It is no surprise that Los Angeles should trigger questions on the nature of urbanity, as it maintains an elusive status despite its vastness, its populations drifting, seemingly, from one non-place to another. The experience of the city from the ground belies its perception from a distance: it disappears as you approach it, like a super-zoomed image, it is barely there — like cranked up sound, it breaks up into distortions shimmering under the perrenial sun. The pretense of form shatters in this amplified void, randomness and unpredictability swaying over the all-present grid. Few cities can lay claim to such a systemic paradox — seemingly limitless freedom barely kept in check by incessant surveillance and absolute control over natural resources, the synthetic environments of speculators and developers implanted in the vain attempt to fix a point in the clouds, to make a hole in the water. 

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