Nocturne: 2015: 3B: Backlands, Badlands, Burbs.

With the theme of Lost and Found, I worked on two of the Beacon Projects during Nocturne, 2015.

3B: Backlands, Badlands, Burbs: 

A combination of field video and audio recordings, rotoscoping animation, and still photography, 3B was Rear screen projected on velum covering a wide stretch of windows above the entrance to the new Halifax Main Library.  The audio track was broadcast in the front courtyard, so that viewers could experience video and audio not only while directly in front of the library, but from the surrounding streets.

Initiating a discussion about choices we make as a society on the growth of a city, 3B explores the destruction of natural habitat by the encroaching development of the wilderness area known as the Backlands located between Purcell’s Cove Road and Herring Cove Road.

The audience experienced, through sound and images, the natural landscape, the progression of the destruction of this rare environment and the building of the new neighbourhood. The fragile ecosystem is forever changed, with the very bedrock that supported it reshaped to provide for new housing. The lands once part of the Backlands wilderness area, found by hikers, bikers and finally developers is irrevocably lost, then re-purposed as human habitation reshapes the landscape.

photos by Richard Rudnicki

                           

As a Media Arts Scholar in the Centre For Art Tapes program (August 2014-August 2015), I was immersed in intensive media training involving workshops and mentorships in video and audio recording, editing and production, and the animation techniques of rotoscoping and frame animation.  I was mentored by Nick Bottomley in the use of Isadora, an interactive media presentation tool with the capacity for programming multiple video and audio layers and effects and outputting to multiple projectors.

The project that I developed during this program is 3B: Backlands, Badlands, Burbs.  Initiating a discussion about choices we make as a society on the growth of a city, 3B uses layered video and sound field recordings, still photograph, rotoscoping and frame animation to take the viewer from the wilderness of the Backlands to the development of the new suburban community of Governor's Brook.

Here are some stills from 3B: