viz.

Front page of Welcome to Pine Point, by the Goggles

Welcome to Pine Point is an interactive experience that documents a mining town that, rather than declining slowly or attempting a resurrection, erased itself, leaving behind only empty land and a website entitled "Pine Point Revisited." Mike Simons and collaborator Paul Shoebridge built Welcome to Pine Point to document and reflect on the experience of discovering that a place Mike remembered from his childhood was not simply empty or decayed; it was actually gone.

The project is constructed as sort of an enhanced scrapbook. The artists combine grainy video, including shots from a memorial video that was offered to residents before the town was destroyed, and old and new photos of Pine Point and its residents with text that reflects on the experience of rediscovering the town. The fragmentary nature of the documents and the scrapbook feel give the project a certain intimacy, as if the reader/viewer/user is discovering these traces of Pine Point herself. It doesn't hurt, of course, that the project draws on the nostalgia most of us feel for places we experienced as children. For viewers who remember the eighties, the poor video and photo quality (as well as the wardrobe choices the images document) will likely draw on that nostalgia as well.

The collection of different media into a digital format raises questions about how we remember, and the project at times seems to invoke these questions. The initial load screen features an illustration of a VHS tape rewinding, thereby replicating a regressive process that most of us haven't seen in a while and thereby drawing attention to how technology affects the process of remembering. A later load screen, which features the word "Town" and a progress bar, draws attention to Pine Point's fully digital existence. Wiped off the map, it exists primarily in its memorial website and in this project. While the disappearing town is by no means a new phenomenon, the project does raise questions about what will become of towns that are currently in decline and how they might best be remembered.