This article was taken from the November issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content bysubscribing online
Two builders unveil their post-apocalyptic play-set
It’s the end. A lone survivor of anunknown calamity and his robot assistant press on, making sure the processing facility keeps, well, processing. A tram runs, conveyor belts turn, and a toxic river flows. The landscape encroaches, held back only by an electric fence.
A crashed vessel juts from the ground. Creatures have claimed it as a shelter. It’s a chilling post-apocalyptic vision -- or as chilling as one made from Lego can be. The giant diorama, entitled Containment, was built by Tyler Clites and Nannan Zhang, and unveiled at Brickworld, the annual Lego-building convention held in Chicago. More than two metres across, it features flashing lights, audio and a working mono-rail. Many of the details are nods to other Lego architects and dioramas: the figure chiselling at a rock sculpture is a tribute to late Lego builder Nate Nielson, and the monkey is a homage to a sci-fi Lego construction called Omicron Weekend.
The scene, Zhang says, is designed to leave us wondering what exactly is being contained == the isolated facility or the chaos outside. “That’s a question for us all to answer,” he says.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
