A whirlwind tour of Hong Kong’s high-rises is an awesome meditation on urbanity

Warning: this film features rapidly flashing images that can be distressing to photosensitive viewers.

Hong Kong’s skyline is defined by towering apartment high-rises, which are themselves characterised by immense size, muted colours and the relentless repetition of their facades. In his experimental animation Serial Parallels, the German artist Max Hattler finds inspiration in the city’s vertical sprawl, building a whirlwind animation from still photographs of these buildings. As a staggering number of units move in and out of view, with scattered open windows and clothes hung out to dry, hinting at the separate lives each window represents, viewers might find the proceedings awe-inspiring, anxiety-inducing or, perhaps more likely, a bit of both.