It pays to be reliable. It also really pays to be flexible.
It is the promise of joint partnership, such as an invitation to participate in an affair, even in an observational capacity. Like the look of a young woman, whose parents are driving her mad. It is a massive hormonal buildup. Everything about her eyes.
If pressed, everybody should answer the same:
“Don’t you know I have my own agenda…?”
There is much additional creative that takes the form of lightness in dark -- licht und blindheit -- light and blindness?
We expose the means and methods perhaps, but in so doing, we are to remain simple and unaffected.
Perhaps it was Greenaway's intention to do the same, using the text of the script as a backdrop behind the action during 8 1/2 Women.
Years ago, I remember a friend pointing out that a piece of music I played her off a CD sounded so simple – too simple.
She said she could have done it. Using spoons. OK. So what's wrong with that statement? Easy, it was a negative; it was a dismissal of the first artist's work, and it didn't inspire the response which was to get her to create a piece of music of her own. But to me, that's the only appropriate response there is. If something is too easy, it makes you want to emulate it, only to improve upon it. Nothing, nothing at all wrong with that.
Which leads back to the list. So many things we do are, ultimately, made to appear more complicated than they need to be. It's like a drummer who shows off when he plays. Remember those t-shirts that bass players used to wear in the 80s -- it was a sixteenth note with a red circle and a line through it. Perhaps, the message there is the same. Colin Newman (a dear friend) used the following quote in his cd liner for Bastard, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." Einstein.
What may seem weirder, is what I do with Dayfornight.com, and maybe just the role I see for websites, with artists, and with music. Originally, I had all these theories about how DFN.com was going to remain an artist-driven website (which it still is) but I was intent upon making it a parallel experience for how we perceive things on the surface, about reality. And so the site was going to offer music, within a metaphor for modern-day railway travel, and it was going to have points of interest -- stations, and the depth of content for that project, or point, would determine whether the user could get off at the station and just walk along the platform, or maybe just leave the station altogether and wander outside in the park. Then there's the "junctions" aspect, which is my carefully-considered, but largely-unrealized goal of defining further impact, through junctions, which are a way of explaining what happens when two or more artists collaborate on a one-off project and mix energies. I say largely unrealized, because I can't seem to allow Dayfornight to blend beyond my own personal boundaries.
I was at a multimedia conference in San Francisco, and became momentarily obsessed with typing this when I should have been listening to the speakers. Truth is, I was listening -- it was to Hillman Curtis, who inspired me so much that I went into "processing" mode -- which is where I free-associate, and instead of taking notes that are a copy of what the speaker says, I let everything the speaker says guide the direction of a newly created piece, which I generate live.
What is Day For Night about?
• love
• creating a better world than the one we live in
• inspiring others
• being inspired
• acknowledging difference
• exploration
• a sense of place
• the contemporary
• the temporary
What is its structure or format?
• Taxonomies,
• Systems
• Structure
• Poetry
• Negative space ("club-style")
• Dream imagery
• Music and mood
What is its Process?
• "i am never bored"
• consistency
• "everything is useful"
• serendipity
• reappropriation
• non-judgmental
• narrative
• parody
For me, Day For Night has never been about any political or social issues, because these really don't, on the whole, interest me. Want a list of things that interest me?
Here:
inspiration
people
loneliness
noise
order
chaos
values (like-mindedness)
And the list goes on, but none of these are hot issues. So the only things that makes them matter is how they're treated, and whether or not these treatments add value, and inspire others to do more of the same.
Before admitting oneself to most hospitals, a seat in the waiting room is obligatory. But something unusual prevails here.
Hospital (Day 070) is presented as a grand tour through an experimental lab site where diagnosing urban malaise is a daily concern.
You study the notice board as you wait for your number to be called, reacting to the slew of lo-fi HTML pleasantries and experiments - waiting room pastimes?
A hidden camera with a roving wiretap on local cellular phone bands. An RX paypoint outside the front lobby dispenses mental-health prescriptions to those suffering from urban malaise. A display of terminals appears to be generating phonetic wordplay – or is it random nonsense?
A weathered alley-side storefront, re:Fresh is accessible in a mere 15 second’s walk (one click) from the home site. At the gallery's entrance, a tenant directory displays the following roster of tenant options, alongside a stack of door buzzers. They read:
1. re:Fresh Design Gallery
2. TonStudio
3. Poetic License
4. NIGHTloops Audio Library
5. The True Wheel
Converted from an abandoned warehouse site, the design gallery on the upper level showcases the graphic images of Day For Night and NIGHTfonts in an ongoing slide show and sound installation.
Other site spaces leased include the Day For Night sound studios, workshops for audio design, poetry and intermedia, and a lending library for customized industrial samples and loops.
A comprehensive virtual gallery and artspace, re:Fresh is the first of three virtual structures built for the public display of visual and graphic works by Day For Night artists.
Three years later, I was on a rampage, trying to explain my website to the programmers I would interview, about helping me complete an algorithmic system for generating, on-the-fly, a NIGHTlink station (or "project", like when you go into a derelict part of urban life where a tenement is referred to as "the Projects" because it no longer really is at the top of anyone's list). Here's what I came up with.
DAYforNIGHT.com is a real network of virtual subway stations located in a fictitious city-like domain on the internet.
Each station has its own timetable and an artistic or musical project associated with it. These are numbered from Day 001 to Day 100.
Each station takes its name and identity after a number in the Day for Night catalogue: past, present or future. The size of the catalog is finite: 100 stations, or projects.
We hope you enjoy this graphical internet experience.
ARTIST = LINE
PROJECT=STATION
COLLABORATION=JUNCTION
EXCERPT...(?) ...getting type like the dfn.com sign...implication here is that type is but an illusion...that it is not a reflection of shadow onto a printed sign, but rather that we see an image with shadow, with translucent type floating over it...QED, type is therefore an illlusion.
Is the site efficient? ie, is taking the tube somehow "faster" or "better" than taking the regular internet with textual hyperlinks?
Obviously it is less efficient in a strictly literal sense, especially when one may easily take the abstract
nature of the web for granted.
Is the train travel concept backwards?
Or is it the necessary analogue for this worK?
What I have done, in fact, is created a fictionalized concept called "dayfornight.com" in which I have illustrated on the Net, the concept of junctions as disciplinary collaborations... (see explanations under "Nightlink INFO"
Day For Night has evolved primarily by means of accretion of music-based projects, articulated via an ongoing artistic monologue, and interpreted through audiovisual design; As inspiration enters this process, ideas are formed and recorded early in any media for an immediate response;
This tension created by this intuitive-intellectual response informs the Day For Night catalogue, and gives us the freedom to discover and experiment with various styles and artforms. This is a monologue germane to Day For Night, slowly tracing its way outwards to those in our immediate circles of influence;
Certain projects, including the NIGHTlink Internet Journey- by-Rail, which originates in the Day For Night audiovisual imprint – are primary expressions between specific Day For Night artists and the clients and friends that are closely connected to us;
Sometimes Day For Night forms an imaginary or virtual space where this expression exists (such as NIGHTlink, H O SPITAL, and the Re:fresh Intermedia Centre and Gallery), reinforced by the self-published works on cd and cd-rom from the catalogue;
Over the past 10 years, Day For Night's projects have included the following;
Television and motion graphics design, music and sound design, web-based art and site design, photography, print, publications and typography, branding and strategy documents, and the publishing of narrative fiction and poetry;
Our most visible contribution is through the Day For Night audio-visual imprint – a serialized catalogue of 100 independent artist projects formatted for audio cd and cd-rom. These merge diverse musical explorations – triphop, drum’n’bass, post-rock, indie, techno, and minimalist and contemporary classical. The projects are an outlet for a more personalized, non-judgmental style of narrative and self-expression, and are designed to illustrate both a taxonomy, which categorises free-form poetry and music, using urban information systems and even railway signage;
A critical approach to presenting text and imagery begins with a deconstruction of the narrative format of the more traditional cd booklet, in favor of a modular series of cover panels which emphasize use of negative space and contemporary sans-serif typography;
At this time of writing, summer of 2002, Day For Night continues to seek out strategic relationships and partnerships with other fine artists and design agents who share these values and ideals.
Well, things do change over time, and it appears that each year, I had the impetus to sit down and try to define Day For Night in a new way that got me excited, and would trigger an opportunity to share something unique.
Here's one of the more pointless, and pompous attempts:
What is Day For Night?
A movement for a personal music, art, literature, film and design—though not necessarily in that order—for both the jaded as well as the discerning.
An aesthetic.
About music, made-to-measure for a roomful of listeners who have made it their obligation to listen; a soundtrack to the life of everyman; a sonic tapestry for talkers & thinkers alike.
Numbers and time, both prime and even.
A film-makers’ term, referring to the process of shooting a nighttime scene during daylight hours, employing the use of special filters–alternately, a “special effect.”
The difference between the taste of salt and sugar.
The title of a film by Francois Truffaut, which netted him Oscar for Best Foreign Language film in 1973 (and which, on a broader, possibly more holistic, level, continued his now legendary autobiography on film; this time placing him in the character role of Director-as-Actor-as-Director, in a Film about the Making-of-a-Film).
A complete musical universe; one that is both self-referential and self-contained. An index of textures; a lexicon of possibilities.
One’s refusal to participate within the normal confines of the Industry; and living the dream of achieving those ends justified by the means.
The color of night, as seen by the cold light of day.
Day For Night is my life.
©2000 Day For Night I CD & CD-ROM publishers. Intermedia experimentalists.
Day For Night originated in 1991 as a recording imprint and independent-projects label, based out of Santa Monica, California. Promoting multimedia while emphasizing a lightly-branded, personalized design style, Day For Night CD releases to date include works in contemporary music and new media released on CD, CD-R and the web.
In nearly-equal parts, the Day For Night Catalogue continues to offer an esoteric mix of creations -- combining music, art, typography, design and literature. This imprint is not a traditional "record label," – its commercial releases will be limited, over a course of time, to 100 total – while its push for to recruit new artists from the outside world is often shadowed by inner development goals – first, to release the full schedule of projects back-logged at this time, many of them still in the works. For this, Eric Scott occasionally reaches critical mass as Creative Director; every day, he shifts gears in his capacities as composer, producer, recording artist, designer, typographer, and author.
These endeavors also include software releases from sub-brand digital type foundry NIGHTfonts, which is currently designing experimental typefaces – as seen in some of Day For Night's business communications – and for distribution via commercial outlets, for application in desktop publishing.
Day for night takes its name from a filmmaking term – creating the illusion of night-time in broad daylight by employing special lens filters. Within this term creative or technical misdirection is implicit – like any special effect that conceals or subverts reality. Eric refers to this, throughout his discussions of "Internet Theater," one Day For Night's "critical services" – as well as a personal design focus. One primary example of this is the self-initiated NIGHTlink Rail internet project, which first launched in 1997, and continues to evolve, slowly, as the Day For Night catalogue grows.
From its fictitious marketing campaign ("Take An Internet Journey By Rail – It Still Beats Walking." and the mock train stations, NIGHTlink Rail becomes an emblematic parody of the label's catalogue: CD project titles are also often referred to by name and, interchangeably, by catalogue number ("Day 001" through "Day 100"). This cryptic emphasis upon cataloguing and order also informs the schematic design of the NIGHTlink Rail Travel Planner – one that might easily be mistaken for a real subway map. The Station stops along this network also share and cross-brand Day For Night catalogue projects, amidst playful marketing "hype" banner ads that cover railway station walls like fly-bill ads.
Another similarity shadows the 1973 film of the same name, furthering a personal authoring style, as did the œuvre of director Francois Truffaut. Where Day for Night the film represented the filmmaker as the bemused subject of the same director's own fiction, Eric compares this to his own continually “being at the heart of Day For Night's big picture, and living inside many of the details as well.”
Real-world clients have approached and boarded Day For Night, demanding the finest in this brand of creative misdirection...from Imagine Television, Disney Online, Touchstone Television, to its inner Artist Projects network, Day For Night has consulted and delivered when even the most daunting levels of creative misdirection is in the design brief.
The sum of the label and its multimedia endeavors represent this artist's vision – one that is largely self-contained, and occasionally self-referential – and one which Eric describes as part of his “personal search for an absolute truth about New Media.” Presenting a lexicon of sounds, textures and graphic possibilities, Day For Night consciously expresses its own subjective experience, as well as its human fallibility.