rss feedCharlotte (North Carolina), is that you?
I agree with many of the Vimeo commenters about artist Rob Carter’s fabulous stop-motion video, Metropolis, which looks at Charlotte, North Carolina - it’s fantastic.
I especially agree with one of the commenters, who noted that it has a very Monty Pythonesque quality to it – which is a compliment, indeed.
His work chronicles the city, which he said is growing fast with various skyscrapers and stadiums.
But behind Carter’s innovative take on animation – and documenting how a city is unfolding – is a message, as he wrote on his Vimeo page for the project:
Ultimately the video continues the city development into an imagined hubristic future, of more and more skyscrapers and sports arenas and into a bleak environmental future. It is an extreme representation of the already serious water shortages that face many expanding American cities today; but this is less a warning, as much as a statement of our paper thin significance no matter how many monuments of steel, glass and concrete we build.
His thoughts are noteworthy because, as I’ve done in the past myself, it’s easy to only focus on the tall buildings in the world, including ones designed by world-famous architects or others that hold world records.
If you’d like to see Carter’s entire 9-minute version of Metropolis, it’s on his Web site.
He’s also showing his work at the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute of Contemporary Art.
But art, journalism, humor and documentaries can help us rethink what we might have once considered as insignificant.
