Marblehead architect Tom Saltsman looked 100 years into the future for his latest Halloween installation at his home at 32 Pleasant St. He calls it “2124.”
People who come to view the creation time travel into the next century and see how Salstman’s residence might look in 2124. The installation features a “main entity ‘owner’” — a large, lit face with expressions and moving eyes. There’s also a “home occupant/maintenance robot” with a tethered dog that is an enlarged, bioengineered mite, according to Saltsman.
Saltsman told the Current the installation was inspired by the book “Sapiens” by Y. Harari, “prompting the rhetorical questions, ‘Who will live here in 100 years? How will they communicate? What are their social connections?'”
He continued, “I am fascinated with what we preserve and how the meaning of the things we preserve changes as we change.”
The installation uses projected video of Saltman’s face (on the robot) and his daughter’s face (on the main entity). The characters move in different ways and there’s an eerie soundtrack that includes whale songs.
Saltsman, who owns a design and construction firm, has been creating awe-inspiring Halloween pieces in his driveway and garage for nearly 20 years. It all started when his now-grown daughter was a student at the old Coffin School, and he created a Halloween experience for kids there.
Since moving his creations to his home, Saltsman has built, among others, a huge smoke-breathing dragon, a 22-foot-tall grunting gorilla and an 18-foot-tall translucent walking man. Last year, he built a giant, mythical forest troll in his driveway, with an eerie woodland inside his garage. The year before, he designed and built a 20-foot Egyptian goddess with the head of a cobra and body of a woman.
“This year it’s different, very different,” Saltsman told the Current before the new theme was revealed. “Some people might think it’s not as big, but it’s definitely very complex.”
This year, there is no inside component to the installation and people can view it from the sidewalk.
Saltsman works full time and spends dozens of hours in the evenings and on weekends working on his Halloween projects. He came up with the idea for this year’s installation in August and started working on it in September with a handful of regular volunteers including his wife, Brooke Trivas, neighbor Jill Dearborn and friends Tim and Katie Sullivan. The installation can be viewed this Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 5:30-8:30 p.m.
Here’s a gallery of photos of some of Saltsman’s recent Halloween creations.
