Road Trip(ping)
This road trip is making me feel so inspired. I never thought I would love the US this much!
This calls for the video art of Hans Gremmen:
THE MOTHER ROAD
2363 miles, from Chicago (IL) to Los Angeles (CA)
Captured from the screen using Google Street View. Duration of the complete movie: 5hrs 11min 49sec. This clip shows the road between miles 1894 and 1931, just outside Kingman (AZ).
Can you believe how amazing this idea is? Hans spent hours and hours making screen images of Google Street View, following cars around… More clips can be viewed here.
Artist statement (2010-2011):
Highway 66 is the main migrant road. 66–the long concrete path across the country, waving gently up and down on the map, from the Mississippi to Bakersfield–over the red lands and the gray lands, twisting up into the mountains, crossing the divide and down into the bright and terrible desert, and across the desert to mountains again, and into the rich California valleys.
66 is the path of people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership, from the desert’s slow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little richness is there. From all of these the people are in flight, and they come into 66 from tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads. 66 is the mother road, the road of flight.