Blog: City Nights finalists

from Gretchen Miller, 20.06.09

Over the past four months nearly 350 unique and wonderful stories, images and sound worlds have been contributed to City Nights. It's been entirely magical to log on each morning to see what else the City Nights tag cloud has rained down overnight; from the very local to the anywhere, the early evening to the pre-dawn, the intimate to the abstract, the heart-felt to the detached. So a very big thank-you to all the City Nighters - it's been a meaningful experience engaging with you and experiencing your terrific tales.

Nine works have been chosen for this first broadcast (see below). The works have been chosen for their lyricism, their powerful narrative, their suitability for performance and the way they both contrast and complement one another.

Of course, it’s been extremely hard to pick out finalists. So hard in fact the project has expanded from a single broadcast on 360 to a rather big night out (see below also).

An equally exciting result of the project has been some very generous commenting and conversations that have developed between some of you, both on each other's work and in our forums.  We hope these relationships continue to develop in various other Pool corners, and you continue to browse further and make comments when the mood takes.

Four fine actors will read the stories for broadcast – Deborah Kennedy, Toby Schmidt, Tony Barry and Ella Scott Lynch. And of course the 360 touch - a detailed sound and music world to really take us deep into the night. Suggest you listen with the lights off!

Thank you.

Cheers,
Gretchen Miller,
City Nights producer.

City Nights will be:

• One and a half 360 broadcasts which will be text based, performed by actors and set to sound and music. The main broadcast will take place on Sat 5 Sept, at 2pm, repeated Wed 9 Sept at 1pm. It will also be made available on the Pool and 360 websites from that week.
•  Individual airings of several audio uploads, wherever space permits on 360 over the rest of the year.
• A Night Air collage of the documentaries.
•  And, for the images, a month long nightly slot on the big screen at Federation Square, Melbourne, starting 29 August, at 7.30 pm. This will see many of the image uploads projected up large on the 20 metre big screen, with fragments of text taken from the City Nights uploads artfully floating across them - all credited in nice big letters on the screen. Phew!

And the stories are: 
 Miss Pardy hears a noise on the roof by Jacqui87
Unremarkable by Meeli
Gabrielle/Ophelia by Gabrielle
From Freo  by Kevin Gillam
The Hands by Les Wicks
Creatures of the Night by A Gibson
Friday Night from Hell by GB
Street of the Candlesticks  by Bell and
Ice Skating  by Felicity Castagna.

The second broadcast of text works we just couldn't ignore will come later in the year - date tba. They too will have their own sound environment. These fine works are:
 At Night by Karina Barker
Violet in Red by Rose Agnew
Slip Drag  by Adrienne Fromsett
Emergency in the Night  by Anne Mcarson
Star for Sale by Patrick Holland
Hum  by Claire Z and
In the Corner  by Abilyrical.

The audio broadcasts you'll hear aired as an occasional series during the rest of the year on 360 are: 
The City at Night by Ciaran and Scott 
Terrors in the NIght by Patrick_W 
Melbourne_Noir by Mickt
Black Coffee Nights by Komninos
Extra Anchovies by Pingping
Breathe by James Laidler
Buddha Belly  by Cameron Semmens and Rod Gear
and Lunatic Road by apatchi creations - which has already aired on 20 June.

To be mixed and mashed with the above into a forthcoming Night Air program, date tba:
Goulds at Night by Rsteel
Out there  and Where you going to love by Xpress Radio.

And a few extras we just have to mention:
There's a wonderful slideshow/documentary Night Butterflies by Belinda Lopez and Nick Perry which we've adapted for broadcast - stay tuned!.  An elegant dance of the garbage truck by Liz Dooley - Paris Garbage, and a very finely crafted play Disgraced by Horse on Platform 4.  We'll blog later on that one but hope the audio/text minded might find a way to produce it so we can air it.

Thanks for the great pic above, People of the past in the night by Lo_fidelity. 

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Tags

• 360
• ABC radio national
• city nights
• documentary
• night air
• poetry
• writing

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Derived from

People of the past in the night...

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