Artist Statement
A playground where children once laughed and played now lies empty, sounding nothing but the creaking of a rusty swing blown back and forth by the wind. An empty soda can which some child once enjoyed now rolls aimlessly down a street, whose name is too weathered to be read. The doors of a school once held by smiling teachers now held by a scattering of pebbles. Quiet like that after a snow—as earth’s groaning seems to have been dampened by a blanket from above. But there is no true quiet; nothing is still. Can a town ever really be dead?
"Ghost Town" was an attempt to rotoscope the wind. Frame by frame animation gives a vibrating life to whatever is being drawn, so I began giving life and character to environments that lack a living subject. After researching ghost towns, I planned a day trip to visit a nearby town that is mostly abandoned. While exploring the town, I was able to record some videos that I felt captured the “still movement” and “silent noise” that I was in search of.
I printed each frame of the videos I captured about the size of a business card, physically drew on top of them with a sharpie, and scanned them back in at a high resolution. This process allowed the frames to jump around and jitter in a fantastic way, giving life to this otherwise dead town.
