stills from "Retreat Into the Swamp"
Synopsis:
This film indexes the entropy of a stump within a public nature preserve in western New York. Over the course of a year, the stump topples and sinks into the swamp. By focusing on the undulating silhouette of the stump across multiple seasons, the film accelerates its transformation, offering an opportunity to witness its decay in minutes rather than months.
About:
Retreat Into the Swamp is an independent, experimental animation documenting the slow collapse of a stump into a swamp. By combining LiDAR scans of the stump taken over the course of a year with analog animation techniques, the film creates an assemblage of both documentary evidence and a translated, subjective experience of decay.
Director's Statement:
Retreat Into the Swamp started with a fascination for how digital tools could capture and reinterpret the physical world—how could the practice of collage extend into the world of 3D scans? This idea took root (pun intended) during walks with my husband at Tinker Nature Park in Henrietta, New York, a place that became part of my recovery process after knee surgery. As I measured my own healing through the familiar geography of the paths, I began to notice how the landscape itself was in a constant state of flux.
At the center of the film is a single tree stump, observed and indexed over the course of a year. It became a way to experiment with the intersection of nature and technology. I kept thinking about Nam June Paik’s seminal installation, TV Garden (1974/2000), and his belief that nature and technology don’t have to be in opposition—they can coexist. That idea resonated deeply, where the organic decay of the stump was captured through LiDAR scans—highly technical and digital—then layered with the imperfect, tactile medium of hand-drawn animation. It was an act of assemblage, layering digital and analog, structured data and organic texture, in a way that felt like a natural extension of collage.
What I love about this process is the weirdness that emerges from the LiDAR scans. For all their precision, still produce errors and artifacts—little distortions that feel strangely organic, like nature asserting itself inside the machine. These “flaws” became part of the film’s aesthetic, blending with the tactility of the watercolor frames. The digital weirdness and artifacting that resulted from these imperfect scans are part of what I find particularly appealing; they introduce an organic quality to the film that mirrors the natural decay, creating a unique fusion of the real and the perceived.
More than just documenting a stump’s slow collapse, this film is about time, entropy, and finding beauty in decay. I wanted to highlight the inevitability of change, challenge the idea that nature and technology are opposing forces, and take formal exploration into combining two distinct media.
Fall 2024 College of Art and Design Faculty Show
Rochester Contemporary Art Center - First Friday/Open studios
Rochester Contemporary Art Center - First Friday/Open studios
Previews of a rough cut version of "Retreat Into the Swamp" at the annual faculty show at Rochester Institute of Technology and at open studies at the Rochester COntempoary Art Center - September/December 2024
the swamp in the Spring/Summer
the swamp in the Fall
the stump
My husband Matt and I on one of the trails
Photos from the swamp at Tinker Nature Park Henrietta, NY