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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Down To Earth

Tuesday Video

What if you could watch a city grow, like really watch it grow.

Sure, we've seen downtown Spokane transform and grow right in front of our eyes.  We've seen neighborhoods pop up on previously uninhabited hillsides, and we've watched Liberty Lake and Airway Heights explode in a relatively short time period.  But really, what if you could see it all happen in under ten minutes.  Awwww - the wonder of technology. 

UK-born and Brooklyn-inhabiting artist Rob Carter has a nine-minute stop-motion paper animation film called Metropolis that provides that vantage point.  Called a "pop-up book on speed", this nine-minute film chronicles the urban expansion of Charlotte, North Carolina, one of the fastest growing cities in the country.  According to Carter's website, this growth is, "primarily due to the continuing influx of the banking community, resulting in an unusually fast architectural and population expansion that shows no sign of faltering despite the current economic climate..."

And here's how Carter explains his work of art: "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."  Watch the final three minutes of the film below.

Metropolis by Rob Carter - Last 3 minutes from Rob Carter on Vimeo.



Down To Earth

The DTE blog is committed to reporting and sharing environmental news and sustainability information from across the Inland Northwest.