WINDSHIELD PERSPECTIVE

May 17 – July 13 2013 at The Architecture and Design Museum, Los Angeles (A+D Museum)

Windshield Perspective focuses on a short yet dense stretch of Beverly Boulevard from Normandie to Virgil. The windshield is both a lens and a shield; a screen which acts much like a magnifying glass to clarify the view and as a scrim to obscure the sight. This drive along Beverly stands for hundreds, if not thousands, of daily journeys through the city’s landscape. The exhibit is about seeing and not seeing.

Typically, our way of seeing from behind the wheel is unconscious. Beverly Boulevard, in its apparent bleakness, is easily dismissed as “nowhere,” falling into the hole in our consciousness put there by the dominant notion that much (if not all) of Los Angeles is not a city at all. Roll up the windows, crank up the sounds, and drive.

But a choreographed drive, recreated within the Museum and accompanied by an immersive sound environment, reveals the very essence of the built city: messy, disorderly, impromptu, and vital. Windshield Perspective will provide a way of seeing and a sight to be seen. The windshield is converted from scrim to lens.

ABOUT THE SOUND FOR WINDSHIELD PERSPECTIVE

The main gallery of Windshield Perspective includes a 6.1 channel audio system playing six separate ambient sound-compositions created for the exhibition by composer Dan Wool. The pieces, derived largely from processed field-recordings made on the boulevard, reflect various themes highlighted in the exhibition. The compositions play consecutively to create a 97 minute program that plays on a continuous loop.