Cai Guo-Qiang: WE ARE
PST ART's official opening event
Getty, presented at the Los Angeles Memorial Colosseum
September 15, 2024
Video by L.A. Art Documents / www.laartdocuments.com
Text Source: https://pst.art/en/events/cai
A spectacular realization of Art & Science Collide, PST ART will open to the public with WE ARE: Explosion Event for PST ART, a monumental artwork by world-renowned artist Cai Guo-Qiang and his custom AI model cAI™ (pronounced AI Cai), newly commissioned by Getty. Presented by Getty in collaboration with the University of Southern California, WE ARE will take place at the iconic Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on September 15.
A unique experience for only 5,000 guests on the field of the LA Coliseum, this is a limited capacity program. As of 9.12, it is fully sold out.
Composed of "daytime fireworks"—a signature form of Cai’s art that uses organic, sustainable pigments and dyes rather than traditional pyrotechnics—WE ARE will mark the first expansive daytime firework event featuring a drone formation equipped with pyrotechnic products in U.S. history.
WE ARE will feature nearly ten thousand twinkling mini firework shells installed throughout the seating bowl of the Coliseum, custom-developed daytime fireworks, and choreographed drones carrying pyrotechnic products, which will transform the Coliseum, illuminating the skies above downtown LA. The result is a visual story full of mystery and wonder, igniting the sky with images that showcase the relationship between humanity and AI suggests a present-day parallel to the myth of Prometheus’s theft of fire from the gods, with AI’s reduced dimensionality seeming to reveal a “heavenly secret."
“Is humanity’s creation of AI akin to the theft of fire and an attempt to steal the ‘heavenly secret’ with AI? …I hope WE ARE will stand as a grand gesture of the art world integrating the virtual with the real in the era of AI, and also as a powerful voice and decisive action in these turbulent times.” – Cai Guo-Qiang
Support
PST ART is presented by Getty. The lead sponsors supporting PST ART are Bank of America, Alicia Miñana & Rob Lovelace, and the Getty Patron Program. Additional support is provided by the Simons Foundation; Eva & Ming Hsieh, Co-Founders of Fulgent Genetics; and Peggy & Andrew Cherng, Co-Chairs and Co-CEOs of Panda Express. Major support for WE ARE is provided by Yan Luo, Ellen & Dominic Ng, Haiyan Ren, Elizabeth Segerstrom, and Sophia & Anqiang Zhang.