In this small clip of the full version of my machinima/video art, And passengers paid a station agent on Vimeo, the man doing the voice over says; “And passengers paid a station agent who pushed a plunger to unlock a gate to let them in”.

Once again, I’m (re)mixing archive and virtual world film, to give them both life outside of their usual places and times. The first was made 70 years ago, and the second is in the present. We span history through our interest in how others lived their lives, and how we understand our own.

The archive film is called ‘The End of the El‘ and records the last days before dismantling of the elevated track across Manhattan, around 1955. I overlaid this with screen capture of a location in Second Life, Chinatown New York 1920s-1940. This location was assembled by the historian Jo Yardley as a part of ‘Time Portal‘.

“The End of the ‘El”, was included in The News Magazine of the Screen (Vol. 5, Issue 10; Summer Review 1955), shown by Warner Pathé News. It is in the public domain and available at Prelinger Archive on Internet Archive: archive.org/details/0521_Manhattan_Landmarks_22_43_56_00

And below is my full version: