The reverse sundial has yet to be created. A device that, instead of using the sun’s light to cast the gnomon’s shadow onto the dial, collects shadows and turns them into beams of light. An impossible invention.
But not for Night Pour.
The reverse sundial must manipulate cause and effect; it must, in a sense, peer into the future in order to collect the light that has yet to hit the gnomon. It’s construction, naturally, is complicated, requiring knowledge of quantum mechanics, string theory, and unnaturally advanced mathematics, all of which are so far beyond the scope of this author’s understanding that it simply becomes magic.
But not for Night Pour.
With machines that look like particle accelerators lining every wall in his house, with batteries and generators and lengths of multi-coloured cables up and down the stairs, with instruments and monitors and an assortment of dials and knobs – Night Pour has been doing just that: collecting shadows and turning it into light.
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To read the rest of this review — and more by Steve Schmolaris — visit his website Bad Gardening Advice.
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Steve Schmolaris is the founder of the Schmolaris Prize, “the most prestigious prize in all of Manitoba,” which he first awarded in 1977. Each year, he awards the prize to the best album of the year. He does not have a profession but, having come from money (his father, “the Millionaire of East Schmelkirk,” left him his fortune when he died in 1977), Steve is a patron of the arts. Inspired by the exquisite detail of a holotype, the collective intelligence of slime mold, the natural world and the suffering inherent within it — and also music (fuck, he loves music!) — Steve has long been writing reviews of Winnipeg artists’ songs and albums at his website Bad Gardening Advice, leading to the publication of a book of the same name.
