I’m trying to find contemporary events which have some of the revolutionary potential suggested by audiovisual performances in the 1960s. For me that potential was never realised, and I’m keen to explore why, and if it could be in future.

I’m referencing psychedelic concerts and Happenings such as Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable events in 1966-67 or Pink Floyd’s Games for May in 1967, while also drawing on COUM Transmissions/Throbbing Gristle events.

I’m really struggling to find anything that isn’t just a restaging of those kind of events – internet savvy festivals such as Burning Man aren’t quite what I’m after either.

After searching fruitlessly for a while I tried asking on twitter and went through various stages of trying to explain what I’m looking for:

Does anyone know of any contemporary examples of something interesting developed from 60s arty sound & trippy visuals events?

Has anyone done anything more with it, not just contemporary imagery, audio and tech, but extra levels of engagement

Is there anything more general? a festival perhaps rather than one band?

I’m just after contemporary audiovisual events with a sense of communal experience, change, purpose, actual revolution.

that’s such a problematic phrase anyway, I’m just trying to work out how we can make something big happen

it can be different stuff really, just audiovisual events that are a bit more challenging to today’s jaded audiences

I’m aware these terms are difficult to prove, at this stage I’m just trying to find something that feels like those things are going on, or that has those intentions.

These Phyllis Galembo photographs show some interesting costumes, I’m particularly interested in the knitted ones.

“Large-scale color photographs from 2005 to 2006 reflect the ritual adornment and spirituality of masquerade in Nigeria, Benin and Burkina Faso in West Africa.” – Tang Museum

They remind me a bit of Mark Newport’s knitted costumes, which are an abject mixture of something heroic and pathetic, perhaps making a link between the repetition-pleasure of stereotypically male geeky pursuits and female craft activities.

There’s also various other knitted masks I’ve seen passed around online in a viral meme way, like Snow Fooling by Meg Swanson in Threads magazine, issue #39, ski masks in McCall’s from 1965, or things like Yarnbombing.

Some more unusual ski masks here.

“Mardi Gras Indians are African-American Carnival revelers in New Orleans, Louisiana, who dress up for Mardi Gras in suits influenced by Native American ceremonial apparel.” from Treme Indians

This article also uses the phrase “masking as Indians” which sounds very similar to some avatar performances. I’ll look into Carnival a bit more in future, it was something I explored a while ago, but these things do have a habit of coming round again in cycles.

I’ve been looking into WITCHH▲US, partly because the sound and visual aesthetic is related to what we’re doing with Samekhmem, partly because I find the use of coded language interesting:

There’s a good overview in the Pitchfork article: Ghosts in the machine

I’m interested in the way there’s a glitching and stuttering of language in the names

“the deliberately under-the-radar approach of its leading lights (oOoOO, †‡†, Gr†ll Gr†ll, ℑ⊇◊⊆ℜ, GL▲SS †33†H, ‘†∆†, etc) who have opted to make their names either unGoogleable or unpronounceable.”

“the bands whose /\/ /\ /\/\ € $ are made out of $¥ /\/\ ß 0 \ $”

/// ▲▲▲ \\\
//TENSE//
▲
†‡†
oOoOO
Gr†ll Gr†ll
Mater Suspiria Vision
Modern Witch
PWIN ▲▲ TEAKS
tearist
twYIYZoNe
WHITE RING

This also relates to my interest in l337

I’ve always been fascinated by the posts on Dennis Cooper’s blog that collect together escorts adverts where they promise extreme things (examples here, here, and here, or search here). When I was discussing it with Thomas Moronic he said that he’s really interested in the distance between what they promise and what they would actually do, but I think I’m more interested in the primacy of that fantasy world over the reality, and how it relates to the Post-Real that I’ve been working with in a.a.s

The story is all told in forms of digital communication, mostly postings on an escort review site, but also some IMs and emails, and this creates a distanced, sparse style, where you can read into the gaps left.  Throughout the novel, there is a confusion over whether the posts are ‘true’ or not, and if the people are the ‘real’ Brad and Brian, something that is exploited by multiple characters.  There is a growing sense that the fantasy is more important, more real, than the truth.  However, the character who tries to harness this seems to ultimately fail, perhaps it needs to have a life of it’s own to be so powerful.

Went to presentation by Michael Takeo Magruder about his project:
“The Virtualised and Visualised Gallery – Eastside Projects: KVL in collaboration with the Visualisation Research Unit, Birmingham City University will create a comparative exploration of the creative and curatorial potential of four different virtual environments, including activities in OpenSim and X3D. Creating pilot 3D online, user-customisable version of the Eastside Projects Gallery, Birmingham and its collection, and providing a platform for the creation of natively virtual and mixed reality contemporary artworks. Funded by Arts Council England 2009-10.”
http://www.kvl.cch.kcl.ac.uk/funding.html

“Michael Takeo Magruder is an artist and researcher in King’s Visualisation Lab, King’s College London. His work uses emerging technologies, including high-performance computing, mobile devices and virtual environments, blending Information Age technologies with modernist aesthetics to explore the networked, digital world.”
http://www.takeo.org/

He talked a little about the problems of working in Second Life and other places that are user content driven – that in signing up to them you are allowing the company to joint own your content. He referred to the problem of not being able to “die” in virtual worlds, where even if you delete the avatar and the content you created, there is still a backup that the company could revive if they wanted to.

The project seems interesting, but very focused around a physical space. As there is already an Eastside Projects in Second Life, it’d be great to find it and do some guerrilla performances there, perhaps get other people to do it as well.

Buck Eliphas from Geodecity asked me if I knew of any better systems for forums so we could have more of a social space to chat, I didn’t offhand, so looked into it a bit.

Matt L suggested FriendFeed rooms, which do refresh when there’s something new, but the sign up might be a bit offputting, and it is linked to lots of other things which might be distracting.

Charlie P also suggested I should look at the various options here, but at first glance none of them seem to do it, I can forward that link to Reactor I suppose.

I did find Blursoft and set up ShiftingSands – it does show posts immediately when someone does them but very limited otherwise, and loads of extra features that aren’t necessary.

This seems promising, but not sure how to do it, and then there’s myBB but that doesn’t seem to have this feature yet.