I live at the center of a huge metropolis, the city of Los Angeles, where cars go whizzing by every day, trains run under the city (but not enough of them), and various areas of public transportation get people from one place to another. Big buildings line the side of the roads, iron beams and pillars hoist up the highways to allow them to tower over the public roads. It's actually quite fascinating, how the many roads and highways intersect each other, it's not just a 2-D map, it's definitely a 3-D construction with different levels of roads piled on top of each other. Must be quite a headache to design roads in a city in that one, but also exciting in a SIMS City (old school PC video game where one built a city from scratch and make things practicable like building schools near libraries, etc. to attract citizens to settle there. Really fun game rivaling in popularity with classic PC games like DOOM and Oregon Trail, for understanding how cities work) kind of create-your-own-city kind of way.
At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), there's an exhibition called "Metropolis" that is a microcosm of the grand city of Los Anglees: toy cars whiz by on bridges going over other roads that pass over various model buildings; trains and even trolley cars are involved in the contraption of the city (unfortunately no rivers or ferries/boats involved, which I'd recommend for the next version). I've never been a big fan of art, but I really thought this exhibition was genius, capturing the imagination of the inner kids in ourselves who loved looking at toy cars and building block cities but also the artistic quality of representing the metropolis that the audience itself is standing in (LACMA is right in the heart of all the hustle and bustle of Metropolis LA). The whole spectacle is hard to put into words: when the exhibition is running, tens of thousands of toy cars of different colors are flying down cleverly designed ramps at a deftly accelerated pace, making a clattering sound that can be heard outside the building itself. The various museum patrons also seemed to agree, as a large crowd gathered when it was running, with a catwalk viewing area to get an aerial view of the exhibition itself. You can follow a car's path for only so long before it disappears into the abyss of the metropolis hustle and bustle, which I do think is part of the metaphor of humans losing our identity amidst all the city life. The exhibition is also genius because it appeals to artists, who should be fascinated by the imagery of it all, it looks very difficult to set up and construction people probably admire the complexity of its design, and just ordinary kids who just want to see toy cars fly down ramps. It certainly outdrew the more hyped-up Chagall: Fantasies for the Stage exhibition that MJ wanted to see.
I'll always be reminded of the Metropolis II exhibition by Chris Burden at LACMA: MJ bought a $5 poster of it and set it right in front of our dinner table. Can't miss it!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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