Flocks of Sheep, Seven Stories Tall, at the Crossroads of the World

In the city that never sleeps, most people could not be bothered to count the sheep that for three minutes every night this month have been filling more than 20 electronic billboards in Times Square.

Bales of hay, flocks of sheep and other pastoral scenes that were shot in Wyoming are being beamed onto screens ranging in size from 15,000 square feet down to 32 — small enough to fit on the side of a newsstand. A sheep’s face peered over Broadway between 42nd and 43rd Streets as it appeared more than seven stories tall on the Nasdaq billboard. The glimpses of rural life displayed in the heart of New York are part of “Midnight Moment,” a synchronized digital art exhibition curated by Times Square Arts that lasts from 11:57 p.m. to midnight each night. The footage, from a yet-to-be-released documentary called “Counting Sheep,” was first shown on Dec. 1 and will appear through Dec. 30.

The footage began its journey to Times Square in 2013 in Kaycee, Wyo., about 70 miles north of Casper, with two octogenarian sheep ranchers and two filmmakers. The next morning over breakfast at the Country Inn diner, Ms. Medenbach and Mr. Yarden talked with growing excitement about documenting the lives of the Meike brothers. Ms. Medenbach described the project as being about “nostalgia for childhood and the pastoral American ideal that, I think, a lot of Americans yearn for that is both hidden and fading away.” For the Meike brothers, who never married and do not have children, the filmmakers’ questions about the future loomed large...more.

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