4DSOUND: A New Technology?
on the ontology of techno in space
Research Master’s Thesis
Sydney Arvid Michel Schelvis 10537899 | rMA Art Studies
supervisor: prof. dr. J.J.E. (Julia) Kursell (University of Amsterdam) second reader: prof. dr. M. (Marc) Leman (Ghent University) 21.002 words
Synthetic electronic sounds Industrial rhythms all around Es wird immer weitergeh'n Musik als Träger von Ideen
INTRODUCTION
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1. LOGOS
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§1.1 | A History of Techno 8
§1.2 | Entering the Techno Arena 13
§1.3 | Electrifying Energies 17
2. TELOS
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§2.1 | Moving to the Beat: Correspondence and Affordance 23
§2.2 | More than a Beat: Expressive Alignment 25
§2.3 | Motivations for Embodied Engagement 30
3. TECHNO IN SPACE
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§3.1 | Spatialised Sound 34
§3.2 | 4DSOUND 38
§3.3 | Artistic Research 43
CONCLUSION
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LIST OF WORKS CITED 51
AUDIO-/VIDEOGRAPHY 56
APPENDIX 57
ABSTRACT 58
INTRODUCTION
In early 2016, London nightclub Ministry of Sound proudly announced that they had installed a Dolby Atmos sound system. An extra 22 speakers were carefully placed throughout the main hall, “The Box”, which now houses a total of 60 speakers (Francey, “Dolbey”). For a room with a capacity of 600, the ratio of one speaker per ten people is not a bad score. And although the aim had never been to provide every ten clubbers with a single sound source, it did in fact have an individualising effect; one that made each clubber’s musical experience a little more exclusive. Dolby initially designed the Atmos sound system for cinematic use. Such surround sound technology tends to intensify, in particular, action movies, wherein choppers chase cars up the stairs on the side of the cinema hall, or a lowering pitch moving frontwards indicates an incoming bomb from the back. These atrocities now even take place in the safe space of a living room with commercially available home cinema speaker sets, since Dolby commodified the Atmos system for domiciliary use too, two years before the Ministry of Sound implemented it in a club setting. Atmos provides, at least from the listener’s point of view, a different sonic experience than surround sound technology had been able to effectuate before. It allows for up to 128 individual audio tracks to be assigned with spatial cues, which results in a much more precise placing of each audio object in the (cinema) hall. This spatialisation means for an individualisation of the listening experience, one that renders the physical position of each listener unique.
While surround sound was built around the “common” 5.1 or 7.1 arrangements — whereby the 5 denotes the amount of audio channels placed centripetally circumventing the subject and the .1 stands for the single low frequency effects (LFE) channel sourced in a location-unspecific subwoofer — Dolby introduced Atmos in cinemas as a 7.1.4 arrangement, with four additional overhead speakers. This extra feature, alongside the possibility to individualise audio objects moving through the space, engenders, in the words of Dolby, a “breathtaking realism” (Dolby US). These words might just have been the exact words used for the introduction of 7.1 surround sound, 5.1 surround sound, or even stereophonic systems that developed from cinematic use too in the early to mid-twentieth century. In other words, Atmos is yet another advancement in the desire for natural-sounding spatialisation of reproduced audio; a desire, so it seems, not yet gratified.
This desire is not just cinema-bound. Taking it back to the club, Dolby Atmos not only spatialises, but supposedly intensifies the overall sonic experience too. According to the Ministry of Sound, ‘[t]his is a truly unique opportunity to immerse yourself within the biggest club records played by an enviable lineup of the world's best DJs’ (Francey, “Dolby”). However, a brief peak at their upcoming event listing informs us that no “Dolby Atmos nights” has been scheduled for the upcoming months. In fact, the latest mentioning of the system dates back to November 2018, 1
when the Ministry of Sound announced that Deadmau5 would be ‘utilizing [its] unique Dolby Atmos system to its full extent’ (Francey, “Deadmau5”).
Regardless of the current COVID-19 pandemic, which halted all nightlife worldwide, this also held true when I first
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Has the sound already fallen out of fashion three years after its installation? Was the user interface too complex to handle for the average DJ booked there? Or did the system simply fail to impress the club’s clientele? The true reason remains undisclosed. In any case, the Ministry of Sound’s programmers seem to favour established names and extravagant themes, which, presumably, draw in a more commercially profitable public. My quest for an answer to the questions posed above does not end here. I believe that in an age of incredible technological development, spatialisation of sound can offer new ways of interacting with sound objects. Therefore, in this thesis I set out the potentials for embodied interaction with spatialised sound objects in techno music.
At the base of this thesis lies my personal and academic interest in techno. As with most academic studies in this field, this research project stems from a deep fascination with the music, its surrounding culture, and its ideologies. This fascination, in turn, derived from being actively involved in nightlife as a writer, promotor, programmer, bartender, and above all an aficionado who takes pleasure in clubbing. In particular techno’s power to move people still intrigues me. This movement is not only a gestural act, as is the kind of movement in focus in this thesis. Techno has also developed into a cultural movement that, over the last four decades, made a significant impact within popular music as well as in the daily — or nightly — lives of its devotees. For it is never the music only, but the conjunction of its sounds, its technologies, its spaces and its people that make techno happen.
From gate-keeping bouncers to beer-tapping bartenders, marketeers and promoters drawing a crowd, stagehands and sound-/light-technicians making sure everything works well, programmers and bookers filling the bill with both warm-up DJs and headliners, to night mayors who lobby in favour of clubs; all play their role in the totality of the techno event. Nevertheless, it is the convergence of sounds, performers, dancers, devices, and the space in which it all takes place that stand central to the music, with each components interconnected through a synergetic pulse that lies at the heart of techno: the beat.
In my research, I seek to answer the question as to what today’s spatialising technology has to offer for an embodied engagement with techno music. It is the moving human, the physically
engaged human, more so than the listening human, that is at interest here considering the entirety
of the “techno triangle” human-machine-sound. Techno music is highly persuasive in inducing regular rhythmic movement, that, as I show in chapter 2, forms the basis of its mode of musicking. This mode of musicking — I hereby propose and henceforth use the verb technoing, as a generic specification of Christopher Small’s musicking — induces a trance-like corporeal 2
entrainment. Hence, the notion of immersion comes to the fore as being the telos of techno. In this thesis I set out how spatialising technologies can induce immersion through the technoer's alignment and entrainment to the sonic materiality of techno music.
Technoing includes any activity that involves techno; from DJing to dancing, and from leaving the event’s space to
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catch a breath to event-related substance abuse. In the context of my thesis, however, technoing primarily refers to physical interaction with the sonic object, usually in the form of dancing.
Much of the research conducted for this thesis took place at the two permanent facilities of the 4DSOUND project: The Spatial Sound Institute in Budapest, Hungary, and MONOM in Berlin, Germany. The details of the project and its institutes follow in the third chapter of this thesis. For now it is important to mention that these facilities for artistic research provided me with the opportunity to study spatialisation of techno music in theory and practice, as producer and listener, and as researcher and aficionado.
This thesis’s structure is tripartite: I first introduce techno’s logos, based in its history, ideology, and musical manifestation; then I examine techno’s telos — i.e., the purpose of engaging with it and how one does so; and lastly I discuss my artistic research that helped me evaluate the potentials of spatialising technology for techno, with regard to its logos and telos.
1. LOGOS revolves around the definition of techno — its music and culture, from Kraftwerk to now. The chapter opens with a historical account of techno music and culture in which I pay special attention to the u-/dystopian ideological origins of the music. Where relevant, I draw a comparison to parallel popular musics, most notably to disco and house. Next, I discuss how the theretofore determined definition holds in current practices of techno. In addition, I exhibit the functional components of the techno arena, complemented by a case study of Richie Hawtin’s CLOSE COMBINED. At the end of the first chapter I present an allegorisation of the techno event as an electric circuit, whereby cyborg-like dancers plug in to a web of energies. I do so alongside works by two philosophers dealing with the increasingly blurring distinction between human body and machine, namely Gilbert Simondon and Ian Hacking. This section helps me to define techno’s logos in accordance with its practices and technophilic connotations.
2. TELOS offers a first- and third-person perspective on the embodiment of techno’s sonic materiality. This perspective is rooted in embodied music cognition theory. As an emerging interdisciplinary field, embodied music cognition combines musicology and experimental psychology to study the physiological and psychological mechanisms that underly embodied engagement. In this thesis, I draw in particular on three works by the field’s pioneer, Marc Leman, namely Embodied Music Cognition and Mediation Technology (2008), Musical Gestures: Sound,
Movement, and Meaning (with Rolf I. Godøy, 2010), and The Expressive Moment: How Interaction (with Music) Shapes Human Empowerment (2016). These titles help me define techno’s telos 3
according to what dancers do when they physically engage with techno music, how they so, and
why they do so. Beyond these core works I draw on studies of embodied music cognition
involving electronic dance music, despite their tendency to refer to different variants of electronic dance music than techno. Key themes in this section include: beat-induction, (rhythmic) patterning, alignment and entrainment, agency and affect of the beat and bass, and physical metaphors in embodied engaging with electronic dance music.
Henceforth, I abbreviate these titles for in-text citations as “EMC” (for Embodied Music Cognition and Mediation
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Technology), “MG” (for Musical Gestures: Sound, Movement, and Meaning), and “TEM” for (The Expressive Moment: How How Interaction (with Music) Shapes Human Empowerment), in accordance with the MLA (Eight Edition) style I use
3. TECHNO IN SPACE, the final chapter, builds on the theretofore defined logos and telos of techno to examine their compatibility with spatialisation. After explaining the relevant principles of spatialised sound and a brief history of sound-spatialising techniques and technologies, I discuss the history of 4DSOUND and its engagement with the spatialisation of techno. Next, I move to my analysis of Richie Hawtin’s live performance at MONOM, which forms the second case study in this thesis. Taking his type of techno as representative of techno’s development over the last three centuries, this set provides me with an example of spatialised techno in a live setting by a key figure in the field. In the last section of this chapter, I discuss my own artistic research at the 4
Spatial Sound Institute. My residency there allowed me to put theory to practice in the form of four-minute spatialised techno track, which I discuss in parallel to chapter two. From this artistic process I was able to distill useful insights into physical engagement with spatialised sound. Having to face various compositional hurdles, I also gained a better understanding of what it takes to spatialise sound from an artistic point of view. Rather than deeming my compositional end product a quality techno track, I consider its components to be the auditory notes of my research.
In the conclusion I return to my research question: what are the potentials of spatialising technology for an embodied engagement with techno music?
The answer to this question adds to the ongoing research in the fields of embodied music cognition as well as electronic dance music (culture) studies. In the former, experimentation crystallises into theory, which, in turn, ‘opens up a number of new possibilities for music research, in particular with respect to the study of subjective experiences, communication, and technology’ (Leman, “EMC” 236). On the other hand, electronic dance music (culture) studies is mostly concerned with descriptive accounts, methodologically based in (auto-)ethnography, anthropology, and cultural analysis. In my approach, I attempt at bridging the two, thereby opening up yet new methodologies and hence new insights. These insights, in turn, help foster future studies and applications in a maturing musical scene. With techno’s exponential growth in the world of popular music and beyond, as well as the parallel development of technologies that directly impacts the evolution of techno, I write this thesis at a time in which both may benefit from a multidisciplinary study of their conjunction.
I am fully aware that Richie Hawtin is only one among thousands — if not more — techno DJs worldwide, and that his
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powerful position as a white male conflicts with the emancipatory currents that have my full support in this still male-dominant musical scene. However, his historical significance and actuality with regard to both his recent film-registration and its release-related performance at MONOM’s 4DSOUND studio made me select these as case studies.
1. LOGOS
Academic literature on techno is scarce. As popular as the genre is today, techno proper is often only addressed in a semi-academic, semi-journalistic style (Reynolds; Sicko), in relation to its cultural and historical position (St. John, “Technomad”; Pope), and very rarely on the basis of its sound (Butler). I therefore draw on historical reports, online interviews, and first-hand experiences in order to define the techno’s logos — i.e., the principles by which techno came to be and the way its current manifestation reflects these principles.
In doing so, I follow Graham St. John, one of the few musicological scholars seriously occupied with electronic dance music (EDM). He writes that researchers of EDM ought to ‘pursue writing as a self-reflexive discipline that is not dismissive of sensory impressions’. He adds, ‘[t]he reading and writing of that which is as scintillating and sensuous as the vibe demands appropriate research arts. An experimental artifice of scratching, remixing, repurposing draws influence from the practice of EDM itself. As DJ/producers and dancers are remixologists and bricoleurs, so are researchers of EDM cultures’ (“Writing” 1+). In my definition of techno’s logos, I adopt this 5
“remixologist” approach whereby my varying styles of research and writing resembles the original practice of techno DJs mixing and remixing tracks and samples. My reason for this descriptive turntablism is to remain close to the musical matter by integrating important voices in the scene next to my own observations.
§1.1 |
A History of Techno
Techno, much like its peer house music, is rooted in a blend of (Afro-)American disco’s danceability, Italo-disco’s instrumentation, and Euro-synthpop’s buzzing beat. This chapter provides a historical account of techno, from the fission in early ‘80s disco music that spawned Chicago house and Detroit techno to the current (commercial) manifestation of techno in popular music. Because house and techno music were initially two sides of the same coin, I address them both accordingly before shifting my focus fully to techno. However, the emphasis in this chapter lies on the ideological foundations of techno, which are grounded in a (post-)industrialist utopian futurism.
My “remixological” approach in chapter one is also the reason I dubbed the first sub-chapter “A history of techno”
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rather than “The history of techno”; techno’s history is not a fixed given, which is why I make use of a variety of source-types for an account thereof that matches the narrative and focus of this thesis.
Disco Demolition
On 12 July 1979, Detroit-based radio DJ Steve Dahl organised his infamous Disco Demolition
Derby. This halftime show to the baseball match between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit
Tigers was initially meant to boost the disappointing stadium attendance that season, but, beyond achieving this goal, it symbolised the incipience of electronic dance music in the United States. A crowd of around 50.000 had brought along their disco records, which would either be collected upon entry or be tossed onto the pitch during halftime. Dahl stacked the bulk of these records in a container and blew them up before the eyes of an ecstatic crowd. Dahl himself then roamed around cheering, hoping he had put an end to disco music for once and for all. He had fed on the anti-disco sentiment that had been around for some time, and with success. Discophobia ran deep in the late 1970s, and was based in a snobbish belief that disco music was inauthentic and soulless. (Reynolds, “Generation” 23-24). Similar claims have later been made about two direct derivatives of disco music: house and techno.
The Disco Demolition Derby’s cultural significance, considered some four decades later, is twofold. First of all, its import lies in the fact that an Afro-American music deemed soulless and physically erotic was publicly shamed and scorned. A music praised by its fans exactly because of its danceability, had become a thorn in the public eye; the white-heterosexual-male dominated, rock-‘n-roll-loving public eye, that is. Second, the cities represented by the baseball teams at play, Chicago and Detroit, are now known to us as the soil for house and techno music, respectively. Around the time of the Demolition Derby, disco dissolved and its remnants settled in post-industrial complexes on these cities’ periphery. One of these was a club in Chicago called after its setting’s former function: The Warehouse. Here, DJs started mixing disco records and boosting their bass; a method of musicking that resulted in house music (Reynolds, “Generation” 23). At first instance, this music audibly resembled Detroit’s proto-techno music. Distinct by their method of production and cultural signification, however, they went on to live separate lives. House was, and still is today, more of a musical method of remixing disco, whereas techno formed a futurist idealisation of high-tech music.
On the other side of the pond, German electronic music band Kraftwerk had, from the 1970s onward, already started to pave the way for techno music. Both their performance practices — replacing themselves by actual robots when playing The Robots live — and their musical philosophy — taking themselves to be musical labourers [Musik Arbeiter] rather than artists — had an incommensurable influence on electronic music, and its integration in popular music. Kraftwerk’s fascination with mechanisation and the potentials of technology for musicking resulted in innovative and inspirational studio albums that thematically parallel their practice and philosophy.
When American post-disco — i.e., house — and its European cousin, “Italo-disco”, collided with Kraftwerk’s synthpop, the ensuing short circuit caused an energy flash that spawned the first forms of techno. A new movement rose from the ashes of the Disco Demolition Derby. In Detroit’s dull suburbs, teens with too much time on their hands started organising underground
parties in which the remnants of disco — especially Italo-disco — did well with the dancing audience. Likewise, on the production side of techno, bored Detroit kids started experimenting with affordable Japanese synthesisers, which resulted in the kind of proto-techno wholly different from today’s techno sound.
Welcome to Techno City
In 1984, the Detroit electro-band Cybotron released Techno City. The song’s name as well as the name of their band already hint strongly at technological futurism. It is also a reference to the city of Detroit, known as Motor City; an American metropolis of which its economy, primarily reliant on the car industry, plummeted in the 1970s. Music’s disposition to resonate the sounds of its place of origin is clearly audible in the early techno works by Cybotron. There is an evident audile association with Detroit’s machine-heavy industrial sound, entwined by themes and tropes from popular science fiction. The “unofficial apartheid”, as Simon Reynolds calls it (Reynolds, “Generation” 19), in 1980s Detroit sets the stage for Techno City’s overall unease and dystopian futurist lyrics. Reminiscent of the 1984 sci-fi blockbuster Blade Runner, frontman Juan Atkins sings of working his way up in the technopolis from the underprivileged position he keeps waking up to every day. Techno City musically mirrors Detroit’s mid-‘80s worsening socio-economical inequality in an increasingly technological environment.
The new soundtrack to this capitalist technopolis was futuristic and utopian above all. Techno music, and especially the occasions on which it was performed, meant for a brief utopian escape out of an increasingly dystopian society. On the production side of techno, Alvin Toffler’s
The Third Wave — a book on the shift from the industrial to the informational age — had a
significant influence on the imagery in early techno music as well as the method of making techno music. Dan Sicko describes Toffler’s notion of Techno Rebels in his eponymous book as strikingly applicable to the first generation techno artists: ‘people who are cautious of new, powerful technologies and want to temper the breakneck pace of technological advancement’ (12). Quoting Toffler: ‘The techno-rebels contend that technology need not be big, costly, or complex in order to be “sophisticated”’ (12). By utilising affordable new technologies techno pioneers were able to generate a new world, one bound by the spatial and temporal dimensions of the techno event and defined by repetitive, science-fiction-informed sounds. And so, techno music was born out of a utopian drive to escape the clutches of everyday life in a dismal (post-)industrial civilisation.
Regarding the performance side of techno, Richard Pope discusses the juxtaposition of techno’s utopian affect amid dystopian Detroit in his 2011 article Hooked on an Affect. He writes: ‘Detroit, by its nature, is aestheticized. The city was a universally-recognized work of art when it was designed and realized as the modernist future of the Western world, and it becomes even more aestheticized as this once utopian vision/realization flips over into its opposite, a realization and a vision of dystopia. It is the ultimate retrofuturist environment’ (41). Techno emerged from
Detroit’s demise and hence lends itself well for a dystopian aesthetic with utopian affect. As Pope puts it, ’fleeting feelings of utopian ekstasis do come by those adjusted to living dystopically; they are affects of survivalism, of having survived, and of thereby being in the present moment (for there is no other)’ (29). In the case of Detroit’s aesthetic, utopia and dystopia are two sides of the same coin. ‘[T]here is no simple opposition between dystopian and utopian affects, but there is a difference in how they relate in the different eras: whereas in modernity they were, to the extent possible, split off from one another (utopia was always over the horizon, the object of desire), today utopian affect exists, to the extent that it does, in the moment, in the liberating realization that one’s dystopian ex-sistence “can’t get any worse”’ (29). This gloomy outlook thus brought about hope, as ‘[u]topian affects emerge here only upon recognition of the dystopian moment, when one is at once free and compelled to traverse the inertia of the present and the future onto which it “opens”’ (33). This utopian affect in a dystopian setting continues to play a role in techno today, of which its aesthetics are still grounded in the post-industrial decay of Detroit.
Techno Today
The genre-label techno first popped up on the cover of the 1988 compilation album Techno! The
New Dance Sound from Detroit. The record was musically curated by Detroit’s Derrick May, but
marketed by Virgin Records UK and titled by Neil Rushton and Stuart Cosgrove in England. Initially titled The House Sound of Detroit, the album was meant as a manner to prolong house music’s success in the UK. Derrick May’s late addition of the song Techno Music, with its title sung in repetition and overall highly Kraftwerkesque sound, had Rushton reconsider the title. The record’s immediate success instigated techno’s definitive branching off from house music and consequent evolution toward what techno entails today (Sicko 67-68).
Genres never subsist solely in their original form, and, as with many genre labels, techno also became subject to further commercial exploitation and the subsequent ramification into eclectic subgenres. As a consequence, little remains of techno’s initial futuristic ideology today. The label techno nonetheless still exists and finds itself applied and branded as a lifestyle label beyond the music alone. The underground techno scene in particular, somewhat reminiscent of punk culture, favours activist illegality and has its own slang, networks, jargon, drugs, sites, and dress code . Aboveground, “coolness” is key to techno culture, whereas the ways to achieve it 6
are ambivalent. For instance, extravagance is appreciated while techno still revolves around simplicity, and “inclusivity” is the vogue term for technoers and clubs with an activist mindset, whereas “exclusivity” is a marker for the coolness of clubs. This goes to show that techno became a distinct musical microcosm with its own inner conflicts, rather than a musical movement heading in a single direction in the way that it did upon its incipience.
In spite of its paradoxes, the techno club remains important to its attendees in serving as a juxtaposition to everyday life. First of all, it is depoliticised. Hakim Bey posed the term “temporary
From my observations, It seems that the black turtleneck prevails as the preferred choice of clothing.
autonomous zone” (TAZ) with regard to the event’s time-space being devoid of formal political power structures other than those used to guard off the clubbers from the outside world. Second, it is a “space of play”. ‘[I]mbued with the symbolic registers of play and ritual, the playful arena of the underground party is framed, hedged or separated from the world of the everyday in order to keep it “special”’ (O’Grady, “Spaces” 94). The club thus serves as a space for escapism that juxtaposes its specialness to mundaneness. Lastly, Simon Reynolds describes the techno rave as ‘utopia in its original etymological sense: a nowhere/nowhen wonderland, where time is abolished, where the self evanesces through merging with an anonymous multitude and drowning in a bliss-blitz of light and noise. It’s a regressive womb-space or clandestine kindergarten […]’ (“Energy” 511). More than being merely a music venue, the club is a sanctuary for those determined to escape the rut of day-to-day life by revelling in the temporary liberation that nightlife offers.
Despite changes in the name’s application and its cultural connotations, there remains, at the core of techno, a rigid electro-acoustic pulse. The many sonic mutations techno has undergone are the result of parallel developing technologies, which complies with the origins of techno as a DIY-practice of adapting the latest available and affordable technologies. Regarding production, these technological advancements include the fact that anyone owning a laptop can (legally or illegally) install a digital audio workstation (DAW) and make music. Regarding performance, people now have access to a ton of techno songs, sets, and mixes on the internet. A side-effect of this potential overexposure is the homogenisation of techno, infused by its internet tag. That is, in spite of techno’s ramification, aficionados attribute an all-encompassing essence to the label “techno” in order to access it. By now, there is an abundance of audio files accessible online under the label “techno”, the vast majority of which adheres to the common audile manifestation of techno as an electro-acoustic music with a pulsating four-to-the-floor beat and a similar rigidity in its bass line.
Another major shift that took place over the course of the last four decades, is the emphasis on danceability in techno. From the beginning, techno has been a danceable music, while the intention was not necessarily to make it as such. In fact, quoting Detroit techno-pioneer Jeff Mills: ‘it wasn’t designed to be dance music, it was designed to be a futurist statement. […] If I think about now, about why a lot of music is being made, it’s solely for the purpose of dancing, in a certain arena, a certain atmosphere. That’s it. Maybe in time we’ll realise. It took a turn maybe in the early ‘90s, and it kind of split off... and so again, same machines, same drum machines, same keyboards – it sounds the same, but the intention really divides and defines what it is’ (Gieben).
Commercial success redefined techno’s logos from being a high-tech, DIY-music born from utopian principles to a heavily branded music defined by its isochronous beat and easy danceability. Over the past third of a century, techno’s futurist drive became mere subcultural capital in the hands of commercially minded promotors and club proprietors. And with the turn to the 2020s, it seems that futurism is much less of a drive for artists producing techno music than money and status are. Even those pioneers active in the early days of techno hardly advance the genre any more, yet they dare ask exorbitant fees for an hour of their mixing skills (Sampayo).
Techno’s future as seen from its onset shone bright at a utopian horizon, but looking back it fell prey to the capitalist forces of the music industry that, like the car industry in 1970s Detroit, caused creative bankruptcy.
Especially large-scale techno events are reserved for big names in the techno scene, driven by capitalist forces similar to those in other pop musics. The need to (literally) highlight DJs derives from a demand within the techno scene, which, although generally progressive and anti white-heterosexual-male-dominance, still buys into the market forces of the culture industry. In the underground, clubbers attach more value to, on the cultural side, local up-and-coming names and, on the personal side, on introverted immersion. On the whole, however, techno became fixed on its rigid beat with minimal intention of self-reinvention.
§1.2 |
Entering the Techno Arena
After the historical and ideological outline of techno music from its pre-history in disco music to its present form, I dedicate this second section to techno music in its live manifestation. I start with a description of the techno arena’s setup, paying special attention to the techniques and technologies used for exciting a dancing audience. I first provide an account of a large-scale 7
techno event, followed by one of an underground event. For visual reference, I include a birds-8 9
eye view model of these events’ arrangements (figure 1.1). Next, I address techno’s sonic material by way of a brief musical analysis. For this I use Richie Hawtin’s CLOSE COMBINED, a triptych of techno sets mixed as if it were one, which exemplifies the sonic object central to this thesis.
The Setup
Upon entering the (large-scale) techno event, the dancer immediately encounters the gravity of the beat; a rough and pounding pulse infuses the arena with a recurrent vibration that lies at the heart of the event. Superimposed by cymbals, synthesisers, and the abundance of effects thereon, the smorgasbord of sounds fills the space with blasting pows that feel like a physical force being pressed upon the dancer. Besides the sonic component of the techno event, the
I write this description according to the three most relevant senses: touch, hearing, and sight. I deliberately leave out
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the senses of smell and taste here, because — though the smell of secretly lit cigarettes on the dance floor and the taste of beer are typical for techno — their contribution to the focus of this research is negligible.
I base this account on my observation of a number of large-scale techno events and festivals, including:
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Awakenings, MELT, Lowlands, Amsterdam Dance Event, DGTL, Wildeburg, and We Are Electric.
I base this account on my observation of a number of (part-time) underground techno arena’s, including:
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technoer witnesses a multitude of visual effects at play: the overall dimness is pierced by heavy use of stroboscopic flashes slashing through the technoer’s sight, lasers in shapes and colours that accord to the mood of the groove continually rearrange the visual perception of the arena’s spatial dimensions, and rows of spotlights flickering in succession toward a specific point in space generate an additional dynamic. Large-scale events, like Awakenings or Time Warp, also often feature video projections placed behind the DJ that display the DJ’s name, live footage of the DJ’s activity, or geometric psychedelic imagery.
Fig. 1.1: a birds-eye view model of the techno arena at a large-scale event (left) and an underground event (right)
In the setup depicted on the left in figure 1.1, the DJ takes in a central position. All of the surrounding technologies ascertain that all eyes are on the DJ. Interestingly, ocularcentrism prevails as the chief directing agent, with musical materiality taking second place in orienting the crowd. As visual perception accounts for a more conscious awareness of one’s surroundings than aural perception, visual techniques synchronised with the beat direct the moving bodies on the 10
dance floor frontward.
While this holds true for large-scale events, whereby the DJ has come to replace the rock-star as the perceivable pivotal point of artistic import, small-scale venues — colloquially addressed as “underground” — tend to make less use of luminary techniques and instead conform to a dystopian darkness that disembodies the DJ. This disembodiment derives from the DJ’s backgrounded position in the arena: often not spotlighted but tucked away in the DJ booth behind an abundance of machinery. Many underground venues make use of a non-elevated DJ booth to be circumvented by a dancing crowd, thereby placing the DJ on equal grounds with the audience. This positioning annuls the DJ’s position as forefronted and superior. The placing of the DJ and the (deliberate) lack of light techniques have a strong disorienting effect on the audience:
This is not to say hearing is less significant in the interaction with one's surroundings, yet it works on a more
sub-10
rather than being directed at the source of all visual stimuli (lasers, stroboscopes, screens), the crowd is scrambled by the agency of the bass. As Paul Jasen puts it: ‘low-frequency sound not only participates in culture, it has a material agency that can play an organizing role, putting matters of human agency and subject-object relations in question’ (25). Because of its vibrational nature, bass is not so much a directed sonic entity that can be traced back to its source, but rather a radiating pulse that can be felt throughout the arena. Bass’s agency together with invisibility as a result of the dimness causes for a disorienting effect that induces introversion in the dancer. To further illustrate the setup and techniques used in the techno arena, I present a brief case study of such below.
The CLOSE-Case Study
On 20 September 2019, British-Canadian techno artist Richard “Richie” Hawtin presented the release of CLOSE COMBINED: an artistic documentation of three of his live sets (in Glasgow, London, and Tokyo) that, akin to the DJing practice of overlapping records, coincide so as to become one set. Hawtin made a name for himself (under numerous monikers) in the second wave of Detroit techno in the early 1990s. The unified performance at hand is exemplary for techno today in that its focus lies on the continuity of the beat and hence the enhanced danceability, as opposed to the song-after-song style found in early techno sets.
Before moving to an audio analysis of the techno object, I ought to note on the sample with which Hawtin opens his performance. A distorted audio-visual recording of a younger Hawtin in the early 1990s tells of techno’s logos as a futuristic music. Most notable is the quote ‘if you perform futuristic music, you have to perform futuristically’ (2:44), whereby Hawtin frames his own practice of using synthesisers and drum machines to produce music ex nihilo — as opposed to mixing pre-made records — as matching the ideological origins of techno. Around halfway in the registration he adds to this: ‘The more potential I have to play with sound, with loops; the more deconstruction I can do, the more powerful moment I can create’ (30:50). His performance practice is in fact one commonly found among contemporary techno DJs. Some in the scene would ascribe more authenticity to such a “live” set, but its futurist undertones have by now largely dissolved as a result of this practice having become the standard. Though the documentation form of CLOSE COMBINED is inventive for its kind, the set portrayed is thus hardly progressive considering his standard synthesiser setup.
Departing the notion of futurism for now, I take a closer look at what sonic components of techno Hawtin presents in CLOSE COMBINED. Throughout, he plays a heavy kick beating 130 11
times per minute. He often superimposes this kick by various cymbals, predominantly hi-hats, which typically sound at a multiple of four measures into the drop as a reinforcer and intensifier of the beat. Hawtin uses filters such as phasers on his drum computers as the foremost effects used
Although this thesis is predominantly occupied with physical engagement with techno, rather than listening to techno,
11
the registration at hand doest not lend itself well for a “physical account” of the set. Therefore, I use this case study to describe the various sonic objects present in techno, and the DJ’s techniques for (re)producing these.
for creating anticipation in the audience. In doing so, he steers the audience’s attention from the monotony of the preceding beat toward the immanent drop. His drops are often composed of a stripped variant of the preceding groove, true to the dictum “less is more”. “Less”, in this case, refers to the removal of musical material other than the core beat, accompanying percussion shaping the rhythmic groove, and possibly a syncopating synthesiser, while “more” refers to the consequently heightened excitement on the dance floor.
The synthesisers Hawtin uses in CLOSE COMBINED are hardly melodic. On the contrary, he uses them primarily to sequence a single tone that he constantly reshapes with various filters. For the audience, the synthesiser’s tonal quality nevertheless is a welcome alternation from the beat. Contrary to the physically intense impact of the beat, tonal sequences pertain more to the domain of aural hearing. Hawtin has his rhythmic groove and synth-tones amalgamate to form patterns that fade into each other, which he uses to build towards a climax. One way in which he does so, is by at the same time looping his rhythmic groove at double speed, gradually cranking up the high-pass filter, and withdrawing the bass until its climactic reintroduction it in the drop (e.g. at 36:10).
Beyond music, Hawtin uses various visual techniques to intensify the set: an enormous screen behind him livestreams (warped) footage of his activity; stroboscopes are sometimes synchronised and at other times superimposed to his rhythms; a spotlight behind him draws out his silhouette; and in the absence of lasers proper, golden spots positioned vertically in the front shine sideward in succession, prompting a spatially dynamic effect (e.g. at 18:07). The top third of the triptych called CLOSE COMBINED features crowd-sourced footage which reveals the audience’s frontward orientation. The entire setup directs all attention to Hawtin’s artistry and positions him as the source of all energy.
In CLOSE COMBINED, Hawtin constructs a physical narrative to be embodied by the audience. This narrative musically builds on simple rhythmic grooves defined by kicks on each beat, superimposed by a syncopating cymbal pattern. By way of looping and using filters on percussion and tonal synthesiser sounds, Hawtin is able to direct this narrative in terms of intensity, and on a more abstract level in terms of proximity. That is, a drop appears to come right at the dancer at full force, whereas the break-downs (the relatively timid sections following drops and preceding build-ups) leave more room for an implicit and embodied spatiality defined by the timbral qualities of the sonic material. In chapter three I return to such spatial notions in techno music, whereby this section serves as an example of how a techno set’s musical material, without state of the art spatialising technologies, already implies embodied spatiality.
§1.3 |
Electrifying Energies
This final section of the first chapter is dedicated to a figuration of the techno event’s time-space, in which there is a continuous flow of energetic current, both sonic and gestural. I open with a section on the way in which the moving body reverberates the pulsating flux, which I conclude by framing technoing as what Nina Sun Eidsheim calls a vibrational practice: a physical mode of musicking. Next, I address the technoer as a cyborg, whereby I scrutinise the relationship between dancer and machinery, influenced by the work of Ian Hacking. At the end of the chapter, I present a more philosophical account of the techno arena, in which I allegorise it as a closed electric circuit, drawing on Gilbert Simondon’s notion of the closed system in order to connect the event’s components in their synergetic interaction.
From Techno-Body to Tech-Nobody
Key to technoing is a trance-like, introverted immersion; the sense of “losing oneself” in the music through repetitive movement. In immersing, a number of exciting energies come into play that invigorate the dancers. In this subsection I discuss two of these, efferent and afferent energy, which collide in the second to last paragraph in the form of a vibrational practice.
Efferent energy — i.e., the energy dancers generate and emit (Leman, “EMC” 86) — is in
part engendered by the dancers’ desire to engage with the music. Mindset is a key contributor to a techno event’s energy, as dancers tend to enter the techno arena with a willingness to dance. They dedicate a “specialness” to the dance floor, which, in turn, grants them with space to play and to break with their everyday lives (O’Grady, “Spaces”). Additionally, dancers may be fuelled by substance abuse. The use of drugs has come to be intrinsic for the techno scene, despite its 12
extant illegality. Most drugs increase energy levels while they decrease conscious awareness of time and space. Hence, they affect dancers according to their own selection of substances used, while overall generating a sense of harmony throughout the audience.
Afferent energy is the external energy incorporated by dancers (Leman, “EMC” 85).
According to law of the conservation of energy, energy is never lost but can be transferred or transformed into other energised bodies. This metaphorically holds true for the techno event as well, whereby the energy of sonic pulses and luminary techniques impacts the dancers’ bodies, which, as a consequence, redirect this energy through physical gestures. The exact mechanisms through which this procedure takes place are the subject matter of chapter two, for now it is important to differentiate between efferent and afferent energies present in the technoers. However, the two also amalgamate. Afferent energy pertains to the constancy of stimuli external
Although the use of recreational drugs remains somewhat of a taboo in academia, it deserves due attention in this
12
section since it is part and parcel of the techno scene. Beyond alcohol, uplifting recreational drugs like cocaine and “speed” (amphetamine), and psychoactive substances such as ketamine and MDMA (3,4-Methylenedioxy methamphetamine, the working substance in ecstasy/XTC), are common.
to the dancers’ bodies, yet fuses with their efferent energy in the resulting redirecting of energy. In this sense the dancers channel the various energies present in the event’s continuous current. Imagining technoing bodies as mediators in the transmission of energy ties in with Nina Sun Eidheim’s notion of listening as a vibrational practice. In her book Sensing Sound (2015), she combats auralcentrism — i.e., the dominance of aural hearing in music — by claiming that ‘also tactile, spatial, physical, material, and vibrational sensations are at the core of all music’ (8). Tactility is definitely a core component of techno, as sonic vibrations are not only processed in the cochlea and converted into aurally perceived sound, but they are also felt as a physical force. In this vibrational practice of perceiving music multi-sensorily, dancing bodies reverberate the energy imposed on them and thereby become vibratory agents itself.
In synthesising efferent and afferent energies, technoing bodies serve as transistor in the event’s energetic current. The deindividualise as they plugs in, as they synchronise with the encircling energies. From this, a sense of harmony emerges among those plugged-in, in turn aggregating the energy emitted by the totality of the crowd. This way, the techno(ing)-body becomes a tech-nobody as it merges with the overall flow of energy present at the techno event.
Dancing Cyborgs
What are some of the devices necessary for creating self-regulating man-machine systems? This self-regulation must function without the benefit of consciousness in order to cooperate with the body’s own autonomous homeostatic controls. For the exogenously extended organizational complex functioning as an integrated homeostatic system unconsciously, we propose the term “Cyborg.” The Cyborg deliberately incorporates exogenous components extending the self-regulatory control function of the organism in order to adapt it to new environments. If man in space, in addition to flying his vehicle, must continuously be checking on things and making adjustments merely in order to keep himself alive, he becomes a slave to the machine. The purpose of the Cyborg, as well as his own homeostatic systems, is to provide an organizational system in which such robot-like problems are taken care of automatically and unconsciously, leaving man free to explore, to create, to think, and to feel. (Clynes and Kline 27)
This first mentioning of the term cyborg — short for cybernetic organism — dates back to 1960, and already has a similar science-fictional feel to it as what the word has come to represent over the last half-century. Today, its use is widespread and links in well with the above disquisition on the dancer as embedded in techno’s energetic current, in particular with regard to introverted immersion. For immersion to occur, the dancer’s body moves in an automated motion, allowing for the mind to lose awareness over the body’s actions and instead wander off. In spite of the Cartesian-dualist undertones, this does not imply a sharp separation of body and mind. On the
contrary, this thesis draws on embodied (music) cognition which holds that the mind is always situated in the body, that is, ‘[t]he embodied music cognition approach assumes that the (musical) mind results from [an] embodied interaction with music’ (Leman, “EMC” XIII).
However, hints of dualism prevail in this discourse, since body and mind are still attributed individual qualities that nevertheless overlap and interlink. Canadian philosopher Ian Hacking addresses the cyborg’s dualist nature when he states that in the astronautical application of the cyborg ‘[t]he body was modified so it could live in alien environments, while the human mind went on creating, exploring, thinking’ (“Canguilhem” 210). Automation of the technoing body brings about a similar effect: when the physique aligns and adapts to its (energetic) environment — that of the techno arena — the mind is free to wander. In this way, the technoer is able to achieve the desired state of mindlessness leading up to immersion.
In Hacking’s account of what makes a machine (in relation to a human being utilising it), he writes that ‘[l]ate twentieth-century machines have made thoroughly ambiguous the difference between natural and artificial, mind and body, self-developing and externally designed, and many other distinctions that used to apply to organisms and machines’ (“Canguilhem” 205). While musical instruments are already appreciated as sound-producing extensions of the artist, rather than mere tools, the technoer, too, interacts synergistically with machines. The above figuration of the technoer as transistor serves to illustrate that the technoer is actively involved in the totality of the event by transmitting and redirecting its energetic flow. The technoer, physically linked-up to the system and largely devoid of conscious thought, is like a cyborg adapted to an alien atmosphere. The dancing cyborgs are partially battery charged (efferent energy) and at the same time fuelled by the event’s current (afferent energy). This allows the technoer to immerse in the totality of the event: with the body entrusted to align to the beat it leaves the mind able to diverge into a desired state of thoughtlessness.
The Electric Circuit
Fig. 1.2: the techno event schematised as a closed electric circuit, featuring:
In this last subsection of chapter one, I elaborate on the metaphor of the techno event as an electric circuit with special attention to its web of energies. In my schematisation of the closed electric circuit above, the techno event is powered by the beat as an alternating current (AC). Ergo, the DJ plays the part of transformer, light techniques function as inductors, and the 13
dancers are transistors redirecting the current. Key to this schematisation is the line connecting the crowd and the DJ. Although their connection is reciprocal, the energy flow from DJ to dancing audience is mediated by a variety of supplementary effects and the architectural acoustic properties of the arena. In turn, the energy emitted by the dancing audience impacts the DJ, who subsequently adjusts the music accordingly. In other words, the electric circuit is a system composed of various interconnecting components.
The notion of system here refers to its use in Gilbert Simondon’s On the Mode of Existence
of Technical Objects. In this book, originally published in 1958, the French philosopher sets out a
contemplative reflection on the integration of technical objects into human life. Some four decades before Ian Hacking, he notes on the blurring boundaries between machines and humans, conceiving of machines as autonomous entities rather than mere tools. In advancing my notion of the techno event as a system, it is important to note on the two distinct types of systems that Simondon’s describes, namely the abstract and the concrete. The former, the abstract system, is one that is made-to-measure so that every individual component is interdependent on others components for the system to function; the latter, the concrete system, is a synergetic whole that is ‘no longer in conflict with itself, [it is] one in which no side-effect is detrimental to the functioning of the ensemble or left out of this functioning’ (Simondon 38). In perceiving of the techno event as a system, I classify it as the latter, the concrete system, because each component serves a function in the synergetic totality of the system. Every component stands in constant reciprocal relation to one another, whereby the high level of energetic current is effectively maintained.
Simondon notes that automatism is not the value of perfection for machines. Automatism only serves an economic goal as it fixes the utilisation of the machine and disables any flexibility. Instead, indeterminacy is what defines the progressive perfection of the machine, for ‘it is this margin that allows the machine to be sensitive to outside information’ (17). In a techno context this means that the soft- and hardware present are fundamental to the system, and that the DJ, as a mediating artistic agent and electric transformer, is able to adjust the system’s current according to the energy levels retrieved from the audience. The act of DJing, due to its acousmatic nature, is already so scarce in evidence of a DJ actually mixing records or making music in the moment, playing a pre-arranged or automated set is one of the biggest sins in techno performance. Therefore, the technological flexibility to control the current is a prerequisite for any DJ’s on-stage credibility.
By inlaying the notions cyborg and electric circuit in this introductory chapter on the ontology of techno, I strove to stay close to its initial futurist ideology. Techno, as grounded in science-fiction fantasy and electric energy, is much more than what Eidsheim calls a “figure of
This mostly holds true for large-scale techno events as underground events make less use of luminary techniques.
sound”, in which ‘the dynamic, multifaceted, and multisensorial phenomenon of sound is often reduced to something static, inflexible, limited, and monodimensional’ (2). Techno, sonically signified as a predominantly non-melodic music, does not lend itself well for score analysis either. Techno, as a music more than sound, is a movement, or rather: is movement. Techno is a 14
constant current running through a closed electric circuit, a concrete system of which each component plays its part in the synergetic totality of the event.
Taking its evolution over the past four decades into consideration, the overall focus-shift that took place within techno — i.e., from being a sci-fi inspired music to its insistence on danceability — accounts for its logos today. Residue of u-/dystopian themes and tropes found on event posters and venue ornamentation still remind the dancer of techno’s genesis, much like the way in which authenticity attributed to the performer’s live use of electro-acoustic instruments connects techno to its heydays in the 1990s. An intrinsic paradox thereby arises, since techno, on the one hand, is a music once prosperous due to its utopian affect amid a dystopian (societal) setting. Its scene encouraged a technophilic DIY-exploration of sounds, with danceability as a delightful side-effect. Techno today, on the other hand, is governed by market-forces and idolises past innovators, with their stylistic progression stagnating under the increasingly fixedness of techno’s sonic signature — i.e., its constant, rigid, four-to-the-floor beat. Techno’s futurism, in retrospect, is a 1980s sci-fi futurism unanswered by its actual 2000s future.
All things considered, the stylistic paradox in techno is what accounts for techno’s logos: most technoers want techno to be futuristic and revive utopian affect amid (a simulated) dystopian setting, but at the same time they favour market-driven superstars who curb techno’s initial drive for sonic exploration. Fact of the matter remains that techno today is sonically characterised by its continuous beat. In my assessment of technological potentials for the dancer’s interaction with the music, my focus shifts, in line with techno’s evolution, toward its danceability.
A descriptive staff notation of Richie Hawtin’s CLOSE COMBINED could, however, be a satisfactory visual equivalent
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2. TELOS
Within music studies, the increasingly interdisciplinary successor of musicology, embodied music cognition has gained substantial ground over the past decade. In a field that ought to keep up with musics to which old approaches and means of analysis tend to become outdated, theories and methods from surrounding disciplines take their place. Those forming the inspiration for this chapter originally stem from psychology’s (“regular”) embodied cognition, adapted to fit issues in music studies. Quoting the field’s pioneer Marc Leman, ‘[e]mbodied music cognition entails a view on mind, matter, and the human body. It conceives the musical mind as embodied, that is, as mediated by the human body’ (“EMC” 235). In dealing with a music that is, at least in its current manifestation, concerned with physical activity above all, this field comes to the fore as the most appropriate toolkit for studying the flux between the moving body and techno music. Rather than delving into the physiology of the ear, I thus choose to focus on gestural listening and interaction. I do so because, quoting Marc Leman and Rolf Inge Godøy, ‘gesture can be defined as a pattern through which we structure our environment from the viewpoint of actions’ (“MG” 8). Precisely these actions interest me in studying the synergetic interaction between technoer and the techno object in space.
My conception of the physical interaction between technoer and techno’s sonic material draws on Marc Leman’s systematic approach to what happens in an embodied engagement with music. Considering the ways in which action and perception are coupled, he distinguishes three levels of such engagement: synchronisation, embodied attuning, and empathy (“EMC”). The first,
synchronisation, involves low-level sensorimotor schemes and demands relatively little effort. In
other words, most dancers experience no difficulty with beat-prediction in reaction to regular pulses. Synchronisation and the ensuing entrainment form the central matter of §2.1, which is concerned with what embodied technoing entails. The second form of engagement, embodied
attuning, requires slightly higher-level sensorimotor schemes, as it intuitively links specific musical
features more complex than the isochronous beat to physical gestures. Leman adds: ‘It can be seen as navigation with or inside music’ (“EMC” 115). In §2.2 I discuss this level of engagement, in relation to the additional rhythmic patterns and syncopating synthesisers found in today’s techno music. This sub-chapter is occupied with the question as to how the technoer embodies techno’s sonic material. Lastly, Leman proposes empathy as a stage in which the embodiment is consciously reflected upon, allowing the subject to identify emotional expressivity in the music (“EMC” 122). This notion returns briefly in §2.3, in which I discuss motivations for embodied technoing — i.e., why doest the technoer physically engage with techno’s sonic material? At the end of this chapter, I define techno’s telos according to its affordances for embodied engagement with its sonic material, and the motivations for this form of engagement
§2.1 |
Moving to the Beat: Correspondence and Affordance
In 1665, Dutch mathematician Christiaan Huygens devised an experiment that involves two clocks hanging from a common board of which its ends rest on two chairs. Because of the common board by which the two clocks are connected, both pendulums in swing are able to exert a physical force upon each other that, due to a mutual attraction, has a synchronising effect: after a while, the two pendulums swing completely in synchrony. The process by which this synchronisation took place is called entrainment, and is present, though mostly uni-directionally, in techno as well. The beat forms a constant and dominant pulse to which the subject aligns bodily movements. Because of techno’s electro-acoustic nature, this beat is presented at a high volume. This then means that not only the air as a mediator for sound waves forms the common board between the two pendulums (the beat and the dancer, respectively), but that the reverberating floor also exerts a physical force from below.
Entrainment occurs when two oscillating agents share a “common board”, and ‘[d]ancing to the beat of the music is an example of [such] a coupled oscillation system’ (Leman, “TEM” 102). Indeed, dancers lock themselves to the groove by retracting and extending the physique at (or around) salient points in the music. Such salient points are, in order of prominence, the first and third beat of each measure, followed by the second and fourth beat. Each beat forms an “affordance”, with the last half of the word italicised here as a textual pun that nevertheless captures exactly what is at stake, namely: a salient rhythmic moment to which the dancer aligns. Doing so in succession generates synchrony, or correspondence, which endows the beat with a regulating effect. Correspondence, in a techno context, implies that the technoer perceives, anticipates, and moves to the beat. And it is only through the beat’s constancy that the technoer is able to generate a predictive model and act upon it. In this line of thought, Leman writes that ‘expressive alignment with music implies that actions are carried out in correspondence with music. This correspondence draws upon the ability to predict timing and energetic flow and to adjust the movements in agreement with the flow’ (Leman, “TEM” 160). The flow of which Leman speaks here, is key to techno music today. With techno’s current focus on danceability, the beat’s energetic flow as engendered by the DJ forms the main affordance: “that which affords to dance”. Entrainment involves the technoer aligning to the energetic flow of the music, which, in turn, is governed by its continuous beat with clear salient points. That is to say, there is a mirroring process at play in which the subject embodies the beat through movement. Leman calls this form of interaction pattern alignment, whereby the subject imitates the musical pattern as it presents itself sonically in time. This form of alignment implies an instinctual physical representation of the sonic material at hand, whereby, Leman notes, ‘the quality of the alignment will typically depend on their familiarity with the music […] and on the degree to which the perceived music can be predicted’ (“TEM” 159). Techno’s high predicability promotes embodied alignment as it allows dancers to put the music ‘under the control of internal predictive models, and thus automate[s] motor activity’ (“TEM” 160).
Fig. 2.1: a common embodiment of techno music portrayed per beat (over one measure)
The sequence of images above shows a possible embodiment of techno music in the subject, illustrated per beat. Leman points out that each beat — and in particular beat one and three — forms a salient rhythmic point that guides the dancer’s gestures. He calls an embodied salient point a landmark, which ‘[i]n the case of a sensorimotor scheme’, he writes, ‘could be conceived as an expected sensory output, such as the position of the hand at a particular time’ (“TEM” 165). The dancer in figure 2.1 is in full extension — or at least as far as limbs extend in a techno dance — at these salient rhythmic moments, which, through their embodiment, become landmarks. Earlier Leman wrote that ‘[t]he idea with points [later: landmarks] is that they are goal-postures in the form of the position and shape of the effectors […] at certain important moments in the flow of musical sound’ (“MG” 121). The figure also goes to show the sheer simplicity of the technoer’s cyclic movements, akin to that of the beat. Though it illustrates only one of many imaginable, this two-step dance represents techno’s embodiment as a mimicking of musical figure rather than musical topics or themes (“MG” 108).
Rhythmic entrainment is a central issue in the field of embodied music cognition. Numerous experiments have been conducted in order to deepen our understanding of this human ability, many of which involved the subject tapping along to a beat. Burger and Toiviainen build 15 16
on this existing methodology to study embodied movement to electronic dance music in comparison to latin, funk, and jazz music (4). Participants in their experiment were asked to intuitively move to the respective musics. When dancing to electronic dance music, most participants had a high overall acceleration rate, indicating that the dancers closely followed the music’s affordances (14). Their findings suggest that the metric musical structure of this music 17
facilitates rhythmic entrainment by dancing subjects.
For an overview see Repp.
15
For an overview see Burger et al.
16
The musical samples used by Burger & Toivainen diverge from techno proper, but nevertheless succeed in grasping
17
Locking to the groove proves to be relatively easy as long as the subject is able to generate a predictive model of salient rhythmic points. Staying locked is even easier as the prediction model only needs to be adjusted minimally to potential alterations in the beat (Leman, “TEM” 114). Techno’s continuity provides its dancers with rhythmic stability and therefore with easy predictability. This way, technoers can go on for hours without missing a beat, embodying the music’s structure, and dancing themselves into immersion.
§2.2 |
More than a Beat: Expressive Alignment
Taking the beat’s repetition as a trigger for movement as my starting point, I here discuss how a subject might move to techno, analogous to Leman’s above-mentioned notion of embodied
attuning. That is, what agency does specific musical material have over the dancer’s bodily
movements, and how can they be spatially expressed? To answer these questions, I first focus on how the rhythm section in techno is gesturally expressed, before moving toward subordinate musical structures. In the end I also briefly touch upon intersubjective motivations for movement, and how they shape the embodiment of techno.
Norwegian scholar Hans Zeiner-Henriksen observes a strong vertical bias regarding rhythmic embodiment. In his doctoral thesis, he onomatopoeically verbalises the basic rhythmic figure in electronic dance music as the “poumtchak pattern”, with ‘“poum” referring to a bass drum sound and “tchak” to a hi-hat sound (or a similar high-frequency sound)’ (3). He adds that ‘[a] complete poumtchak pattern has bass drum sounds on all of the downbeats and hi-hat sounds on the upbeats (off-beats) between them, and it may comprise the “basic beat” of the track’ (3). Regarding this poumtchak pattern in relation to embodiment of sonic objects on the dance floor, he witnesses a ‘correspondence between the bass drum sound [“poum”] and a body movement downward (on the downbeats), and the hi-hat sound [“tchak”] and a movement upward (on the upbeats), together comprising a continuous and undulating vertical movement pattern performed with different parts of the body’ (4). These movements also show from figure 2.1, in which each downbeat accounts for a salient point in the music at which the extension of a body part ends and subsequently retracts.
Zeiner-Henriksen’s account of the technoer’s predominantly vertical incorporation of the beat forms my starting point in outlining the overall embodied engagement with the techno object. Beyond the centrality of the beat — and its affordance for up-and-downward motion — techno music today largely revolves around a perpetual beat that is constantly superimposed by
