Masstransiscope

This will probably be old news to New Yorkers, but I moved out of the city before this was created and never managed to see it on my visits home.

Bill Brand used the principles of a zootrope and the existence of an abandoned subway station (one which trains pass at full speed) to create the above animation. Here are some older news reports on the creation of the work.



Toronto has a subway and there are stretches where this kind of thing could be done. However, I think it would be more interesting to do it outside the elevators of the CN Tower. How great would it be to see animation on clear plastic (cels!) of somebody falling and opening a parachute as you descend back to ground level? Or something totally surreal as people in rocking chairs or rowing boats in the sky, as Dorothy sees out her window during the tornado in The Wizard of Oz?

In any case, my hat is off to Bill Brand for finding this use for animation and for livening up the commute to work.

(link via 37signals.)