Buzzwords like immersive and experiential are all the rage in spectacle-society art shows these days, often conjuring rather carnivalesque aesthetics. But in the NextArt-produced pop-up installation of the “ULO (Unidentified Landed Object)” project currently on view in a repurposed storefront at ROW DTLA, it’s much more — and more lowkey — than that. The darkened room festooned with glimmering lights and evocative audio is a version of Kyle McDonald and Jonas Jongejan’s “Light Leaks” — reimagined from festival scale to a 15-minute drop-in “show” with elements of a nightclub, an infinity room, and a meditation-induced hallucination.

A deceptively simple sculptural assembly offers a sort of wild garden of mirror-balls, whose disco-fabulous reflectivity is leveraged and activated by projection mapping and augment by an ambient but emotional soundtrack. With about 25 people maximum at once and 15-minute timed-entry slots, the intimacy factor is not compromised by crowds, and viewers are free to have whatever experience of personal contemplation or shared delight they prefer — rendering the encounter much more like a fantastic but conventional (in a good way) gallery exhibition or museum project space installation.

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Light Leaks (Photo by Shana Nys Dambrot)

This dreamlike star chamber is also conveniently located in an active outdoor plaza full of stores and restaurants, and welcomes drop-ins — all in a bid to make this kind of art experience accessible to spontaneous discovery by whoever passes by, integrating its perception-tweaking mood-resetting powers into the fabric of ordinary life, though it is anything but ordinary.

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Light Leaks (Photo by Priscilla Mars)

Tickets can be purchased at the site, or at the door.

ROW DTLA, 777 S. Alameda, downtown; Fridays, 6-10pm; Saturdays, 2-11pm; Sundays 11am-6pm, through September 28. $10.

ULO/Light Leaks

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ULO STOREFRONT @ ROW (Photo by Priscilla Mars)

 

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