Walkers Series: Manhattan samples

Walkers Series. Animation/Live Action/Line Art. Winter 2010


My "Walkers" series continues to evolve. So far, I am filming in High-Definition on the streets of New York and Massachusetts, mapping immigrant, youth, LGBT and other subcultures to a video-embedded GPS map.


My plan is to film walkers in many cities and towns domestically and overseas.

Walkers considers gait, social position, class, ethnicity, religion and age -- among other factors -- in an effort to map social settlement patterns (geographic and chronological,) chance juxtapositions, and other urban moments.


For audio, I am experimenting with both sound design (multi-layered natural sound elements from each location) and "live scoring," recording directly to the video track using acoustic instruments that I have around my studio, such as a kalimba and shakers. 


In "whitePants" (Boston Common) a walker wearing white pants moves across a busy street as many other people pass by.


In "sideWalk" (Downtown Crossing) I briefly experiment with reducing images of walking people to line art.


In "oneSock" (Manhattan) A man with one sock showing crosses the street. A woman with sunglasses, all dressed in black, walks with a turned-in knee. Three workmen approach, in lockstep. A man strides by impassively, a giant sausage -- or perhaps a prayer rug -- gift wrapped in white over his shoulder. 20 seconds is stretched to a minute and a half so we can see details that otherwise may escape us in real time. 


In "coldDay" (Chinatown) the camera walks through pedestrians until discovered by an elderly couple.