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