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Jody Zellen

Ghost City Avenue S

Interactive website

"As the pandemic spread in early 2020, I began to build a new neighborhood in my Ghost City website (www.ghostcity.com/avenue-s) Avenue S. Suddenly the world was like a ghost town, the streets were empty, the beaches and parks closed. As we stayed at home or walked alone wearing masks, I wanted to provide an alternative experience. Week by week, I continued to add images, rollovers, poetic texts and animations to the site and have now created hundreds of unique webpages. Avenue S is a journey and a meditation on these disconcerting times—a reflection on isolation, nature, walking, politics and protests. It was meant to be an active yet fragmented viewing experience... a maze from which to navigate the pandemic.

Ghost City is an ever-changing website. It is a virtual city that has become an archive of changing web technologies. Ghost City has no physical space or real time beyond the space and time of the viewer's interaction with the screen. Ghost City focuses on the representation of the city by the mass media. It uses the space of the web as a sculptural space, allowing viewers to interact with animated graphics to delve deeper and deeper into an imaginary city."

– Jody Zellen

About the artist

Jody Zellen

Jody Zellen is a Los Angeles-based artist who works in many media simultaneously. She creates interactive installations, mobile apps, net art, animations, drawings, paintings, photographs, public art, and artist’s books. She received a BA from Wesleyan University (1983), an MFA from California Institute of the Arts (1989) and an MPS from New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program (2009).

Her site specific interactive installations include: “The Unemployed” on view at the Los Angeles International Airport from May – October 2019; “News Wheel” created for Long Beach City College, 2017; “Time Jitters” a commission for the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston, South Carolina, 2014 and “The Blackest Spot” created for Fringe Exhibitions, Los Angeles, 2008.

Among her numerous interactive net art projects are “Spine Sonnet,” 2011 (commissioned by LACMA); “Lines of Life,” 2010 (commissioned by terminalapsu.org); “Without A Trace,” 2009 (commissioned by turbulence.org). Other net art projects include “Ghost City,” 1996-present, an ever changing poetic meditation on the urban environment; “Urban Fragments,” “Talking-walls” and “Disembodied Voices.”

Recently she has been creating mobile apps as artworks. These projects available for free in iTunes include: “Time Jitters,” “Spine Sonnet,” “Art Swipe,” “4 Square,” “Episodic,” “News Wheel” and “The Unemployed.”

Zellen was awarded an Artist Fellowship from the City of Santa Monica in 2011 and 2016. She is also the recipient of a 2012 California Community Foundation Mid Career Fellowship, a 2011 Center for Cultural Innovation Artistic Innovation Grant as well as a 2004 COLA (City of Los Angeles) Fellowship.

Image of artist