The degree of intensity in one's life is determined by the creations one resists, or is becoming identified with.
Some work-throughs:
Recognizing a need for attention,
vs. a want for attention.
Also, the ignorant are usually charged with a Stupidity Tax, especially when there is a surfeit of apathy.
Today, be present and real.
I’m continuously reminded that I have a choice:
I can make a thing as big as I can,
or,
I can create it deliberately on a scale, such that I can also still fully appreciate it.
If I remember to create in relation to scale, and appreciation, then the work assumes a manageable degree of authority, by recognizing its audience, without overextending its welcome.
The goal in packaging electronic, minimalistic and ambient music seems less connected to the traditional aspects of advertising and marketing; up-selling a potential client on a new look or a model that is desirable or simply unattainable; but rather, to resonate a sympathetic chord with the listener; to hit them on a more abstract level, where the purchasing decision lies behind instinct.
A pure abstraction.
To be underground, you had to do what you believed in, at the potential expense of passing on any new temptations or riches.
The lure of the underground is that if you could avoid jumping upon a capitalist bandwagon during your entire adult life, and stick to your guns forever (or for as long as you can creatively defend not doing so), you would have proven a methodology for happiness by exemplifying singularity for your peers and colleagues.
OK, so “Operation Iraqi Freedom” starts up full force on our TVs on Tuesday, March 25. Only it’s got other names, on different networks. CBS calls their spin on the war “” while NBC uses the president’s lingo, “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Looks like someone’s sucking up a little.
The nightly news on ABC actually features an editorial from a media-studies guy, who dissects the 3 different brands, and assures the viewers that they are being lied to in three different containers. So choose wisely.
It was actually the most engaging part of watching the whole spectacle. Could you imagine the creative meetings that took place to get these identities? Can you picture the kind of behaviors that accompanied the agency/designers’ motivation...to keep the war “sexy”...?
"I want to make the coooolest logo.... for the war? Because think of the opportunities? If we came up with the official brand for the war, we could charge a lot for that."
Operation Iraqi Freedom. "Hey, we got to pick the font!"
It's the integrated spectacle, in case you didn’t notice.
There are moments when I want to choke on my own sick.
I'm reminded of Tracey Emin becoming the subject of a Turner Prize nomination on account of her bed being in the center of a special room at the Tate Britain, but I really dug her warmth, when I got there and wandered through the rooms, taking in her video, her writings, quilts and drawings; whatever it was that would make an artist choose to create everything she does as a partial display of her self, this was good.
Not a unique idea, but a unique presentation.
One might question whether I suffer from acute schizophrenia to trade under so many different names...Day For Night, Rhythm Factory, Found, Sexus, King FM, Bluebottles, NIGHTfonts, Von Trapps...Eric Scott
Yes, perhaps I have trouble resisting identities...or too much spare time to think. Perhaps (also) my reasoning originates with a desire to differentiate projects by a discrete manifesto – a subset of artistry defined by an independent projects label, and an image represented in a series of curriculum vitae.
Eric Scott projects are mostly linked to my pursuits as an author or composer of instrumental, ambient, (minimalistic) compositions for other ensembles (ie. Sexus)...plus a few songs written while dabbling with popular music since the mid-eighties onwards...
Found, as another example... compiled entirely from sources I've collected over the years and not relying too heavily upon melodies so much as the settings and scenarios created; some poignant, funny or even sad...
Or Sexus, the funny little six-keyboard ensemble founded for the purpose of performing minimalist ensemble pieces--of which I am but one member as well as "lead" composer...
King FM is a drum & bass/dub/remix outfit...and what better source material to start with than the music of Rhythm Factory, essentially a techno outfit -- me again, with an arsenal of keyboards -- in which I play the three main roles, composer, programmer, and producer (assigned three discrete aliases: Jupiter, Pete and Gez - The Sonic Investigators?) ...But recent attempts to sculpt the upcoming releases "Push" (Day 022) and "Suck" (Day 024), not as electronica, but with guitars is part of the genre-busting we're hearing so much about...
The Von Trapps is me recording with singer/lyricist Doug Green. Attempts made in the early 1990's haven't always aged the same as others (foreshadowing of breakbeat loops and no more electronic drums for another 10 years!) -- still, the Von Trapps have been hibernating for quite some time now...there are but three recordings to this identity; a one-off perhaps, but as with most projects these things do wake up as they receive interest...
The eponymous first Bluebottles album is slated for 2000, a return to the basic art of songwriting. Meaning Bluebottles that it basically has singing and guitars, and really doesn't have that problem of sounding like it was done entirely inside a computer. (Even if it was!)
re:Fresh is the online gallery where Day For Night's inter- media goes on display... a temporary shopfront for NIGHTfonts, the foundry of digital and experimental typefaces, developed under the patronage of Day For Night.
Font families are organized in groups by a particular thematic title (Manifesto, Control, Disorder, Mission, Style, Transit)...
So where exactly does DAY for NIGHT fit as a creative entity? What is there possibly left to say? It might be witnessed simply as a designer label, but Day For Night assumes predominantly a curatorial role in the big picture of internet theatre and the independent projects label: the proverbial camera operator presiding behind the creative lens, gently nudging the frame to the right or to the left.
The NIGHTlink stations represent something internal to the Day For Night process; a creative embodiment on this specific type of willful misdirection. Which may account for why I tell people that NIGHTlink is a work of fiction.
You see, all the stations, all the artists are my identities...They're me.
No identities are fixed. All identities are the product of change. They flow, and are not meant to be rigid entities.
So in the end, I can weave a good story, but I can also be a bit of a control freak, and what happens there is that the art, the music, the counter-narrative themes, or whatever, they become so me that nobody else knows how to get involved properly. Which can be sad really, as it's meant to inspire, while at the same time, overwhelming the end user is one way I like to create that particular distinction in art.
Basically, what this says, is that "the thicker the book, the more credible the author and their information."
Sound familiar? I wrestled with the idea of the length of this book. And of the breadth of content on my CD-rom.
As an independent artist and designer, I have deliberately avoided some of the limitations, both of specialized areas of work and the obligations of commitment required in a design studio environment.
I prefer to work alone, allowing myself more room to experiment and change, and to choose commissions of a wider diversity (from web creation to record covers, corporate work to unique commissions).
Presently, I am pursuing only the commissions I believe in and can support morally, socially and politically. This approach leads me into essentially close relationships with clients.
With two of my experimental projects thus far – NIGHTlink Rail - An Internet Journey By Rail, and H O SPITAL – I have indulged the passion for image-making which most interest me... Siteworks offering a unique marriage of progressive musics with flexible visuals. Both are joined in a network unified by a starting-point and an end-point. In the middle lies a finite universe of 100 virtual underground stations, each one representing a completed Day For Night project.
This might be tied in to a longtime fascination with underground travel, allowing me to develop a more effective context to integrate my music and images, making for a journey that is both unique for each visitor, and yet, like a subway system, governed by a powerful internal logic.
What I do is not a 'job' but a vocation, something that is fundamental to my life. My approach to doing projects is continually informed by a passion for language and for architecture – a balance of form, space and order.
I admit a tendency to being something of a “trainspotter” – creating an ordered universe, where the beauty and serendipity of random order can ultimately be introduced to play a catalytic role in the creative process.
Future hopes include continually challenging the accepted notions of applied arts – experimenting with unknown materials and new technologies – to extend work into a wider diversity of projects and to work more with environmentally-aware clients.
Eric Scott
January 1, 2000