When we think of Los Angeles, warm weather, palm trees, the film industry, and great, new lo-fi punk bands come to mind. But perhaps the first thing we imagine is the constant traffic. Turns out that’s also been preoccupying L.A. resident and filmmaker Ross Ching. Inspired by Matt Logue‘s Empty L.A., Ching has created Running on Empty, a time-lapse video that imagines what the city’s roads would look like without cars. The result, set to Radiohead’s “No Surprises,” is a gorgeous, meditative vision of life in Los Angeles, post-automobile. Watch the video after the jump and read about how it was made here.
Comments (5)
Would be a perfect world, except for the fact that Sex And the City 2 is still being advertised in it.
Actually, the name of the author of Empty LA is “Matt Logue”, not “Matt Ross”. I hope they update this article to give proper credit to guy who inspired this clip..
Thanks SS – it’s fixed.
These are exactly the kinds of images LADOT engineers put on all their presentations, these unrealistic car-culture wet dreams of open roads and endless freeways, unspoiled by anyone else, even other people in cars; it’s like those images of English gardens you see, immaculate, totally untouched, without a single human in sight…or like my friend’s friends’ houses in the Hamptons. All these images in my head reveal the deeply anti-social trends in our culture. I’m much more a fan of David Yoon’s work at NarrowStreets LA, where he’s imagining a Los Angeles without the worst of us–our cars–and more with the best of us–ourselves, on foot, in conversation, in a city built for people.
This is LA after the apocalypse. But its missing one thing: Where all those streets are, converted into urban farms.
Where all those since-defunct corporate office buildings are, converted into low-income housing.
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