Houston, Texas · 2015–2017
Day for Night
Year-by-year archive of Day for Night, the Houston music and digital-art festival held from 2015 to 2017: dates, venues, music and visual-art rosters, ticket structure, sourced economics, and the 2018 removal of its founder and foreclosure sale that ended it.
Day for Night was a music and digital-art festival held in Houston in December 2015, 2016 and 2017. It was produced by Free Press Houston with the design studio Work-Order, and it was unusual in programming visual and computational artists on the same footing as musicians: installation and light rosters were announced alongside the music bill rather than appended to it.
The first edition occupied a six-block area around Silver Street Studios. The second and third moved into the former Barbara Jordan Post Office at 401 Franklin Street downtown — by 2017 a 1.5-million-square-foot site holding four stages and eighteen art installations, plus a Friday speaking summit.
The festival is a useful case in the economics of large-format art programming, because its costs and its outcome are both partly documented. Its founder later said each edition cost between $6 million and $7 million to produce and that none was profitable. In August 2018, after affidavits alleging sexual assault were published by two women, the festival's creditors foreclosed on the owning entity and removed him; the entity holding the festival and Free Press Houston was sold at public auction that November, and no further edition took place.
Timeline
Editions
2015
Day for Night 2015
2015-12-19 to 2015-12-20 · Silver Street Studios and surrounding blocks · 2 days · 60 performers listed · 2 archive images and films
2016
Day for Night 2016
2016-12-17 to 2016-12-18 · Former Barbara Jordan Post Office, 401 Franklin Street · 2 days · 73 performers listed · 10 archive images and films
2017
Day for Night 2017
2017-12-15 to 2017-12-17 · PostHTX (former Barbara Jordan Post Office), 401 Franklin Street · 3 days · 60 performers listed · 12 archive images and films
People
Documented roles
Research
Built on this archive
Live Index research that reads these records. The documents are institutional publications of the editorial desk; the underlying facts belong to the publishers named in the source ledger.
- Day for Night, 2015–2017: sound, light and summit programming
A cross-year record of how Day for Night programmed music, visual and computational art and, in its final edition, a talks summit — built from the documented rosters in the Live Index archive.
- Houston festival attendance and economic-impact evidence, 2009–2017
Every attendance, price and economic figure published for Free Press Summer Fest and Day for Night, recorded with the measure it represents, the party that produced it and the limitation that applies.
- Historical festival project record
The machine-readable dataset generated from these archive records, with JSON and CSV releases.
Visual archive
31 sourced images, films and galleries
Every item names its creator where the source names one, the archive it came from, and the edition it belongs to. Nothing here is generated or stock.
Day for Night 20152 items
Making-of (1)
Posters and identity (1)
Day for Night 201610 items
Sound (2)
Light and installation (2)
Light and installation · gallery
Houstonia: Day for Night: The Art
Light and installation · gallery
Hyperallergic: At Day for Night Festival, a Surreal World of Light Provides Respite From the Music
Making-of (3)
Crowd (2)
Crowd · gallery
The Austin Chronicle: Houston's Day for Night Festival 2016
Crowd · gallery
W Magazine: At Houston's Day For Night, Festival Season Is Literally Still Lit
Posters and identity (1)
Day for Night 201712 items
Sound (1)
Sound · gallery
Pitchfork: Pitchfork Radio Day for Night 2017
Light and installation (3)
Light and installation · gallery
Houston Press: The Art Installations of Day For Night 2017
Making-of (1)
Venue (1)
Venue · gallery
Crowd (4)
Crowd · gallery
Houston Press: Fun Times at Day for Night
Crowd · gallery
CultureMap Houston: Our best moments from Day for Night: the sights, the sounds
Crowd · gallery
Vogue: The Best Street Style at Houston's Day For Night Festival
Posters and identity (2)
Year not stated by the source archive7 items
Historical images and films are reproduced or embedded here for documentary and reference purposes, with the original creator and source archive named on every item. Where a source permits linking rather than copying, its photography is linked and cited instead of reproduced. No image on this page is generated, reconstructed or stock. Where the source archive names no photographer, that is stated rather than a credit inferred.
Method
How this record was compiled
- Rosters are reproduced from the announcement that carried them — the organisers' own release in 2015, and contemporaneous broadcast and music-press coverage in 2016 and 2017.
- Music and visual-art rosters are kept as separate lists, as the festival announced them.
- Financial statements attributed to the founder are labelled as his account, not as audited figures. The '$20 million' impact figure appears only in a later secondary reference and no original study has been retrieved, so it is recorded as a secondary report.
- The end of the project is recorded because a factual archive that stopped in 2017 would misstate the history. Allegations are described as published allegations, alongside the denial.
Record last reviewed 2026-08-24. Machine-readable copy: historical-projects.json.
Provenance
Sources
01 · Houstonia · 2018-08 · Independent reporting
Amid allegations, Day For Night festival removes founder
Used for: August 2018 publication of affidavits alleging sexual assault, and the creditors' statement removing the founder from ownership and involvement
02 · Houstonia · 2018-11 · Independent reporting
Day for Night is done (for now, at least)
Used for: November 2018 public foreclosure sale of the entity holding the festival and Free Press Houston; founder's denial of the allegations
03 · Houstonia · 2019-06 · Independent reporting
Used for: Reported production cost, unprofitability across all three editions, a secondary reference to a $20 million impact study, and the outcome of the foreclosure sale
04 · Kiffer Keegan · Organiser-published
Day For Night — design and motion archive
Used for: Festival design, motion work and documentary photography credits
05 · Free Press Houston / Work-Order (PRWeb) · 2015-10-07 · Organiser-published
Used for: 2015 dates, full music and visual-art rosters, presale demand, producer credit
06 · Houston Press · Independent reporting
Day For Night aims to change the winter festival game
Used for: 2015 venue and site footprint, festival concept, producer credit
07 · JamBase · Third-party compilation
Used for: 2015 dates and venue address
08 · ABC13 (KTRK) · Independent reporting
Day for Night festival lineup revealed; Bjork, Butthole Surfers and Aphex Twin to perform
Used for: 2016 dates, venue, sound and light rosters, ticket tiers and prices
09 · JamBase · Third-party compilation
Used for: 2016 dates and edition record
10 · JamBase · Third-party compilation
Used for: 2017 dates and full announced music lineup
11 · ABC13 (KTRK) · Independent reporting
Day for Night: lineup includes Nine Inch Nails, Solange and Thom Yorke
Used for: 2017 dates, PostHTX venue and floor area, 18 art installations, four stages, Hurricane Harvey relief donation
12 · Pitchfork · Independent reporting
Thom Yorke, St. Vincent, Nine Inch Nails and more playing Day for Night 2017
Used for: 2017 headliners, the Friday summit programme and installation count