At 7AM It Rocks Out!

April 4, 2011 11:34 PM

24 hours of L.A. traffic set to music. (SLunder2minuteYT) (May be considered a rebuttal to "You are listening to Los Angeles". Or maybe "Monster Commute".)
posted by oneswellfoop (11 comments total)

That is pretty cool! I know those freeways pretty well. Watching the 101 south in Hollywood jam up after rush hour, the constant throbbing all up and down the 405, the angry constipation of the 5...ahh...memories. I feel like a war veteran - I live in the hinterlands now.

The 60 and 10 had a pretty good day though, at least for this occasion.
posted by Xoebe at 11:53 PM on April 4, 2011

Yikes. We on the westside bitch so vociferously about the 405 and our little chunk of the 10 but the 101 in the morning looks pretty damn beastly.

One thing I thought was cute was the little foreshock at 5am - the time-shifters stagger out of bed and hit the road, hoping to get back to the Valley or the exurbs before evening commutes begin. The guy next to me at work gets in at 6 and leaves at 3. My dad used to get in by 4am most days and try to bounce a bit after noon when he commuted from the west Valley to Koreatown - and that was in the early 90s. He works from home now :)
posted by troublesome at 1:08 AM on April 5, 2011

Oh! I found this from the yooouuutuuube link a while back!
posted by nile_red at 1:26 AM on April 5, 2011

no, I take it back, it's early AM and I can't read.
posted by nile_red at 1:27 AM on April 5, 2011

We Angelenos have a saying: God created the 101 to train the faithful.
posted by joechip at 2:22 AM on April 5, 2011 [2 favorites]

I can distinctly see a profile of George Washington created by the 91, 71, and 241 Freeways (toward the easternmost side of the map.) I'm wondering if the music is somehow "generated" by the traffic patterns, or at least triggered by it. Based on the links under the video, it seems possible.
posted by ShutterBun at 2:46 AM on April 5, 2011

I recently visited LA, and I was blown away by how long the evening rush hour lasts. In my suburb-trained eyes, it seems like all you LA folks must spend all your non working hours either driving, or sleeping for a few hours before enduring it all over again. Is it really that bad, or do commuters actually get through traffic pretty smoothly?
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 6:52 AM on April 5, 2011

It's that bad. As far as I am concerned, it is Live Close To Work Or Die. If I didn't live within 10 minutes drive/20 minutes bike of my work, I wouldn't live or work here. Period.
posted by fake at 6:59 AM on April 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

Love the visualization, not crazy about the music. I'd love to see something similar for Chicagoland.
posted by me3dia at 8:11 AM on April 5, 2011

Is the map created by the artists or is this a traffic map from local news or from some other usage? Is the music generated from compressed signal, from some alert sounds, or randomly assigned tones? What is the meaning of the freeway segments highlighting? Random? Traffic density? Something else? Does anyone know? This link cries out for explication, even to a decorated veteran* of the LA freeway system.

BTW (speaking of context), the artist's website has some interesting examples of his other work, such as this project converting CO₂ off-gassing process of ripening tomatoes to tones, then compressing the result for playback during a dinner prepared (in part) from the ripe tomatoes. http://www.nikhanselmann.com/?/projects/tomatoquintet/
posted by spacely_sprocket at 9:48 AM on April 5, 2011

Well this was nicely dovetailed by this post.
posted by Defenestrator at 8:14 PM on April 5, 2011