| More than 100 artists, musicians, comedians, actors and performers from L.A.'s thriving, multifaceted underground art scene are featured in a new experimental video game named "Blippo+." Created by Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans, with music by Bechtolt and Rob Kieswetter, the trio behind the L.A.-based post-pop band YACHT (Young Americans Challenging High Technology), the game is part video art installation, part interactive theater. It was created for the newfangled gaming console Playdate, which was released in 2022 and purposefully conjures old-school devices like the Nintendo Game Boy, with a black-and-white, 1-bit display. |
| "This is essentially our bootleg way of making television, by skipping all the gatekeepers and going straight to a distribution platform that is still open to artist's weird experiments, a.k.a. video games," said Evans, in an interview Thursday in advance of the game's exhibition party at Bob Baker Marionette Theater in Highland Park. |
| "Hollywood [production] has left Los Angeles, so the people that are here have to scramble to figure out what to do," added Bechtolt. "So we moved to where there's lots of funding, and an openness for experimentation. And that's the video game world, indie video games, specifically." |
| Playdate's low-res format was ideal for "Blippo+," which rolls out in a looping, 11-week cycle, with new programming — original, avant-garde soaps, sitcoms, news, weather and talk shows— arriving every Thursday at 10 a.m. PDT. Bechtolt and Evans collaborated with director JJ Stratford, a longtime video artist and music video maker, who runs the all-analog Telefantasy Studios in Glendale, dedicated to, according to its website, "bringing the strange, surreal, and speculative to life." |
| "She's a scholar of video arts, and an artist herself," explained Bechtolt of Stratford. "When all of the TV studios in Los Angeles converted to digital, they just threw out their analog equipment. So JJ has been collecting this stuff for years and years, and now she has a full-on 1982 television studio." |
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| The L.A.-based post-pop trio YACHT has created a new art project / video game called "Blippo+." (YACHT) |
| The programming on "Blippo+" was filmed over the course of a year using the kind of tube cameras common in television studios before the digital era, and employing the talents of the band's aforementioned artist-collaborators including artists Martine Syms and Maya Man; musicians Staz Lindes (of the Paranoyds), Calvin Johnson (of K Records / Beat Happening) Phil Elverum (Mount Eerie); and comedians Whitmer Thomas, Clay Tatum, Mitra Jouhari, Donny Divanian, Kyle Mizono, Anna Seregina, Steve Hernandez, Tipper Newton and Brent Weinbach. |
| Post-production took another year, and the game was finally released on Playdate in May. Next month "Blippo+" will roll out on Steam and Nintendo Switch. |
| Playdate was created by the Portland-based software development and video game publishing company Panic Inc. YACHT originated in Portland and the people behind Panic were longtime fans. They approached the band almost a decade ago at a music festival in North Carolina. |
| "They gave us this open invitation to make something as YACHT if we ever had an idea for a video game," said Bechtolt. |
| Evans added that Panic's interest was likely fueled by the band's reputation for creating experimental multimedia art projects that exist both on and offline, including co-founding the Triforium Project, which worked to restore and revitalize artist Joseph Young's controversial Triforium sound-and-light sculpture in downtown Los Angeles, and resulted in a variety of live art and music performances at the site. |
| "Blippo+" is a natural extension of YACHT's immersion in underground art and obsession with how analog and digital tools can collide to create new forms and functions for a post-postmodern world. It was also proudly made without the use of AI, Bechtolt and Evans noted. |
| I'm arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt, heading back underground where I belong. Here's your weekly dose of arts news. |
Best bets: On our radar this week |
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| Gustavo Dudamel conducts the L.A. Phil in John Williams' score for "Jurassic Park." (L.A. Philharmonic) |
| 'Jurassic Park' in Concert
Gustavo Dudamel and L.A. Phil perform John Williams' epic score live to picture as Steven Spielberg's 1993 blockbuster starring Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum is projected on the big screen in HD.
8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com |
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| The Old Globe presents "Deceived," based on the play "Gas Light," Saturday through Sept. 7. (Ben Wiseman) |
| Deceived
Playwrights Johnna Wright and Patty Jamieson's update Patrick Hamilton's classic 1938 stage thriller "Gas Light" (also the basis of the 1944 film "Gaslight") about a woman who begins to doubt her seemingly perfect new husband as she is increasingly bedeviled by strange occurrences.
Saturday through Sept. 7 Old Globe Theatre, 1363 Old Globe Way, San Diego. theoldglobe.org |
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| The Hollywood Bowl at night. (L.A. Philharmonic) |
| The Russians are coming …
And L.A. Phil has them for two separate programs this week at the Hollywood Bowl. Tuesday night, Elim Chan conducts the orchestra performing Tchaikovsky's "Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35" (with violinist James Ehnes), Britten's "Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, Op. 33A" and the 1919 version of Stravinsky's "The Firebird." Then on Thursday, Gemma New takes the baton for Rimsky-Korsakov's "Capriccio espagnol, Op. 34," Arutiunian's Trumpet concerto (performed by Pacho Flores) and Tchaikovsky's Fourth symphony.
8 p.m. Tuesday; 8 p.m. Thursday. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N Highland Ave. https://www.hollywoodbowl.com/ |
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| Brittany Howard and Alabama Shakes play the Hollywood Bowl on Wednesday. (Amy Harris / Invision / AP) |
| Alabama Shakes
In their first L.A. show in eight years, the soulful rockers led by singer-guitarist Brittany Howard are joined by Oakland punk quartet Shannon and the Clams.
8 p.m. Wednesday. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com |
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| The North American tour of "& Juliet" arrives at the Ahmanson on Aug. 13. (Matthew Murphy) |
| & Juliet
What if Romeo's tragic love didn't end it all? Find out in this jukebox musical written by David West Read (TV's "Schitt's Creek") and featuring the music of Swedish pop hitmaker Max Martin and others.
Wednesday–Sept. 7. Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. centertheatregroup.org |
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| Legendary L.A. jazz composer/musician Bobby Bradford, pictured in 2019, brings his tribute to baseball great Jackie Robinson to the Hammer's JazzPOP series on Thursday. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) |
| Bobby Bradford's Stealin' Home: A Tribute to Jackie Robinson
The West Coast jazz great leads an all-star septet performing his original composition, an homage to the Dodger legend who broke baseball's color barrier in 1947. Part of the Hammer's 2025 JazzPOP series.
8 p.m. Thursday. UCLA Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood. hammer.ucla.edu |
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Culture news |
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| Vincent Van Gogh, "Tarascon Stagecoach," 1888, oil on canvas (Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation) |
| Los Angeles County Museum of Art announced that it has been gifted its first paintings by Vincent van Gogh and Édouard Manet, in addition to four works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Alfred Sisley, Wilhelm Lehmbruck and Maurice Brazil Prendergast. The pieces come from the Pearlman Foundation, which is dividing its collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and Modernist art among LACMA, New York's Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum. |
| Times Classical Music Critic Mark Swed writes an appreciation of experimental theater director and playwright Robert Wilson, who died at the end of July. Swed was in Austria when he heard the news, attending the Salzberg Festival, and watching, "the kind of uncompromisingly slow, shockingly beauteous and incomprehensibly time-and-space-bending weirdness Wilson took infinite pleasure in hosting when he made what he called operas." |
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| The Japanese Pavilion at the L.A. County Museum of Art in 2012. (LACMA) |
| Times contributor Sam Lubell takes a deep dive into the work of Bruce Goff, who designed Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Japanese Pavilion, noting that while Goff remained largely under-the-radar throughout his life, he nonetheless inspired a host renegade of West Coast architects. |
| Gustavo Dudamel appeared onstage at the Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday, to the great joy of fans and the orchestra alike. This summer marks the 20th anniversary of the now legendary conductor's U.S. debut, writes Swed in a review of Dudamel's single homecoming week this Bowl season. "After 20 years, Dudamel clearly knows what works at the Bowl, but he also likes to push the envelope as with Tuesday's savvy blend of Duke Ellington and jazzy Ravel," Swed writes. |
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The SoCal scene |
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| Philanthropist Glorya Kaufman at her Beverly Hills home in 2012. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) |
| Glorya Kaufman, the philanthropist who transformed dance in Los Angeles through the establishment of an eponymous dance school at USC as well as a prominent dance series at the Music Center, among many other initiatives, has died. She was 95. Read her full obituary here. |
| The Tom and Ethel Bradley Residence in Leimert Park — along with the Stylesville Barbershop & Beauty Salon in Pacoima, St. Elmo Village and Jewel's Catch One in Mid-City, the California Eagle newspaper in South L.A. and New Bethel Baptist Church in Venice—have been designated Historic-Cultural Monuments as part of a project meant to recognize Black heritage and led by the Getty in collaboration with the City of Los Angeles' Office of Historic Resources. |
| When Pasadena Playhouse announces its new seasons each year, it typically delays naming one show until a later date. That time has now come, and Producing Artistic Director Danny Feldman sets Julia Masli's "ha ha ha ha ha ha ha," directed by Kim Noble, as the theater's fifth Mainstage production, running from Oct.15 to Nov. 9. The playhouse also announced some juicy casting news: Tony Award winner Jefferson Mays will star as Salieri in Peter Shaffer's "Amadeus," which is scheduled to open Feb. 15. |
| Paging parents of teenagers! There is an organization called TeenTix that has paired with a veritable cornucopia of L.A.-area arts institutions to offer a youth pass that charges local kids between the ages of 13 and 19 $5 to attend shows, concerts and exhibits. More than 35 groups participate in the program, including Geffen Playhouse, Center Theatre Group, the Soraya, Pasadena Playhouse, Boston Court, Pasadena Symphony, the Armory, A Noise Within, the Autry Museum of the West, Heidi Duckler Dance, Skirball Cultural Center, Sierra Madre Playhouse and Actors Gang. Reservations are required, and info and passes can be found here. |
| — Jessica Gelt |
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And last but not least |
| There is a free plant stand in Altadena — a symbol of new life in the wake of January's devastating Eaton fire. |
