WE'VE ALL SEEN it from above but what do you see when you look down at the maze of light?
"There
is nothing to match flying over Los Angeles by night. A sort of
luminous, geometric, incandescent immensity, stretching as far as the
eye can see, bursting out from the cracks of the clouds. Only Hieronymus
Bosch's hell can match this inferno effect. The muted fluorescent of
all the diagonals: Wilshire, Lincoln, Sunset, Santa Monica. Already,
flying over San Fernando Valley, you come upon the horizontal infinite
in every direction. But, once you are beyond the mountain, a city ten
times larger hits you. You will never have encountered anything that
stretches as far as this before. Even the sea cannot match it, since it
is not divided up geometrically . . . . Mulholland Drive by night is an
extraterrestrials vantage point on earth, or conversely, an earth
dweller's vantage point on the galactic metropolis."
-- Jean Baudrillard
What do you see when you gaze down at Los Angeles?
(photo: los angeles at night; credit, b.mune flickr creative commons)
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