Luminous City, the latest in the ODD NY series of shorts, examines what the cityscape of Manhattan looks like at night, as each pinpoint of light seen against a building facade represents a bit of human activity.
The ODD NY series is designed to essentially be one short film composed of four chapters, each representing a different aspect of urban life and visual perception. The series launched five months ago with "Mapping." Like "Luminous City," it was designed and directed by Gary Breslin, Creative Director of the Office of Development and Design, the design and visual effects partner company to Supply & Demand Integrated.
In "Mapping", Breslin envisioned what a map of New York City might look like if you took a less literal approach to it. In "Luminous City," he turns his attention on the city at night, where the environment is constructed of lights.
"I've long had a fascination with windows illuminated at night, and seeing them in a multitude of ways," Gary commented. "In one sense they're vectors, nodes - the points we need to understand the architectural structure, since it's often too dark to see the buildings' facades. On the other hand, every window lit up means something; it means someone's home, and so the light becomes a window to their world. I wonder just what those people are up to."
Fittingly, the short peers into little portals of luminescence that compose a view of the NYC nightscape, observing the lives and worlds unique to each window. This portrait of New York after dark culminates with a re-imagined view of a city with no facades - just the windows themselves - existing as an entity free of any structure and a life of its own. Both shorts are narrated by Gary himself.
The next two chapters in ODD NY are in production now, and will deal with scaffolding and the reflective quality of wet streets at night.