Night Ritual wears its digital-ness on its sleeve. It embodies a post-ironic Second Life / Asset Flip aesthetic which feels very timely in the wake of the more mainstream neo-Y2K throwback, and the return of a particular flare-panted all-black-and-faux-leather look which I can only describe as Columbine Chic. What Night Ritual possesses that these other trends do not, is a genuinely interesting (if appropriately arcane) methodology to its madness. Rather than simply being the terminus point of the most recent nostalgia vector, Fox’s work digs back into the aesthetic and technological realities of a particular moment in time in order to establish the ideal grounds for its own uniquely gothy and shambolic performance.

It is, after all, a ritual, and therefore requires proper initiation to attend. Traditional IRL rituals are typically linked to particular geographies, histories, natural cycles and so forth; with initiation into their practice drawing on an underlying understanding of these conditions and the specific cultural contexts in which they operate. Within the digital, which lacks conventional spatial and temporal limitations, and in which culture quickly becomes strained and soft-bordered, it only makes sense that new traditions, new ritualistic touchstones and modes of initiation, would be required.

The digital offers freedom from many physical limitations, and this freedom is on full display in Night Ritual. Figures move in defiance of gravity; every characters’ look is immaculate and immune to time, wear or mechanical limitations; layers of reality fade and cross fade haphazardly; and the beat is never broken, always accessible to the dancing figures even when it is denied to the viewer. What in most traditional rituals would, by necessity, have to remain symbolic or merely consensually agreed upon, can instead be rendered quite literally. Ecstatic highs and revelatory lows come exactly when needed, and can be sustained forever without loss if desired.

At the same time, other elements which would normally be literal, concrete, instead have to be re-established through artifice. What does night really mean within a digital space? What are seasons, or geography? When a digital dancer reaches the peak of their ecstatic performance, who is really feeling what, and when? In this way digital rituals, like that of Fox’s work, are essentially the mirror image of traditional ritualism. Everything which can be taken for granted in one must be erected in the other through the consensual agreement of its attendees. While initiation into traditional rituals requires time and connections to specific places, peoples and natural realities, initiation into digital rituals instead requires the capacity to glean the proper connections and reference points from the undifferentiated sea of timeless and placeless data that is the network.

Both are about identity, and history, and belonging, and the instrumentalizing of the same; but the methods by which one arrives at them, and the material conditions which each create, are almost diametrically opposed. Opposed not in the sense of negation, at least not when presented with the care and sophistication present in Fox’s Night Ritual; but rather opposed in the manner of reflection. The dark, cleanly rendered upside-down of the digital Now serving as the perfect counterbalance to the soft-edged yet well-tended gardens of the Then and Always. One is the inversion of the other, functioning therefore as a sort of Underworld to it; a place for exploration and reflection which one does not expect concrete or simply stated answers to ever emerge from.

In this capacity, the very particular moment-in-digital-time which Night Ritual evokes is perfectly chosen. It reflects the digital at its most distinct point, where all of its strengths and limitations are on full display. It presents the digital in its most of-itself-ness, and by doing so compels the viewer, (at least those who are able to follow the necessary cultural currents to find proper initiation) to view its other core elements in the same light. Death, loss, dissolution, ecstasy, agony and joy, all taken in their most of-themselves-ness. A digital underworld, perfectly contrasting and complimenting that which rests above in daylight. A Night Ritual.