Doug Aitken: Lightscape — Los Angeles Master Chorale

Lightscape, a new film-based installation by artist Doug Aitken and produced with the LA Phil and LA Master Chorale, considers our landscape of diversity, creating a vulnerable and humanistic portrait that chronicles the search to find one’s individuality in a world of continuous transformation. In this work, Aitken creates a modern mythology propelled by music, film, and architecture. It follows multiple characters in a Robert Altman–esque structure, taking us on a journey that explores a landscape in the midst of extreme change—from the deep ecology of vast deserts and desolate mountainscapes to futuristic robotics factories and the digital realm.

The diverse cast of Lightscape mirrors the landscapes its characters occupy. Natasha Lyonne is seen in a nocturnal high-rise in an existential sequence. Urban crump dancers move through automated factories, their bodies driving and twitching in response to their mechanized surroundings. A migrant worker speeds through the desert at escape velocity. We are thrust into seemingly disparate worlds, with each character on a different journey, but as the narrative progresses, the stories interconnect.

Lightscape is a visual poem. Music lies at the core of the film, featuring a unique collaboration with the LA Master Chorale and the LA Phil. It includes original recordings—conducted by Gustavo Dudamel—of iconic minimalist composers and artists such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Meredith Monk and original scores by Beck & LA LOM and Doug Aitken with Grant Gershon. The visual and sonic landscapes shift gears as the characters’ narratives develop, ranging from hardcore techno to haunting compositions.

At The Shed, Lightscape evolves into an immersive installation designed as a seven-screen artwork. Implementing an ever-shifting mix of sight and sound, Lightscape functions as a living project. During its run at The Shed, a series of ongoing live musical performances will activate the space, blending the Lightscape installation with live improvisations. Incorporating performance and the musical culture of New York, the artwork itself becomes a hub for collaboration, turning The Shed into a site for active artistic experimentation.

Lightscape is an artwork for our times and about our times. Like a fragmented mirror, the film is immersive—we fall into it, and follow the different characters who gradually converge to create a larger worldview: one of connectivity, struggle, hope, and embracing what our new horizon may bring.

Featured throughout the film-based installation, the Los Angeles Master Chorale brings a powerful collective energy with a live performance of a song cycle by Aitken. Their performance animates Lightscape’s sonic landscape through a fusion of choral music, electronic sound, and cinematic storytelling.