Houston is comprised of a dream characterized by the vastness of suburban life. Liberated from the confines of zoning, the megalopolis’s poly-nuclear form of distributed urbanism fostered an extensive infrastructural landscape to accommodate the automobile as the predominant mode of transportation. The “free”-ways of Houston have created a limited set of views onto the urbanized field, which are absorbed as flickers calibrated to speed. According to the Texas Department of Transportation, five million Houstonians, operating four million vehicles, drive eighty million miles daily, and spend about fifty-six hours in traffic jams every year. The automobile, once symbol of liberated transportation, has turned into a device of imprisonment.
Calibrated to the speed of movement, this low-resolution lenticular composition of 576 individual pyramids collapses four paradigmatic views of Houston in one surface plane. The perspectives — liberated from the congested field, trapped in the field, a glimpse of a vehicle ascending an off-ramp, and the sprawl-scape of signage to navigate these complex arteries — are recomposed into an open work wherein the viewer navigates and forms new perspectives. Providing flashes of information to the passing viewer, the installation materializes an anti-iconic perception of this rapidly growing urban environment.