Standard Hotel Elevator Now Making All Local Stops to Hell

Thursday, Jun 18, 2009 | Updated 8:00 PM EDT

The Standard Hotel New York has paid artist (and Demolition Man director) Marco Brambilla and Canadian studio Crush an undisclosed sum of money to make an incredible video installation for its elevator, which gives the effect of either ascending to heaven or descending to hell, depending on which floor you're headed to. Civilization was inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy and combines looped footage from over 400 sources (including Ghostbusters, we notice). According to an artist from Crush, they're reasonably certain it won't cause motion sickness, though we're pretty sure our stomach could find a way to prove him wrong on that particular count. Even so, this is totally awesome. Click to watch a demo!