"This track provokes polar inertia: a sense of dead immobilty while simultaneously being transported through vast distances. No longer beats per minute - instead, moments are taken from beats and expanded into another time frame altogether."
At the center of Project Cybersyn (for “cybernetics synergy”) was the Operations Room, where cybernetically sound decisions about the economy were to be made. Those seated in the op room would review critical highlights—helpfully summarized with up and down arrows—from a real-time feed of factory data from around the country. The prototype op room was built in downtown Santiago, in the interior courtyard of a building occupied by the national telecom company. It was a hexagonal space, thirty-three feet in diameter, accommodating seven white fibreglass swivel chairs with orange cushions and, on the walls, futuristic screens. Tables and paper were banned. Beer was building the future, and it had to look like the future.Dat het op 11 september 1973 op botte wijze werd vernietigd zegt weer veel.
Not much on social media is truly social, he argues. “We personalise,” he says. “So, you know, it’s kind of social, but in a very personalised way … One of the most troubling things for me about social media is the lack of diversity. It’s like going to some expensive US college. You only meet people like yourself.” Then there’s the whole privacy issue: “The internet is becoming structurally parochial, like a village. So not only does everyone from the NSA to the big internet companies know pretty much everything there is to know about us, but we’re all clustering in these tighter and tighter little ideological and cultural networks. There’s no serendipity, no stumbling upon random people or random ideas. Everything is pre-ordained; you’re served with what they know will suit you.”En nog veel meer intrigerende observaties van Andrew Keen in dit interview naar aanleiding van zijn nieuwe boek The Internet is Not the Answer. De eerste keer dat ik Keen tegenkwam, in een aflevering van Tegenlicht (als ik me niet vergis, kan haast niet ergens anders), vond ik hem zo'n typische figuur die eens lekker gaat stoken door tegen de gevestigde mening in te gaan. Hij had alleen een beetje last van een vervelende habitus. Inmiddels heeft hij de wind flink in de zeilen (en die zeilen zijn van beter materiaal gemaakt).
Then, after the 1996 'Richard D. James' album, he seemed gone, ominously telling interviewers he was thinking of retiring from music, saying he didn't feel the need to release music he made. And so at record stores one would, over a period of five years, overhear a desperate query in regards to a possible release date of "the new Aphex". One local record store even went so far as to sarcastically write on its upcoming release date board behind Aphex Twin: 2005. Finally replacing it with a terse: "never!".
Forever looking for fresh ideas, the producer reluctantly admits that technology has adapted to such profound levels that songwriters must look for the 'new' in the music itself. “Everybody's asking me: did you find something for the future? Unfortunately, I have no idea. The thing right now is that the sounds you get in the computers are so good and so many that it's almost impossible to find something which is new. So I think if there's anything new it has to be musical. 'I Feel Love' was a sound, while in this case I don't think you can create new sounds because there are so many. The music has to be new.”
The legend was this: Aphex Twin was a mad inventor from Cornwall who built his own synthesisers. Surfing on sine waves, he would lead a pack of young boffins out of the computer screen glow of their bedrooms into the public domain of clubs, shops and charts, then back in and out of more bedrooms in a feedback loop of infinite dimensions. So far, all true.
Working in collaboration with creative technology company rehabstudio (rehabstudio.com), Chavez’s aim was to ‘create a highly conceptual interpretation of a futuristic nightclub that comes alive through the phenomenon of biofeedback,’ and so wearing EEG headsets, she guides guests through a meditation session in which their cerebral activity is translated into a mesmerising audio-visual display. She explains, ‘the headset reads brainwaves and, via bluetooth, transmits a custom-coded signal to the audio-visual system. Since the signal’s frequency and strength mirrors the participant’s brainwave activity, the intensity and register of the colour and sound emitted by the system varies as well. As a result, each audio-visual ‘set’ is unique to the person wearing the headset.’ So through considered contemplation and calm focus, one person is able to transform the experience of everyone else, or as Tim Rodgers of rehabstudio puts it, ‘control the club with their minds’.Al was het omdat ik in de De Toekomst Hervonden in deze richting speculeer wanneer ik probeer na te denken over een alternatief voor het rigide ritueel van de club en het dansfeest. Het bovenstaande voorbeeld is wel erg mid-jaren '90 new age-stijl. Wat niet uitmaakt, elke poging is toe te juichen. Ik dacht zelf alleen meer in de richting van een alternatief op de openingsscène van A Clockwork Orange.
Maar er bestaat een andere vorm van techno. Techno dat het dictaat van de dansvloer loslaat. Hier zijn verschillende namen voor verzonnen die nooit helemaal, en dat is wellicht al een goed teken, juist aanvoelden en geaccepteerd werden: ambient techno, intelligent dance music (IDM), electronic listening music. Wat deze muziek van zeer diverse artiesten verbindt is dat het, zoals de meest radicale tracks van Kraftwerk (‘Numbers’) of Model 500 (‘No Ufo’s’), niet retro klinkt. Het is muziek die een inherente toekomstigheid bezit. Hierdoor krijgt het de vorm van een vertakking die parallel is gaan lopen aan andere trends in muziek, maar enigszins vergeten raakte nadat de schijnwerper van de media-aandacht zich op nieuwere genres is gaan richten.En inderdaad, de Soundcloud uploads zijn de "Grote Plaat", maar dan in een nieuwe, radicale vorm die probeert te breken met de conventionele manier van muziek uitbrengen.