LACMA presents the U.S. premiere of the latest installation from Christian Marclay, the video artist behind an enthralling 24-hour film filled with clocks. This time around, Marclay has created five immersive audiovisual installations (two of them interactive) that use millions of publicy-posted Snapchat videos.
Snap Inc. worked with Marclay to create algorithms that analyzed millions of publicly-posted snaps, which he then used to select videos based on their sound profiles. It sort of flips how we typically think of the social media app: We usually associate Snapchat with stickers and face filters, but here Marclay is primarily concerned with the sound of these 10-second snippets.
You’ll navigate five audiovisual installations in the nearly pitch-black galleries, starting with a half-circle of crisp, gloriously glowing smartphone screens. All Together loops a series of 400 snaps across 10 screens that’ve been thematically synchronized, so different shots of feet walking or frying pans sizzling play out across the screens. The hard-to-look-at Tinsel Loop flashes a pair of videos that match the pitch of Marclay’s audio composition Tinsel, while Sound Tracks’ ceiling domes rumble with unsettling low tones—look up, though, and you’ll find those ominous sounds are actually as benign as a dog video that was shot in the app’s slow-motion turtle mode.
The call-and-response Talk to Me/Sing to Me puts visitors among a tangle of smartphones suspended in darkness. Set aside your shyness and speak or sing loudly, and you’ll find you trigger a whole network of phones that’ll bark back at you with videos that match the same pitch.
The Organ is the clear standout; with each press of a piano key, a column of snaps more or less at that same pitch is projected onto the wall. It’s basically a pipe organ, but with the dissonant drone of vertical videos instead of pipes. When you’re at the seat of the digital organ, it feels like you’re playing god on Snapchat, summoning strands of videos from around the globe at the tips of your fingers. And as a spectator, it’s like peering into a massive surveillance network as mundane moments from the recent past flash across the screen at an overwhelming rate.
I still really don’t know what to make of The Organ, but I keep thinking about it—it’s beautiful and transfixing and sort of horrifying. And, let’s be real, social media is sort of horrifying—particularly here in L.A. with an over-the-top influencer culture and the very real ramifications of Snap’s expansion in and then flight from Venice. That sentiment isn’t really explicit in Marclay’s installations; instead they seem to tackle themes of togetherness, of people all around the globe taking the same silly selfies and partaking in and sharing similar small moments. But it’s also hard not to shake the sense of isolation and loneliness staring at a small screen in a dark room inspires as you’re, well, staring at a small screen in a dark room.