Get all the details about Northern Lights.mn‘s upcoming “nuit blanche” and the night-long assortment of projects, art installations, and performances across the Twin Cities June 4 & 5 on the website for the Northern Spark Festival.  See below for more of our virtual meet-and-greet with the festival’s artists.

In the meantime, read on for information about the Bicycle Synthesizer, MURMUR, and a project that combines grassroots urban planning with all the kidly fun of playing with your nephew’s train set, Twin Cities Re-imagined.

Read a recent feature article on the Northern Spark Festival, written by Regan Smith, on mnartists.org >>

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Artists: Chris Farstad (Food Pyramid) and Alex Dyba
Project: Bicycle Synthesizer Ride
Project description: The Bicycle Synthesizer Ride will be a totally new way to interact with an everyday machine. Utilizing circuit bending and home-made synthesizer modules, participants will have the opportunity to ride a custom group of modified Nice Ride bicycles at the Science Museum of Minnesota. This project will be a fun and interactive way for people of all ages and backgrounds to engage with bicycles and their communities.
Night owl or an early bird? We align with the sun and the moon according to the dictates of the tides and the electromagnetic impulses of Russian spy satellites and/or iPhones.
All-nighter survival kit secret weapon: A TASCAM digital field recorder, with omni-directional variable microphones.
What were you doing last time you were up at 3 a.m.? Disassembling the innards of cheap boom boxes for use in sound modules.
What’s your favorite after-hours breakfast joint? Hard Times Cafe in West Bank
What are your go-to cures for insomnia? The understanding that “the glass is already broken” i.e. the pursuit of perfection is an endless downward cycle into a calcified sense of space and time.
If you could choose anyone to stay up all night talking with, who would it be? THREE WAY TIE: Fela Kuti / Nikola Tesla / Daphne Oram
Soundtrack for a midnight ramble?

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Artist: Debora Miller
Project: MURMUR
Project description: The river both divides and unifies the environment of the city. Being near this quiet dark mass heightens awareness of the other side. The tension created by the inability to cross, the need to navigate to bridges, and the observable but separate activity that occurs on the water, combine with the natural beauty and historic utilitarian interest of the place to make the landscape and details more present and memorable. MURMUR is a participatory outdoor projection experience queued by the audience via a web site available at a computer station on the north end of the Stone Arch Bridge and over the internet. Select photographs for projection onto the Gold Medal Flour silos. Participate via murmur-project.com and, in person, at the Stone Arch Bridge. The photographs include natural and industrial imagery, both abstract and descriptive, photographed by the artist along the Mississippi River and its environs.
Night owl or early bird? I used to be definitely a night owl, but these days I’m becoming an early bird. I chalk this up to parenting, life with a dog around, living in a house under full renovation, and ever growing respect for my body rhythms.
All-nighter survival kit secret weapon: A small folding chair, nuts, water, and a thermos of mashers. Oh, and a smartphone.
What were you doing last time you were up at 3 a.m.? The last time I stayed up for fun was over ten years ago in New York City when we killed time waiting for a sunrise photo shoot by Spencer Tunick. We were ready to participate fully, but the police had another idea, so we ended up being in a rare clothed photo by him. Since then, when I’m up, it’s probably because I’m peeing, trying to remember where I packed something, or reading a book I can’t put down.
What are your go-to cures for insomnia? Exercise and walking the dog. Reading only works if it’s technical writing.
If you could choose anyone to stay up all night talking with, who would it be? Well, two people come immediately to mind…and they were both there the last time I stayed up all night for art in New York, too. My husband Andy McQuigg has been working hard creating the custom interface for MURMUR, so he makes the list for sure, and my twin sister Rebecca is flying in for Northern Spark from New York. That makes for a perfect time.

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Organization: Prairieform (respondent: John Kamp)
Project: Twin Cities Re-imagined
Project description: Twin Cities Re-Imagined will invite the public to reflect upon and participate in a physical evolution of the Twin Cities. The project will consist of an interactive model of the Twin Cities constructed out of found objects. The model will interpret and represent the key geographical features, street patterns, sweeping landscapes, and cultural landmarks. Placed on the model will be a hundreds of small one-inch-scale buildings, as well as swaths of miniature plant materials (grasses, shrubs, trees).  By touching and moving the small buildings and plant materials on the model, the public will be allowed to investigate various urban forms that typify the Twin Cities, and to project their own ideas onto the model about the physical nature of the city. In this way, the viewer becomes an active participant in the creation and evolution of the work.
Night owl or early bird? I’ve never been an early bird, however much I would like to and to come across as “disciplined” by waking up at 5:30 every morning. I’m at my best – creatively, socially, etc. – after dinner and on into the night/early morning.
All-nighter survival kit secret weapon: I might need to bring a blanket, but just for bundling up. I swear I won’t lie down and go to sleep.
What were you doing last time you were up at 3 a.m.? Am I supposed to divulge this across the world-wide web? In that case: only wholesome things!
What’s your favorite after-hours breakfast joint? BCD Tofu House at 3575 Wilshire Boulevard in LA. Curry soon tofu and your best friends = complete contentment.
If you could choose anyone to stay up all night talking with, who would it be? Hmm, with someone I’m in love with probably – platonically or not.
Soundtrack for a midnight ramble?

Get all the details about Northern Lights.mn‘s upcoming “nuit blanche” and the night-long assortment of projects, art installations, and performances across the Twin Cities June 4 & 5 on the website for the Northern Spark Festival.  See below for more of our virtual meet-and-greet with the festival’s artists. Next up: Amanda Lovelee, Philip Blackburn, and Forecast Public Art with Melinda Childs.

Read a recent feature article on the Northern Spark Festival, written by Regan Smith, on mnartists.org >>

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Call and Answer Project

Artist: Amanda Lovelee
Project: Call and Answer Project
Project description: As a society that faces the collapse of communities how do we continue to form visceral, face-to-face connections? This complex problem inspired the Call and Answer Project, which addresses the need for human connection, the value of touch, and the pleasure involved in community-oriented folk dance. As part of Northern Spark, the Call and Answer Project will be hosting an all-night Square Dance and book-making marathon at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts.  The goal is to print 2000 booklets on four presses with the help of volunteers while also keeping an all night square dance going.  We will have unlimited fiddle music, coffee and homemade pie!  Be there and be square!
Night Owl or Early Bird? I am an early bird. I just need to make it through the middle of the night and then I am good to go!
All-nighter survival kit secret weapon: 3 lbs of donated coffee from Peace Coffee!
What were you doing last time you were up at 3 am? Catching a flight home from Nicaragua. Lucky I got on the right flight.
Favorite after-hours breakfast joint: Anywhere that has pancakes with real maple syrup.  But then again I could eat that anytime of the day! 
What is your go-to cure for insomnia? Yoga and then a book.
Soundtrack for a midnight ramble?
At Northern Spark, Minnesota Center for Book Arts is going to be keeping it alive with Old Time music!

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Phliip Blackburn's Wind Harp

Artist: Philip Blackburn
Projects: Sewer Pipe Organ, Car Horn Fanfare, and Wind Harps
Project description: I’m contributing three outdoor sounding projects that call attention to the urban landscape through our ears: subtle wind energies transformed into alien tones; intricate polyphonies of car horns honking; and the acoustic resonant cavities beneath our city streets.
Night Owl or Early Bird? Neither – I’m a periodic napper.
All-nighter survival kit secret weapon? A pillow.
What were you doing last time you were up at 3 am? Singing madrigals for a May Ball at college. Your lungs don’t respond at that hour.
What is your go-to cure for insomnia? Melatonin.
If you could choose anyone to stay up all night talking with, who would it be? My cat Percy
Soundtrack for a midnight ramble? A virtuoso frog pond at a distance through the palm trees.

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Dream Interpretation Station, by Melinda Childs and Forecast Public Art

Artist/Organization: Melinda Childs with Forecast Public Art
Projects: Dream Interpretation Station and Big Dreams
Project description: Forecast is hosting all the events at the Black Dog Cafe and as part of that I am doing my own project called the Dream Interpretation Station, where, upon encountering, visitors will have the opportunity to discover the deeper meaning of their most prominent dreams. In addition, Forecast Public Art, Springboard for the Arts and the Black Dog Café will host Dreamland, a carnival of dream activity in Lowertown St. Paul. The night will unfold with a mixture of science, community building, performative artistic brainstorming, live performances, dream-based participatory art projects, and early morning projections of the evening’s events.
Night Owl or Early Bird? Both, once I’m up I’m up and once I stay up past 10 I can hoot with the best of them although this will be tested at Northern Spark now that I am a mom.
All-nighter survival kit secret weapon? Something good to drink, but I can’t decide if it should be caffeinated, alcoholic, or drug free.
What were you doing last time you were up at 3 am? Feeding my one year old son Roan.
Favorite after-hours breakfast joint? Mickey’s Diner
What is your go-to cure for insomnia? Counting sheep.
If you could choose anyone to stay up all night talking with, who would it be? My husband, Jaron Childs
Soundtrack for a midnight ramble?

With more than 60 Minnesota artists contributing work and just as many local organizational partners, Northern Lights.mn‘s upcoming “nuit blanche” is going to be a barn-burner. As mentioned here last week, we’ll be introducing you to a sampling of creative folks behind some of the events in the Northern Spark Festival this week and next. See below for thumbnail portraits of projects by three festival notables: Andrea Stanislav, Piotr Szyhalski, and Wing Young Huie.

Read a recent feature article on the Northern Spark Festival, written by Regan Smith, on mnartists.org >>

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Nightmare

Artist: Andréa Stanislav
Project: Nightmare
Project description: This is a public video work that creates the illusion of a white horse galloping on the Mississippi, at night, in slow motion. The horse uses the river as a metaphorical race track creating a spectacular illusion, produced by towing a video screen placed on barge at night. This project goes along the Mississippi River from North Mississippi Park, Minneapolis to Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, in south St. Paul.

Early Bird or Night Owl?: Night Owl
All-nighter survival kit secret weapon: Credit card
What were you doing last time you were up at 3 a.m.? Working
Favorite after-hours breakfast joint: Dupar’s, West Hollywood
If you could choose anyone to stay up all night talking with, who would it be? Joseph Stalin

Soundtrack for a midnight ramble?

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Empty Words

Artist: Piotr Szyhalski/Labor Camp Project Orchestra and collaborators
Project: Empty Words (so that we can do our living)
Project description: Empty Words is a nine-hour, participatory, multimedia event—part poetry reading, part dance, parade, and concert—constructed around the collective reading of “Empty Words” by John Cage. This elegant and powerful, yet poetic and playful text attempts to “demilitarize language,” carrying an important message: awakening poetry while making it impossible for people to “control one another.” Empty Words includes spoken word, live musical performances of Vexations by Erik Satie, projections, art objects, and other actions. It’s a dusk-’til-dawn collective contemplation of surrender as an opening up to a hopeful future, a spontaneous blend of community festival and a theatrical performance tempered by an attitude of thoughtful expectation, a transformation of darkness into the light, of words into music. The event aims to celebrate these ideas, “so that we can do our living…”
Early Bird or Night Owl? Night Owl, hands down
All-nighter survival kit secret weapon: Coffee, “But it is likely that I will be so consumed by the multiple aspects of the all night performance, that adrenaline will sustain me just fine through the night.”
What were you doing last time you were up at 3 a.m.? I was working in my studio! I have things set up in my space that are conducive of working on several projects at the same time. There is a table on which I work with tactile materials, my audio station, and a place to do some non-audio screen based work. On any given night I find myself moving from place to place several times.
What is your go-to cure for insomnia? Work. I am not sure if this is a “cure” but it helps me forget about sleep. I wish I didn’t have to sleep. Ever. The day after, I know that a great, warm meal helps me and my body to regain some sort of balance
If you could choose anyone to stay up all night talking with, who would it be? Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (a.k.a. Witkacy)
Soundtrack for a midnight ramble? This varies. Probably the strangest for me was the discovery of how much I enjoyed listening to some Morbid Angel around 4/5am… this is not my usual musical fare, but at that hour, listened to very loud, it seems oddly resonant.

http://youtu.be/v7YLblswAI0

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A Ping Pong Retrospective

Artist: Wing Young Huie
Project: A Ping Pong Retrospective: 1500 Photographs by Wing Young Huie
Project description: Ping with Wing! See 1500 photos that span 35 years by photographer Wing Young Huie—all in one night while batting glow-in-the-dark balls with friends and strangers. This re-imagines your old-fashioned slide show in the living room coupled with basement-style ping-pong, except the living room-basement is an outdoor lot in the West Bank near the University of Minnesota, one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the Twin Cities. This unique retrospective is a culmination of more than a dozen projects that document the dizzying everyday socioeconomic and cultural realities of our changing cultural landscape, including the well-known public installations: Frogtown (1995), Lake Street USA (2000) and The University Avenue Project (2010), all of which transformed major urban areas into photographic galleries.
Early Bird or Night Owl? There was a time when I was a night owl, but now usually in bed by midnight.
All-nighter survival kit secret weapon: It might be my first can of Red Bull.
What were you doing last time you were up at 3 a.m.? I was in a fabulous hotel room in Beijing (for a traveling retrospective exhibit) taking a bubble bath trying to alleviate jet lag.
Favorite after-hours breakfast: Back in the day it was a fried egg sandwich at Mickey’s Diner.
What is your go-to cure for insomnia? Reading my backlog of New Yorkers.
If you could choose anyone to stay up all night talking with, who would it be? Henry Miller (he was a ping pong player)
Soundtrack for a midnight ramble?

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Are you planning to stay up and explore the nocturnal spectacles of Northern Spark? If so, what’s on your must-see list?

From dusk on June 4 to the break of day June 5, the Twin Cities will be transformed by Northern Spark: A Nuit Blanche, a public arts festival spearheaded by Northern Lights.mn, featuring more than 100 creative projects by over 60 regional and national artists and a bevy of partner institutions through the metro area.

Not to be left out, mnartists.org and the Walker Art Center have joined forces to present Nightshift, our contribution to the Northern Spark Festival; this all-nighter will include interactive gatherings of the quiet, more intimate variety, exploring nocturnal activities within public and communal space. Nightshift presents a range of things to do, spread throughout the Walker Art Center and Open Field, including live headphone concerts in the James Turrell SkyPesher, bedtime stories with local writers, stargazing, choreographed and impromptu sleep position performances and a few surprises.  The Walker galleries and building amenities will also be open for late night viewing and relaxation. And what better way to wrap up the night than with fresh donuts delivered at sunrise?

Read a recent feature article on the Northern Spark Festival, written by Regan Smith, on mnartists.org >>

Below, find out more about a few of artists participating in the festival. Check back often between now and Twin Cities’ own ‘nuit blanche’ and we’ll introduce you to a sampling of the creative folks behind the projects you’ll find as you explore Northern Spark’s offerings on the big night.

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Photo courtesy of the artist

Artist: Mike Hallenbeck
Project: Sound Spandrel — Science Museum
Project description: In the discipline of architecture, the V shape between two arches is called a ‘spandrel:’ negative space, but part of the design nonetheless. As a site-specific sonic event somewhere between performance and installation, the Sound Spandrel foregrounds the marginal and the parenthetical to integrate music as part of a location’s incidental soundscape. Exploring the intersection of sound, space, and human behavior, the performance responds to the acoustic character of a particular environment and becomes raw material for the creation of new audio structures. Anything from the tonalities of heating and cooling systems to the buzz of light bulbs to the percussive patterns of footsteps and door slams inspire a score fleshed out by live performers and electronically blended back into the soundscape.
Early Bird or Night Owl?: Dusky Duck
All-nighter survival kit secret weapon: Snacks
What were you doing last time you were up at 3 a.m.? Probably writing music or editing audio.
What are your go-to cures for insomnia? I think about my cats and how snuggly they can be. Especially my cat Blanche. She’s like a giant Tribble.
If you could choose anyone to stay up all night talking with, who would it be? Dostoevsky
Soundtrack for a midnight ramble?

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Photo courtesy of the artists

Artists: Bridget Beck and Carissa Samaniego
Project: GLOW-a-BOUT
Project description: GLOW-a-BOUT is a nightlong city game which depends on large-scale public participation!  Join in on the fun, it’s accessible to all!  GLOW-a-BOUT combines the spirit of nostalgic neighborhood games and the Indian Holi Festival to create a new event celebrating the new Minnesota Festival, Northern Spark: A Nuit Blanche.  With your help, the game glows, sparkles, colors and excites the evening through an engaging process, high-energy game and stimulating visual experience.  There are fortresses, flags, pigmented powders, teams and glowing orbs.
Early Bird or Night Owl?: Bridget’s an Early Bird (with coffee in hand), and Carissa’s up as the occasion demands, “generally more productive in the mornings, but not one to miss out on late-night escapades.”
All-nighter survival kit secret weapons: Bridget’s bringing “directions to Loring Park, an outrageous neon costume, a flashlight, and the willingness to join in all sorts of fun;”
Carissa won’t leave home without “a flashy headdress, LOTS of glitter, glow in the dark earrings and running shoes.”
What were you doing last time you were up at 3 a.m.? Bridget: I go to bed early.  But, I’m pretty sure the last time I was up at 3am there was a dance party with a wig calling my name. Carissa: I was on a road trip exploring the Southwest listening to a cheesy, yet tear-jerking book on tape.
What meal is best when served at 2 a.m.? Bridget: A homemade plate of lightning bolt shaped pancakes with blueberry syrup and a big cup of coffee! Carissa: Mashed potato margaritas (yes, they are probably exactly what you think they are).
If you could choose anyone to stay up all night talking with, who would it be? Bridget: Gertrude Stein or Camille Claudel; Carissa: My grandma
Soundtrack for a midnight ramble?
Bridget:

Carissa:

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Image by Andrea Steudel

Artist/Organization: Skewed Visions (respondent: Charles Campbell)
Project: Please Remain Seated
Project description: Please Remain Seated is a set of performances tailored for 15 festival buses and their drivers, along the routes and for the duration of Northern Spark: a Nuit Blanche.  Giving riders a glimpse into the inner life of driving and being driven as they navigate the city, Please Remain Seated explores the forgotten spaces of a system of public transit and the dynamics within a system of public service. Created by the three Skewed Visions principles, Please Remain Seated will range from short enigmatic pronouncements to longer monologues, from choreographed equipment to passenger dance lines, from the haiku of paying the fare to the historical epic of the cross-town journey. These performances provide rider-audiences with insight into the world of bus drivers, the routes of the buses, and an opportunity to experience the mystery, intimacy and the terror of missing your stop from the other side of the steering wheel.
Night Owl or Early Bird?: Yes
All-nighter survival kit secret weapon: A watch
What are your go-to cures for insomnia? Having a baby.
If you could choose anyone to stay up all night talking with, who would it be? I’d actually just listen, and it would be Tom Waits; given his voice, I’d love to hear him snore.
Soundtrack for a midnight ramble?

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So, what’s on your Northern Spark itinerary? Share your own plans for the upcoming nuit blanche in the comments section.