Marco Brambilla's "Civilization"

I had the pleasure of staying at The Standard Hotel in West Hollywood last Spring and enjoyed their trendy, sleek and hip furnishings. Sure I appreciated their "complimentary" Patron cocktail drink (inside joke), but they didn't have a cool elevator like their New York City location has...

Zoomed out version of the mural featured in the elevator of The Standard Hotel, NYC

The picture doesn't do this piece of art any justice so please watch the short video here.

Italian-born Canadian artist Marco Brambilla (in collaboration with production company Crush) created this innovative video mural depicting the ascension from hell to heaven as the elevator reaches higher levels (and vice versa when traveling down the 18-storey building towards the lobby), constructing one of the most amusing elevator rides you may ever have...

A view of the mural from inside the elevator

If you pay attention to the video, you'll notice it involves sampled film clips within the entire motion collage (waste a few minutes to try and spot what movies were sampled). The time, effort, detail and thought they put into this project is really mind blowing. Could video murals be the new age version of canvas oil paintings?

Go here for more info on "Civilization" and a Q&A with Marco Brambilla:
http://motionographer.com/theater/marco-brambilla-civilization/

Check out Marco's website for more of his work as well:
http://www.marcobrambilla.com/home.html