Landscape porn time-lapse videos set to ambient music are the equivalent of a thinking person’s cat GIF, an escape hole from a boring day-to-day stuck with the whole world’s knowledge at our fingertips. It’s a genre that has been featured everything from airports and forests to the darkest reaches of space. We’ve reached the point where the whole “Hey, look, we’re flying over a beach/moon/portapotties/dystopian nightmare” thing is getting about as tired as felines with bitchy resting face and anything that can be described as a “listicle.”
Just when you thought it was time to stuff those feelz back down where they belong, Martin Heck went ahead and took 100,000 medium-format images of South America’s most photogenic location and stitched them together into an 8K synth-fueled techno trope dream of sunrises, storm fronts, constellations, rushing rivers, and trippy reflections. Filmed at a resolution so high you likely don’t have the technological capabilities to fully appreciate it, you’ll just have to accept that the breathtaking visuals you’re immersing yourself in could somehow be better as the music swells and you swoop and swirl through digital panoramas so realistic you have a sudden urge for Deep Woods Off.
Then, before you know it, 4½ seconds of your life are gone forever and you’re spat out the other side, condemned to spend the rest of your day begrudging the fluorescent flicker of your office. Time well spent? Yes. The not-subtly named Patagonia 8K is a standout in a crowded field, so good that you may even watch it one more time before hoping you never see another time-lapse landscape again.
Now get back to work.