Setting No. 2: NIGHTlinkRail
Essays and themes in this section focus upon the self-initiated NIGHTlinkRail.com project, as a metaphor for a virtual model for modern railway travel as well as the Day For Night catalogue and its artists.
Obsession.
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 […]
Take an internet journey-by-rail.
Back when I worked for a studio, not many people understood me, and it was often hard taking credit – or getting credit – for my ideas, because what I was best at rarely materialized in the finished work. So I haven’t included much of that work in my portfolio – it just doesn’t seem […]
From darkness.
…I entered NIGHTlinkRail’s 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 […]
Never underestimate trains.
We understand them: they’re regular, on time (mostly) and we like to ride them. It’s important that we learn to connect every new idea with at least one we already understand. That’s all.
Joyriding.
…2 years earlier, I didn’t know much yet about the web. To better understand it, I wrote, conceived and designed this thing, and titled it an “Internet Journey-by-Rail.” I needed some inner clarification, while developing the abstract for the connected relationship between separate Days of the catalogue (for which I am presenting 100 total) and […]
NIGHTlinkRail (dot.com).
The NightLinkRail model is really about the generation and spreading of ideas via the web. It’s 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 just too deep to be […]
NIGHTlinkRail (too).
The real beef is this – because I keep on asking myself, “How might we view Situationism as most truly relevant today, when we are becoming further immune to Guy Debord’s definition of a society deceived by spectacle? His later admonitions had more to do with a full, but depressed appreciation for how society appears […]
NIGHTlinkRail : Are you commuter literate?
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 I’ve been referring to as “An Internet Journey-By-Rail.” After descending via escalator into the […]
The train ride.
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