Bitter Air

Bitter Air, Splash Screen

Bitter Air is a site-specific app that presents itself to the user as an audio-visual “radio drama” that is set in a North Vancouver shipyard in 1943.  The user moves through the contemporary site of what once was a shipbuilding yard. The site has fourteen hotspots geo-located into the app, so that when the viewer finds the place where the scene is taking place, it pops into life. The script and the video animations were created after months of research into the history of North Vancouver and the Burrard Drydock company.  The eighty minute drama follows twelve characters that ghost over fourteen different locations on the site of the former shipyard.  The piece looks at the socio/economic/political history of the shipyard, delving into union history, women in the industrial workforce, trauma and family.

I’ve included here a short excerpt from Scene One.

You can download it here:   https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-polygon-gallery/id1304441715?ls=1&mt=8

and here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.thepolygon.thepolygongallery&hl=en&pcampaignid=MKT-Other-global-all-co-prtnr-py-PartBadge-Mar2515-1

This piece was commissioned by Polygon Gallery.

Screen shot from Scene XIII - Bitter Air
Screen Shot from Scene X - Bitter Air
On-site users listening to Bitter Air
Screen Shot from Scene I - Bitter Air
Screen Shot from Scene V - Bitter Air