The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and artist john gerrard announce the Summer Solstice launch of SPIRITS, a landmark year-long artwork commissioned by LACMA’s Art + Technology Lab and presented on LACMA’s homepage from Winter Solstice 2025 to Winter Solstice 2026, on June 21, 2026. Highlighting LACMA’s opening celebrations for its new David Geffen Galleries, designed by Peter Zumthor, gerrard will present SPIRITS SUMMER SOLSTICE DANCE a live event on the East West Bank Commons, headlined by a DJ set from acclaimed electronic music pioneer Richie Hawtin. The Summer Solstice event will mark the debut of Peak Oil, an original psychoacoustic composition by john gerrard. The event is free and open to the public with RSVP.
SPIRITS is a rumination on our world’s petroleum addiction, aimed at highlighting the impossible bind we find ourselves in through the over consumption of and reliance on forever chemicals and plastics. A digitally native interactive work, SPIRITS is the the first institutional project in the world to use gaussian splatting, a spatial imaging technology that composes objects from cloud-like points of data. The Summer Solstice (Mediterranean Sea) launch marks the most significant public moment of gerrard’s most expansive year to date, and the first time in LACMA’s history that a major solo exhibition has been presented exclusively in the browser on LACMA’s homepage.
“SPIRITS begins in techne. The making, doing or crafting in ancient Greek – now assigned to technology and the algorithm. Over several years we have called these works up, from the realms of game engine, AI gaussian splat and tone.js composition. They took languages from art sims on the landscape and pushed into the touch screen and the cultural super space of the phone. On June 21 we welcome the extraordinary Richie Hawtin. We welcome thousands of dancers. We enter a form of participatory techno dance intersecting with both very old and very new knowledge, ecologies and power. We shall see where it takes us on solstice night on the beautiful new commons under the David Geffen Galleries at LACMA , LA” — john gerrard
“As a visual artist John has often cited music & rave culture as an important influence as he discovered (and danced to) Techno in the early nineties. As a musician, the structure and subtractive nature of my studio works would have never materialized without a deep interest and analysis of the mid-century works of Rothko, Barnet Newman and Donald Judd. For our collaboration at LACMA, John and I will explore the meeting point between sight & sound, rhythm & repetition and analog vs. digital.” — Richie Hawtin
“Bringing together Richie Hawtin’s pioneering approach to electronic music and john gerrard’s meditation on the world’s oceans, SPIRITS SUMMER SOLSTICE DANCE invites audiences to gather in celebration of the summer solstice, reflecting on the systems and cycles that connect us all.” — Joel Ferree, Art + Technology Lab, LACMA
JOHN GERRARD: SPIRITS
Organized around four bodies of water and four astronomical events, SPIRITS transforms 96 discarded plastic sandals and shoes, collected along the shores of the Pacific, Indian, Mediterranean, and Atlantic oceans, into luminous, interactive virtual sculptures rendered in real time in the browser. These are not images, not video, and not AI, rather they are what gerrard calls image objects: dimensional, world-built sculptures crafted over two years, in which the physics of the earth itself is embedded into each sculptural form. The viewer’s finger is the central cultural actor, each touch transforming the object with overlays of oil slicks, ocean currents and other forms.
The work unfolds in four 24-hour events, each releasing 24 new spirits hour by hour across a single day, tracing a full solar year. SPIRITS is conceived as a full solar wheel, opening and closing on December 21:
- Winter Solstice (Pacific Ocean): December 21, 2025 — now on view at lacma.org
- Spring Equinox (Indian Ocean): March 20, 2026 — now on view at lacma.org
- Summer Solstice (Mediterranean Sea): June 21, 2026 — preview here
- Autumn Equinox (Atlantic Ocean): September 22, 2026
SPIRITS uses WebGL, Babylon.js, Tone.js, and gaussian splatting technologies and is presented by LACMA’s Art + Technology Lab.
THE SPIRITS SUMMER SOLSTICE DANCE: JUNE 21, 2026
On the longest day of the year, SPIRITS SUMMER SOLSTICE DANCE marks both the inflection point where the days shorten and the wheel tips along with the release of the Summer SPIRITS. The activation is meant to connect the core concept of the work: petroleum and our planet at a location adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits, the oldest petroleum deposits in Los Angeles. As the sun wanes, ancient sunlight is also trapped beneath the dancer’s feet. Entirely waste free by design, the activation will span four hours as the day moves from light to dark. Upon entry each guests will receive a prismatic vessel titled UISCE (the Irish word for water, and the root of uisce beatha, “water of life.”) These vessels are intended to be kept as a gift from the artist and serve as serving ware for refreshments for the evening.
Kicking off SPIRITS SOLSTICE DANCE Jelani and Anastasia Giovanitake the stage, two performers from Los Angeles inherit the SPIRITS world and perform the simulations live on the LED wall as the sun begins to set. At 7:30pm, Richie Hawtinarrives to lead the dance for two and a half hours.Inspired from data generated by Gerrard’s simulations, Hawtin will explore how the visual streams influence elements of his set in real time. Using his unique setup of the analog MODEL 1 mixer and integrated digital systems like Bitwig & Traktor, Hawtin will translate this unique moment into musical expression.
At the four corners of the floor stand four ocean sentinels, monumental sound and lighting towers, each holding one ocean of the world. At the center, a four point mister continuously cools the dancers through the night, each facing each cardinal direction toward its ocean. Dancers fill iridescent vessels from water vats and return to the floor. The event is designed by john gerrard with material care throughout: all surfaces are made from logs gathered from California’s burnt forest landscapes; a commissioned chill-out area features golden, sun-dried aromatic grasses and hay, hand-cut and baled with non-plastic twine. Food and drink are sourced from producers who work with care within post petroleum agriculture.
PEAK OIL
The Summer Solstice event will mark the debut of Peak Oil, an original psychoacoustic composition by john gerrard*. Conceived as a sonic expansion to SPIRITS, Peak Oil will be performed live at LACMA before being given to artists and DJs globally for remixing, with the track seeding into clubs across globally through July and August as the work travels to Silencio Ibiza at the end of June.
The composition extends gerrard’s investigation into petroleum, plasticity, and the material conditions of the contemporary world into the register of sound, adding an auditory dimension to the broader SPIRITS project and its meditation on what we have extracted from the earth and left behind on its shores. Built on dichotic listening, the words “peak oil” moving from one ear to the other at high repetition. The phrase shifts, morphs, becomes something else, then returns.
SPIRITS SUMMER SOLSTICE DANCE WITH RICHIE HAWTIN AND JOHN GERRARD
LACMA, East West Bank Commons
June 21, 2026 | 6:30 PM–10 PM
Free with RSVP
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