Obsessions : Day 040

Back when I did this at a studio, nobody understood it, and it was really hard taking credit – or getting credit – for much of it, because what I really do never surfaced in the finished work. So I haven't included any of that work in my book (portfolio) -- it just doesn't seem relevant to show it when it feels like so little of that was made of the same substance as my current stuff.

Getting into answers? Some people assert that there aren't really any answers, maybe that's it. Only some really good questions. And the value they provide, is that they make us think, or they give us an opportunity to find new things of importance to think about. Take social issues. These get a beating on daytime television, there aren't any more to think about, because hosts turn them into a media circus. "Entertainment is assault by the media, 24 hours a day." So instead, we retreat into our own heads and think about the things we're going to buy, the people we're going to see, or what our share of this might be to do so that, by the end of the day, it finds new relevance.

Posted by Eric Scott at 08:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

...I entered the NIGHTlink gateway and descended into the extranet that Tuesday, via Station 019. I had a handful of quarters and a haversack, filled with my camera, my steno pad, my walkman (listening to Paris: A musical overpass all the way here. What a blast to imagine actually being able to go there from here...or wherever 'here' is.

I decided I would take one of those mystery trips advertised on one of the walls in the station. Saw a poster reading "Take an Internet Journey By Rail." Next to that was a large ticket paypoint with a ten-by-ten selector counting all the way up from 001 to 100. I was intrigued by the fact that only about one-half of them were lit up or even appeared to be working. At first glance, it looked like a mostly dormant network.

Chose my lucky number twenty-four. 24? 24. There it was all lit up and waiting: 024. I clicked the button, and waited for the paypoint to issue me a ticket or something. "Validating your connection, please wait"... The next thing I knew, I found myself hurtling along a dark tunnel as one of the NIGHTlink connections carried me and my haversack to my mystery destination.

In the dim interior light of the car, I could hear the repetitive cachick-cachack of the trestle rods and the faint hum of a busker strumming his guitar& turntables to underground beats and to the bemused stares of other tele-commuters. But when I turned my head, I was all alone here. Where was this seemingly deserted subway car taking me? I could see the ambient and repetitive blur of ads flying past on the wall, inches beyond the glass of the door. I could barely make out the words except by the repetitions. Ads for different artists..."Rhythm factory"..."Found"..."The Von Trapps"(chuckle)..."Day for Night"..."Eric Scott"...odd that it were Tuesday, and it were also raining, it were, it were...

When the doors opened a mere few seconds later, I found myself staring down a dark tube with a Travel Planner in my hand.

Posted by Eric Scott at 08:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We understand them: they're regular, on time (mostly) and we like to ride them.

That's all.

Posted by Eric Scott at 08:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

2 years ago, I didn't know the first thing about the web. I wrote, conceived, designed and mostly illustrated this internet journey by rail.

(I need some help developing the abstract for the connected relationship between separate days (of which I am presenting 100) and the spatial relationship between stations in a network. a similar abstract might explain the connection between railway stations in a transit network and broadcast stations in a radio/television/web network.)

I have pre-visualised the NIGHTlink network as a series of algorithms, based upon traditional commuter behavior on an urban transit system.

Analogous to the existence of different "platforms" in a subway stations to allow travelers at junctions to commute and switch between different transit lines, the NIGHTlink architecture also suggests a similar algorithm where the key variables are 10 Artists (x) and 100 Stations (y). There is a specific and finite number of possible connections using the x-y variables.

This fictionalized account is intended to suggest a new (old) model in intuitive graphic communication and information architecture. (with sparing use of the term "telecommuting") ;-)

Please enjoy the ride.

Posted by Eric Scott at 08:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The NIGHTlinkRAIL model is really about the generation and spreading of ideas via the web. It is a numbers game. "The bigger it gets, the more plausible it looks; and the more people who see it, the more people will hopefully talk about it...Hey, I've just seen the craziest thing…It's too deep to be fiction, you know?" The rigidness and absurdity of its taxonomy has also brought in more than one "Trainspotter" as a fan and visitor. It is a visual catalogue of musical and interactive experiences, capped definitively with a defined upper limit of 100 stations.

The success of NIGHTlinkRAIL lies in its attention to literalism and form over function, favoring an abstract browser design of walls, streets, platforms and surfaces. Artist homepages depict large multi-panel tunnel ads of the type which line subway platforms. "Music Can Fry Your Brain" warns the message from one homepage quay, with a series of abstract Surgeon General's warnings in the bottom right corner: “Dope can cause birth defects, lice, minimalism, slurred speech and tooth decay…”

Eric proposes that NIGHTlinkRAIL should not be taken too seriously. It is, after all, a system modeled upon many of the experiences of inner-city transit, from its minute intricacies down to its failings and inadequacies. (Who ever heard of a website that shuts down between 1:30 and 5:00 AM, boasts of its unpleasant odor or even…its rats?) While isolated from both the corporate and the corporeal, NIGHTlinkRAIL's scenario intentionally parodies all underground subway networks... In this case, the “artists” have taken responsibility away from the urban planners, and NIGHTlinkRAIL becomes a journey into the bowels of a virtual metropolis – one inhabited instead by musicians, designers and authors – who are notoriously under-prepared when it comes to matters of technical accuracy, for are they not, in fact…artists?

Elsewhere, server downtime or inability to serve a particular DHTML “destination” is justified by a worker's strike, inept or late service at a junction, or hapless railway disaster. To jumble things further, the site deliberately imitates life, with its empty promises for timely repairs at imaginary signal boxes and junctions, while complaints directed to the Stationmaster are ultimately met with the same shrugs and delays as the real-world version.

As a sitework, NIGHTlinkRAIL is continually in progress and invites feedback and participation from its visitors...And for some travelers, it is even a final destination.

Posted by Eric Scott at 08:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The real beef is this -- because I keep on asking myself, “How might Situationism be viewed as most truly relevant today, when we are becoming further immune to Debord’s definition of a Society, deluded by “Spectacle”? His later admonitions had more to do with a full, but depressed appreciation for how society appears to want spectacle. This is of course, somewhat preposterous and true, and somewhat plausible but untrue. When a post-spectacle society consumes Internet Theatre playing to a capacity crowd, then sociologists also begin to use terms like “post-literate” and the idea of reality television has accelerated a viewpoint of social decay?

Then there’s NIGHTlinkRail... ah, that’s been fun to nail down.

NIGHTlinkRail.com
Sub-urban Planning

NIGHTlinkRail.com
At least we get you there.

For the online tours of the NIGHTlinkRail Network, I came up with
“Take An Internet Journey-By-Rail!
A pleasant wait is guaranteed for all.”

Then, in relation to NIGHTlink, I became “Stationmaster” as opposed to something more banal title.

The need for Detournement is addressed in Punk sloganism, and the jolts created by Situationism as a form of post-Surrealism, post DaDa.

Where can I go to support this interest with Situationist films, a documentary?
I would like to experience Situationism and feel it, not just as a purely abstract, or theoretical concept.

If Situationism was big in 1968, was there any relevance to the idea that The Spectacle would not have included the medium as part of its message? Especially once it became clear that Situationism was rejecting that medium...? Antipathy between a medium, as a whole, and the ideology?

ISSUES / SITE BRIEF

• DFN will illustrate DFN, by creating and posting a piece representing clarity
• Must illustrate / manage expectations of how DFN works with its clients.
• How will we integrate the technical capabilities that we sell to clients in our demonstration.
• How we will address the content.
• How we will demonstrate results, as self-evident from the sitework
(At first, that may be "anything that resulted in PR".)

Posted by Eric Scott at 08:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

NIGHTlinkRAIL, an experimental sitework launched in 1997 by Dayfornight.com, is a network composed of 100 individual train stations. It parallels the online catalogue of the Day For Night musical imprint, in the form of a series of Railway Stations along what creative director Eric Scott refers to as an "Internet Journey-By-Rail."

After descending via escalator into the gateway station, one will begin to recognize the predictable options from modern railway travel. While browsing the Travel Planner Station map on the wall, a visitor may also preview an entire CD release through streaming RealMedia, while sampling the graphic art on-screen from many of the DAY for NIGHT releases...According to its own urban legend, domain planners began operations, building and excavating from the 11th November 1996 onwards, and finally opening its gates to commuters in January 1998. NIGHTlinkRAIL is a fictitious amalgam of the Metro, the New York City subway and the London Tube all at once.

Eric Scott declares NIGHTlinkRAIL's primary objective to be an "exploration of possible new models for visual navigational systems," via a detailed recreation of a much older and completely different model for a navigation system used every day by commuters, worldwide.

Each Station mirrors a project completed by one or more Day For Night artists – a managed residence along an artist Line or maybe a musical release, work of fiction, an internet project or other exploratory sitework.

Certain stations even behave as "junctions" between multiple artists, where collaboration represents a meeting of artistic minds.

Posted by Eric Scott at 08:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

16:20 Descent from street, onto platform
16:20 Move past the accordionist.
16:26 The train departs.
16:31 Platform ambience
16:35 Next train arrives, departs.
16:44 Listen to amusing female voice intoning "Mind the gap"
16:45 Board train
16:53 Listen to tube chatter
17:10 Get off train
17:14 Embankment arrival

Posted by Eric Scott at 08:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)