Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) · Miracle Mile

john gerrard: SPIRITS

Now showing21 December 2025 – 20 December 2026·Ticketed — see website

A year-long artwork for your mobile browser: 96 plastic sandals and shoes collected from beaches worldwide, photoscanned into gaussian splats.

Book tickets

Open a link on LACMA's page and a single worn plastic sandal floats on your phone screen. Press it and the surface changes. In the Indian Ocean set it begins as a faint iridescent shimmer, turns glossy and acid-house bright, darkens to deep ocean blue, then bursts into flame and ends as a charred void.

john gerrard collected 96 plastic sandals and shoes from Pacific, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean and Atlantic beaches and photoscanned each into a gaussian splat, rendered live in the browser rather than played as a video. LACMA released them on its homepage over four 24-hour events, one an hour, from the December 2025 solstice to the September 2026 equinox. A generative soundtrack shifts as you drag and rotate.

There is nothing to see in the galleries: SPIRITS is online only and needs no ticket, and all four ocean sets stay linked from the exhibition page until 20 December. It is the one LACMA show where parking on Wilshire isn't part of the visit.

Look for

The Indian Ocean set (spring equinox)
Look for sandals whose surfaces move from a faint iridescent shimmer through acid-house colour and deep ocean blue to flame and a charred void.
The Pacific set (winter solstice)
The first shoes released, under a morphing layer that runs from light and gasoline through 1960s Californian psychedelia, ocean heat maps and wildfire to a final burn.
The generative soundtrack
Tap the speaker icon at bottom left: the winter set has minimal engine-like tones and distant digital choirs, and spring's beats move from house to techno.