Obsessions : Day 040

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)

It's an amazing world, and let's do that.

Let us always create what we prefer. Let us create something of our own choosing, and allow ourselves the space around that creation, to become a "breathing zone", for what we choose for ourselves. To support our higher selves -- our truest version of self, it's the only way we can have impact, ultimately, in our universe.

Posted by Eric Scott at 08:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

More than sex, I fantasize about a tolerant, patient, open-minded society

which can handle revolution
and rejects the musical spectacle

Posted by Eric Scott at 08:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(She/He may be limited…)

in space…
in experience…
in money…
in patience…
in food…
in sexual knowledge…
in out of body experience...
in good life experience…
in bad times…

she or he may be limited in time.

Posted by Eric Scott at 08:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Why is it important that others align with their higher self, to find this understanding?

The goal of all life is, ultimately, to create happiness by meeting all the needs for survival, followed by the needs that lead to self actualization. Maslow identifies this with his hierarchy of needs, which ascends in 5 levels (physiological, safety, love, esteem, and finally, self-actualization.)

Perhaps, for one thing, there is nothing more boring at parties than someone who hates their fucking job. Because you always want to know from them, why don't you really just do a career, and not focus on a job instead?

Maybe the world would become a more enlightened (and happier) space, if we all do what it takes to create this for ourselves, with a higher goal in mind.

What would a mass form of idealism produce?
Would it form a shallow, utopian view? If we don't assume responsibility for ourselves, whenever we talk about Utopia, then the prospect doesn't seem so realistic. We imagine a perfect world, but we also still assume that someone else, maybe a creator, is still responsible for our decisions. It is easy to see why we give up on a vision, especiallly when it becomes easier to assign "utopia" with a label... such as "equals, unrealistic."

Synergistic relationships, however, between spouses, partners, clients and vendors ...all begin with a principal alignment, which must require few compromises, few second-guesses. There is no world so heinous as one which senselessly endorses "harmful" goods and services -- products that its inhabitants don't really want. If we don't make the time to research the alternatives we choose, to our own satisfaction, then we contribute to a glut of useless options, without addressing our civil right for better options -- a right which requires self-authority; to make a deliberate choice early in the puzzle -- and which precedes a glut based upon quantitative measures.

When we work against our better instincts, we unwittingly give creating energy to the parties whose products we do not deliberately endorse; this is especially true, when we undertake business relationships that we feel are separate from our awareness of higher self.

Perhaps it is every person's responsibility: first, to get to know oneself, to understand and to value this importance. Equally, we must learn to be consistent within ourselves, in a manner which produces a satisfactory result, one which appears to be connected to the steps taken to arrive there.

How often does someone you know give up, frustrated, saying "I want C, but I do A and B, but I never get C as a result!" And how often do we also know that A or B may not have been the only right steps in the first place, but an abbreviation of merely some of those steps?

Posted by Eric Scott at 08:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)