The Power of Abandoned Places

When did the desolation colonise you?

~ Tim

For me, it is kinda the other way round. Desolate and abandoned places are full of history, yes, but that makes them full of life that has been lived.
It is the skeletons of unfinished buildings that give me the forlorn, desolate feeling, the drywall and mortar still wet and setting, no windows or doors, no a trace of history, a wound on the landscape where history and identity has been erased to make space for who-knows-what.

In Mexico, we have a saying: "El diablo sabe por viejo, no por diablo."
It means, "the devil knows because he is old, not because he is the devil."

You briefly talked about limilal spaces and I wonder if you could also go into the horror aspect of abandoned places.
I mean, there is a reason why abandoned amusement park, haunted castle ruin or ghost town are popular staples of horror writing. Seeing a place that is supposed to be bustling with life suddenly empty can also feel one with dread and uneaseness and I would have loved to hear your thoughts about the horror aspect of such places.

I always find myself coming back to this place... Always remembering the words "Desolation Colonizes" every single moment...

What's the game with Odin/Mimir?

cant believe you didnt talk about the red zone! all those homes destroyed, the empty land slowly reverting to swamps and wetlands, inspires the exact same sense of desolation as area x for me. its bittersweet to see aotearoa healing around the scars of suburban streets where the children of colonizers grew up.

Your craft is admirable.
The way you linked Christchurch visually through the piece and the peep hole at the end.
I visited Christchurch 5years post quake and it felt so empty. Walking the city centre streets and buildings still in ruin. No one about. It felt abandoned. Abandoned for bureaucracy, for the insurance battles, for the details of a rebuild. Which leaves it still in rubble.

Thank you for your craft.

If we're talking about a game... Then rain world would be the perfect candidate for this, you are an animal just trying to survive in a harsh environment that is long abandoned by its inhabitants...

I’d love a list of these games. I want to check them out.

Happy 167th Birthday, Christchurch!

this reminds me of these two sing posts near my old elementary school. the neighborhood is far from abandoned but these to posts both have two ribbons of them.
one faded green, one yellow.
two symbols of the Humboldt crash that have been up there for all of the five years since it happened.
there is somethings so melancholy about a reminder of a tragedy so close to a school that the kids who go there now will be to young to remember

OK but, if you explore desolate and abandoned places with your best friend, you get to have that emotion bring you closer together. Maybe it's that as you see that even with civilization collapsed around you, the two of you are still together as friends.

Wow. I can't even find words. Just... Wow.

What is the name of the song that plays at the beginning? It's a great mood setter, especially for this subject.

When I was little, I got in trouble for being outside when I wasn't supposed to. The recess bell went off, and I didn't hear it because I was in the bathroom. All the kids quickly ran inside, and I was seen still outside, quickly being told "if no one is around, you probably shouldn't be there."
Living in a crowded city, I still sometimes feel the weight of those words. When I'm in a very quiet part of a beach, when I'm out hiking by myself, when I'm on a lonely stretch of road, I often ask myself why it's so quiet. Did I discover something new or is there a reason why a place is untouched. My mind quickly questions if I'm in the right place, if I missed a "Do not enter" sign.
It's amazing how a one off line from when I was 6 can have such a dramatic impact on my entire life.

Could somebody PLEASE tell me the song at the beginning? Can't find it anywhere

This was a beautiful video. Was wondering what you thought of Horizon Zero Dawn / Forbidden West, as a game that explores both abandonment and reapropriation of human made and natural areas. There is often that sense of wonder while you wander alone in some places and find little pieces of past life left behind. Actually, videogames may really be the media that most often make us deal directly with abandoned places. What Remains of Edith Finch was indeed a masterpiece.

February 22, 2011. I was there too - in the old family house (I was in University, but had no lectures that day); after moment the tremors first began there was no knowing how long they would last - only that it was dangerous enough to be deadly.

Even after 12 years, the memory of standing in the doorframe, trying to wrap my little sister under me as the house seemed to disintegrate around us, are as intense as ever.

My first job was with the Red Cross, helping in the earthquake recovery. I heard a thousand stories akin to mine, but each individual - and each brining home just how formative and devastating an event it had been.

Often, the most desolate and abandoned places, are crowded with others.

Does anyone have any book recommendations that go trough abbandoned place's? Something like in Nier: automata?

That was beautiful 💔

The first time I heard “there will come soft rains,” was when Traveler C.S. made a song using an emotive reading of it as a sample for his ethereal song “Infinity of Creation.” Definitely worth a listen!



(It also inspired me to make an album about memories themselves, how you can visit them and their eternity whenever you choose.)

I listen to 12Tone a lot, so suddenly hearing him narrating was a jarring pleasure.

I think I'm less interested in places that are abandoned, and more by places that were abandoned, but are now teaming with life again, but life that doesn't understand the constructions around it. When the city has become so surrounded by nature that the buildings themselves seem less like artificial structures, but simply a part of the local environment. Local wildlife or even new people seeing the balconies of buildings as little different from tree branches. Where steel and concrete seem as natural to the inhabitants as wood and soil.

Beautiful video

I live up in the Adirondack Mtns of Upstate NY. I like to take walks in the woods and down long trails. Sometimes I veer off those trails and scattered around these mountains are abandoned and forgotten places, mostly old barns, and cabins so old the wood has rotted away leaving only the stone foundation and a fireplace. Seeing them always fascinated me. Makes my mind race, who lived here and what did they do for a living? Were they happy? Sad? Did they raise a family? Or live on there own? But the most important question is always, why did they leave? Did a hard winter get them? Or did they move out with other family because they couldn't make it in the woods? Questions I ask knowing I'll never get the answers but yet they still fascinat me. Sorry for the long comment lol

I know this is mad old but it reminds me of my cousin. One of the teachers at his school was stabbed to death by a student. She was one of the favorite teachers of this school and they shared that together as a class. That hardship.

I remember while we were driving one day his mom brought it up and he shut down a bit. This lead her to say "I understand it's hard" when he finally said: "no you don't. No one does. It's been three years and if she's brought up the room goes silent. No one gets it. No one understands. We still feel it - we still miss her"

Beautiful. :) A different sense to add to the ruins in my book.

I can’t tell you properly how much I love this

This is my favourite video of yours

bru minecraft S2

This is what a I need

Kirby and the Forgotten Land is a fantastic game exploring an abandoned advance alien civilization ruins. My favorite world is Wondaria Remains, a giant abandoned theme park based on a children sci-fi series about two dogs named Wondog & Wondy exploring space. The author Wondaria main characters were inspired by pets they had. Wondaria stories are lost to time but they were really popular to have a massive theme park about their stories. Going through Wondaria you see all these giant rides abandoned for a long time. The level Invasion at the House of Horrors is this giant fun house that this alien civilization use to go through for fun. The final level The Wondaria Dream Parade has all this night time stuff still working with the people not there at all to enjoy it.

Gone Home is one of my favorite games of all time purely because the story moved me so much with so little.

That outro melody is something else! Who made it!?
Edit: Found it, it's "Only Human" by Philip Ayers

Ok, y'all NEED to hear the choral arrangement of "There will come soft rains". It is TRANSFORMATIVE

I'm so glad you brought up Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, it's SUCH a good game, the highest tier of walking sims with the BEST soundtrack

only managed to watch this today, and it's beautiful.

before I start the video

I just want to mention why I like abandoned places

they make me feel like there's so much to explore, individual lives through the items they have the messages they've left and many more

it also makes me feel free, as if there's nothing restricting me from doing anything

It's all history that I'm given to explore and find things

the closest experience I got to that was looking around in abandoned grave yards, huge plants growing in the places where people used to arrive to mourn but aren't there anymore to get rid of those plants

The images of the people who once were visible, the only thing left of them (at least to me) being devoured by their surroundings

that is why I think carving your head on a rock is a better way of showing yourself instead of plastering your face on a flat smooth rock because those are going to degrade over time

Technically, the world "liminal" means "in-between" or "neither here nor there". An example of a "liminal space" is a doorway: when standing in a doorway, you are neither inside the room nor outside of it, so the space is liminal. I've never heard the word liminal used to describe a "strange place that makes you feel uncomfortable" before.

What remains of Edith Finch. Glad you brought it up in here! One of the best video game experiences I’ve ever had. Such good writing on the characters and stories. And the house feels so…familiar. Exploring it was somewhat uncanny but mostly nostalgic and sentimental.

Now it's just a ghost town.

Hi Tim,
could you tell us the name of he song used at the beginning and ending of the video, please?

You gave us the link to "epidemic sounds" but this isn't even the creator. It's more like a project with thousands of songs.

Thanks in advance and greetings.

Absolutely loved the music for this one, mate.

There’s a Irish song “The town I loved so well” that has a man coming back home to the town of Dairy and seeing all that has happened to it in the wake of the troubles. It really captures a lot of what you talk about and brings a tear to my eye as I think of other towns I have seen similar destruction and decay in.

The reader of the house of leaves was Jacob Geller right? You and he have great content. Thanks for this.

Does anyone know the name of the song that the video opened with? I know it's on Epidemic Sounds, but that's a pretty expansive platform. I'll give a digital hi-five to the first who names it!