Art installation moves 100,000 toy cars an hour

IT'S NO PICASSO, but this installation by conceptual artist Chris Burden certainly has the potential to be moving.

Called Metropolis II, this amazing construction took Chris and his chief engineer four years to design and create and expands significantly on Metropolis I - the latest version has 18 roadways including one six-lane carriageway.

It also has a rail network with HO-scale model trains, and running at capacity it pumps 100,000 cars around its network at a scale speed of 230mph. Metropolis II also takes two staff to operate it, watching out for collisions that can cause thousands of cars to fall off the roads.

Chris also had the cars for Metropolis II specially made, as the original version used standard toy cars which couldn't stand up to the brutal speeds.

Metropolis II has been bought for an undisclosed seven-figure sum and will go on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for the next ten years. You can see it in action here:

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2014/03/metropolis-ii-a-kinetic-installation-of-100000-circulating-toy-cars/

By Press Association reporters