In Chris Burden’s Metropolis II, a future LA transportation system is imagined. Cars zooming at scaled speeds of 240mph through the streets of LA. According to Burden, the cars won’t have drivers in them, just passengers. Comprised of 1,100 miniature vehicles, 18 roads, buildings, and other structures. This 3D model of LA suggests possibilities of self-driving automobiles that are being realized in the 2020s.

As noted in online journal Open Culture, “The title of the kinetic sculpture gives away its reference, that of Fritz Lang’s 1927 Metropolis and its imaginary city scapes of elevated freeways and train tracks and people movers and planes that fly in between.”[1]

Google Driverless Car

Sources:

[1] https://www.openculture.com/2015/06/metropolis-ii-discover-the-amazing-fritz-lang-inpsired-kinetic-sculpture-by-chris-burden.html

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/14/BAQA1MPI9L.DTL

http://mashable.com/2012/02/24/google-to-test-driverless-cars-on-nevada-roadways/

https://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/metropolis-ii