs of single-story, flat-roofed record stores, insurance agencies, empty lots and palm trees, all stretched out along a mesmerizing horizontal continuum, as evocative of Los Angeles as the Hollywood sign,” writes Smee.
At a time like this, when moving through landscapes seems far more fraught, the ability of 12 Sunsets to transport the viewer can’t be discounted — both into another place and into art.
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