Voyager Birdman

Genre: Experimental, Animation, or Music Video

Synopsis:

A dream on a long dark highway.

Voyager Birdman is a frame-by-frame experimental animation made from simple spontaneous line drawings, rotoscoped video clips, and views of the highway filmed between Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Sounds of podcast voices, old radio programs, Nasa recordings, and sampled audio files carried by the Voyager space probes launched in the late 1970’s merge with an unfolding stream of hand-drawn symbols, figures, abstractions, and fragments of the passing highway landscape. On one level, it’s about the idea of using drawing, animation and collage to find and create meaning. More directly, it’s an attempt to capture the fleeting dynamics of thoughts, memories and dreams experienced on a long night’s drive - much like the virtual and untethered character of contemporary existence - and the enduring lure of an interstellar connection.

Credits:

Director: Gerald Habarth

Director Bio:
Gerald Habarth is an artist and animator currently serving as Associate Professor of Art at West Virginia University where he heads the Electronic Media program in the School of Art and Design. He holds an MFA degree from the University of South Florida and a BFA degree from Parsons School of Design. His works have screened at numerous national and international venues and festivals including the Tampa Museum of Art, the Huntington Museum of Art, the Festival Les Instants Vidéo and the Stuttgarter Filmwinter - Festival for Expanded Media. In 2010 he founded the West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival. He currently resides on the outskirts of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.