Beginning tomorrow night at sundown, you’ll have a whole night’s worth of urban adventures in store. If you’re still in the planning phase, you can find all the details you need to establish your nocturnal itinerary, or get the rundown on all the artists and projects, a map of sites and participating venues, or tips on how to get around as you hop from project to project on the website for the Northern Spark Festival.
Read below for a final sampling of participating “nuit blanche” artists: Ben Garthus and his Mobile Creative Outpost, Janaki Ranpura’s fertile retooling of “hide-and-seek”, and Diane Willow’s luminescent nightscapes.
*Editor’s note: The original version of this post indicated that the festival begins tonight, when in fact it is taking place June 4 &5. I’m sorry for the error!
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Artist: Ben Garthus
Project: The Mobile Creative Outpost
Project description: The Mobile Creative Outpost is a nomadic social gathering point that redefines spaces into areas of a creative, self-determined activity. Inspired by the free open-ended play of adventure playgrounds or junk playgrounds, which allow children to build using simple tools, are more common in much of Europe but are a rarity in the United States, the Creative Outpost doesn’t propose a specific program. Instead, it offers a variety of loose parts, old building materials, tools and open-ended equipment that challenges participants to come up with their own objects, inventions and activities.
Night Owl or Early Bird? Night owl
All-nighter survival kit secret weapon? Cold press iced coffee
What were you doing last time you were up at 3 a.m.? Working in my studio.
What’s your favorite after-hours breakfast joint? Uptown Diner
What are your go-to cures for insomnia? Stay up until I’m tired (sleep deprivation), acupuncture, and exercise.
If you could choose anyone to stay up all night talking with, who would it be? Any of my closest buddies after I haven’t seen them for a while.
Soundtrack for a midnight ramble?
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Artist: Janaki Ranpura
Project: Egg & Sperm :: Hide & Seek
Project description: Egg & Sperm Ride :: Hide & Seek is an adult hide-and-seek game that will be repeated throughout the night. Six members of the public per rotation are invited to wear glowing Sperm helmets and count while a large Egg rolls to a hiding location. When the Sperm find the Egg and lay hands on it, it lights. They usher the Egg back to the start point. This project plays with the metaphor of contact, creating it through electricity and through the human body. Many art + technology projects use technology as a way to bring people closer, and this project is no exception. It exaggerates technology’s role by putting it at the center of the human quest for love; and yet, when you meet someone and there’s electricity, you know it. The Egg & Sperm project is inspired by the lack of romance in the tundra of Minnesota. Its attention to corporeality hopes to inspire participating individuals to unplanned acts of contact.
Night Owl or Early Bird? Night owl
All-nighter survival kit secret weapon? A hot thermos of green tea and scotch
What were you doing the last time you were up at 3 a.m.? Taking a shower after a long dinner party in Washington, DC
What meal is best when eaten in the middle of the night? Noodles, noodles, noodles — three times a day and for snacks.
What are your go-to cures for insomnia? Daybreak
If you could choose anyone to stay up all night talking with, who would it be? Right now it would be Kevin Kelly, because then I wouldn’t have to finish reading his latest book. I hope that we could talk while on a long country road cycling side by side.
Soundtrack for a midnight ramble? An album: Run Rabbit Run by Sufjan Stevens is perfectly nice music to travel in an Egg to. I think it goes well with lights.
http://youtu.be/01esPM-UnO0
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Artist: Diane Willow
Project: beneath a glowing ceiling veil of living light
Project description: A Glowing Ceiling Veil of Bioluminescence transforms one arch of the Stone Arch Bridge into a chamber that invites people to experience the living light that illuminates the night within this space. Glowing bioluminescent plankton inhabit a membrane of soft vessels filled with seawater. Together they form a liquid veil suspended within the arch. The plankton are in tune with the night phase of their cycle, ready to luminesce in response to subtle and grand movements of the water in which they dwell. Conceived as an ambient site that is responsive to the presence of people who visit, the water in the soft vessels is animated by subtle vibrations as people enter and experience the chamber. There is a sense that the glowing light is responsive to people’s movement within the space and at the same time this relationship is muted, suggesting the emergence of a collaborative atmosphere that shifts with the flow of people.
Night Owl or Early Bird? I am by nature a night owl. I experience the night as a very open and spacious time. Although I rarely wake up at dawn I share my life with an early bird and have grown to appreciate her love of the morning – especially our pre-dawn departures for long road trips.
All-nighter survival kit secret weapon? Glow sticks, seltzer, and sparklers.
What were you doing the last time you were up at 3 a.m.? Obsessively watching the plankton luminesce – a mesmerizing, meditative, and awesome experience.
What are your go-to cures for insomnia? I love to sleep and rarely have trouble sleeping – being active in the day and being outside may be the best cures.
If you could choose anyone to stay up all night talking with, who would it be? Joanne Jones-Rizzi
Soundtrack for a midnight ramble?
http://youtu.be/JuDuNfqXnrc
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