Los Angeles doesn’t do subtle, and neither does Carmen Zella. For over two decades, she’s been yanking art out of the gallery and into the city, mixing it with technology and letting it spill onto LA’s streets.
Carmen leads NOW Art, an agency that fuses art, architecture, technology, and community—sometimes all at once. She also co-founded NXT Art Foundation, the nonprofit arm of NOW Art, with a mission to shake up public spaces and reimagine how we experience the city together. The goal: break art out of the museum and let it breathe in LA’s neighborhoods.
She’s collaborated with artists like Refik Anadol and Nancy Baker Cahill, launched citywide experiments like Luminex and Attune, and found ways to connect artists, neighbors, and city officials who might never have crossed paths. If you’ve ever paused on a sidewalk in LA, caught off guard by a burst of color or light, chances are Carmen had a hand in it.
In our conversation, Carmen talks about what’s shifting in LA’s art scene, what makes public art both a thrill and a grind, and why cities need to stop micromanaging artists.
Episode Highlights With Carmen Zella
- Luminex: Carmen breaks down Luminex [00:21:02], a NXT Art festival where buildings become massive screens, video installations interact with people on the street, and technology transforms everyday spaces into jaw-dropping art labs.
- Attune: What does a truly “synchronized” art event look like? For Attune, NXT Art ran tech-driven experiences across ten neighborhoods, plugging in light and sound and weaving Los Angeles together—no car required [00:54:50].
- Collaboration across disciplines: For Carmen, tech isn’t just a tool; it’s a creative partner. Whether she’s working with architects, data artists like Refik Anadol, or AR/VR pioneers like Nancy Baker Cahill, she wants to blur boundaries and turn public spaces into playgrounds for bold new ideas [00:01:29], [00:53:02].
- The changing face of public art: Why it’s not just about murals anymore. Carmen argues that L.A. needs to move beyond the century-old “statue in a plaza” approach and invite technology-driven, site-specific projects into everyday life [00:37:44].
- Smart cities, human scale: Bringing public tech experiments to overlooked spaces might be the answer to LA’s urban woes. Carmen says developers and policymakers need fewer rules, more imagination, and more artists at the table [00:42:55].
- Legacy or ephemerality?: Carmen argues that not everything needs to last forever—not art, not technology. Embracing impermanence, she says, can make digital installation art more innovative and less wasteful [00:31:31].
Quotables
- “Public art is a medium—one that glitches, shifts, evolves, and sometimes needs a firmware update.” — Carmen Zella
- “If you can projection-map a building, you can probably hack the culture.” — Scott ‘Sourdough’ Power
- “Collaboration with technologists, architects, artists—it’s not about egos, it’s about breaking the medium open.” — Carmen Zella
Mentions & Shoutouts
- Luminex: The award-winning outdoor digital art exhibition with massive projections, architectural storytelling, and Angelenos dancing under pixelated waterfalls. [00:21:02].
- Attune: NXT Art’s synchronized multi-site light-and-sound interventions, linking ten L.A. neighborhoods with real-time tech magic. [00:54:50].
- NOW Art: Public art agency merging artists with data, architecture, immersive media, and next-level collaborations.
- NXT Art Foundation: Nonprofit incubator for daring, experimental public art.
- Refik Anadol: Digital art pioneer and Carmen’s frequent collaborator. Watch for Dataland, Anadol’s new museum for immersive data art, coming soon to LA [00:11:18].
- Nancy Baker Cahill: AR/VR artist, redefining art’s relationship to technology and public space.
- Blink (Cincinnati): A biennial light festival that brings $205M to the local economy—Carmen’s proof that big public art works for LA [00:48:22].
- Santa Monica, Culver City, Long Beach: Cities working with Carmen to push the limits of public and digital art in Southern California [00:15:49].
- Chris Burden's "Urban Light": Still the public art landmark every local has to mention at least once [00:38:42].
Where to Connect
Episode Credits
- Host: Scott ‘Sourdough’ Power
- Guest: Carmen Zella
- Production: Crewest Studio, Los Angeles
- Theme Music: Ricky Peugeot & Desi DeLauro of Parlor Social
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