Introduction
“In times when algorithms are used to alienate us and music is reduced and consumed as ‘content’, a group of ravers and musicians use algorithms to bring people together in dancefloors, perform music and live code experiences to make music taking place”
(Geraldine Juárez) 1
In 2014, with these introductory words, the Free Art and Technology (F.A.T.) Lab 2 awarded the ‘prestigious counterfeited prize’ F.A.T. Nika – a mockery version of the better known Golden Nica for the ‘Prix Ars Electronica’ in the field of digital culture and art – to a group of ‘ravers and musicians’ acknowledged under the name of Algorave.
At the time of this announcement, this term had already been around for a couple of years, particularly in environments related to the practice of live coding, a way of making music and visuals by writing and modifying algorithms in real time.
Over the last ten years, the term was found in the pages of famous magazines specialised in new technologies as well as in those on electronic music, from billboards of major international music festivals to flyers taped to the wall of an underground station.
But what exactly does this term refer to? What was it used to signify and, in particular, by whom?
Adopting a socio-phenomenological perspective to introduce us to the study of this particular experience, Algorave presents itself as constituted by a series of events “[focused] on humans making and dancing to music”,3 organised around the world in the last ten years.
Recalling the definition suggested by Alberto Melucci (1996), Algorave may be thus intended as a ‘collective phenomenon’, insofar it represents a “[set] of social events [comprising] a number of individuals or groups exhibiting, at the same time and in the same place, behaviours with relatively similar morphological characteristics” (Melucci, 1996: 20). In this sense, Algorave as a collective phenomenon is argued to involve a body of social actors, whose joint work has been able to sustain the organisation of particular events, reproduced over the years among a wide variety of socio-cultural contexts.
The main sociological question, guiding this research on the trail of the previous studies regarding the process commonly referred to as ‘collective action’, is how all of this comes together. Which is to say, how ‘a number’ of single individuals has made Algorave possible through their being together, uniting to form a collective, a whole, that goes beyond the sum of its individual parts. Thus, ultimately, the specific issue aimed to be probed in this dissertation regards the mechanisms upon which ‘a collective is formed’; a question inherited from Melucci (1996), here re-actualized by addressing it through the analysis of a recent collective phenomenon, which makes it possible to consider aspects – inevitably only mentioned, but at the same time foreseen as crucial by Melucci already twenty-five years ago – such as the ICTs mediation and the online dimension of social interaction.
Besides the importance of the latter in fostering collective action, as largely recognized in literature (e.g., Crossley and Diani, 2009), what I regard as the most interesting aspect on which to focus the attention in this research, is to study the interaction happening in real life (IRL) in light of these ‘new’ opportunities to connect.
Algorave is a phenomenon presenting unique features related to its pervading online, or virtual, dimension, such as the organisation of simultaneously IRL and online – often exclusively online – events via streaming, but it represents a significant case study insofar, as mentioned, it is also constituted by an array of situated IRL social events, in which the people had the chance to meet and, over time, creating more or less durable ties that are commonly argued to be needed for the pursue of collective action.
Moreover, being Algorave essentially related to ‘musicking’ (Small, 1998), this also represents an opportunity to discuss from a theoretical standpoint the relationship between music, intended as a form of social interaction, and collective action (e.g., Becker, 1982).
As a point of departure for the discussion, I here propose the two ‘sensitizing concepts’ (Blumer, 1969) from which, almost a year ago at the moment of writing the present introduction, I started the exploration of the Algorave phenomenon: the ones of (creative) feedback loops and repetitive conditionals.
Collins English dictionary defines ‘feedback loop’ as “the path by which some of the output of a circuit, system, or device is returned to the input”.4 If this expression is mainly adopted in computing and electronics, in Algorave its meaning relates, on the one hand, to the processes internal to the events, on the other, to the expansive dynamics of the “network of thriving scenes” (McLean, 2019: 175) which constitutes the phenomenon. Indeed, in the first sense, it refers to the creative co-creation of the social situation at Algorave events, thanks to the relentless interaction between performers and attending people, musicking and dancing (cf. McLean, 2019). In a second sense, it may be used to signify the Algorave network progressive expansion: as new actors participate to the events the number of these latter contextually grows, precisely because of the increasing participation to the previous events.
Furthermore, ‘repetitive conditionals’ is used by the people involved in Algorave to describe the music generated by the joint action of the ‘live coder’ and the algorithm. Algorave is indeed argued to be “made of ‘sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive conditionals’”.5 While this expression is apt to denote the algorithmic characterisation of the music at Algorave, based on the programmed repetition of conditional statements, it is interesting to notice that within the quotation reported it is juxtaposed to an explicit reference to the U.K. ‘Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994’, regarding the regulation of “powers in relation to raves”.6 In addition to a cross-temporal connection in continuity with the phenomenon of ‘Rave Culture’ (Anderson, 2009), which developed at the turn of the last two decades of the 20th century, something more might be subtended. Beneath this link, I argue, lies an insight suggesting that it would be fairly reductive to consider Algorave phenomenon as an exclusively musicking-related human activity, insofar, as we shall see, from the exploration of the process of its construction a broader interpretation will emerge as deemed needed.
The aspects emerged so far will be discussed in the first chapter of the dissertation (Ch. 1 – Algorave), devoted to a more in-depth presentation of the case study and a theoretical argumentation on how to frame theoretically this phenomenon. In particular, in the first part of the chapter I will reconstruct the prevalent meanings associated over the years to the term ‘Algorave’, in the attempt to providing an operational definition to be used during the dissertation – a process of “concept formation […] implicitly [pointing] to a proposition-forming and problem-solving activity” (Sartori, 1970: 1040).
The remaining part of the chapter will be therefore focused on confronting this definition with the existing literature on musicking and collective action.
In the second chapter, the methodology adopted to study the phenomenon, afferent to formal Social Network Analysis (SNA), will be outlined (Ch. 2 – Methodology). From this perspective the intent is to provide a modest contribution to the research programme for the study of collective action based on a network analytical approach (Diani, 2003; Diani, 2003a; Diani and McAdam, 2003; Diani and Mische, 2015; Crossley and Diani, 2019), inspecting the possibility to apply its main concepts to the study of other forms of social formations, such as ‘musicking networks’ (Crossley, 2015; 2020). The research design, including the research question, the methods and analytical approaches, as well as the data and the process for their collection, will be presented in this chapter.
Hence, the third chapter will be centred on the analysis of the networks resulting from the data collected, providing two different perspectives for the empirical investigation, focusing first on the set of the events, and then on the individuals who participated to these (Ch. 3 – Constructing Algorave: an Analysis).
The dissertation closes with a concluding chapter devoted to the discussion of the main findings of the research, finally suggesting an interpretation of these, alternative to the one presented in the previous chapters, adopting a political perspective (Ch. 4 – Conclusions: The Politics of Musicking), bearing a simple question in mind: should be Algorave intended as a phenomenon just about music?
This quotation and the information reported in the first part of this chapter are retrieved from: http://fffff.at/f-a-t-nika-2014-algorave/ and https://algorave.com/2014/09/14/f-a-t-nika-2014-goes-to-algorave/ (last accessed, 10/05/2022).↩︎
An organization “committed to supporting open values and the public domain through the use of emerging open licenses […] and the admonishment of secrecy, copyright monopolies and patents” (http://fffff.at/about/ last accessed, 10/05/2022)↩︎
https://algorave.com/about/ (last accessed 10/05/2022).↩︎
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/feedback-loop (Last accessed: 10/05/2022).↩︎
Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, c.33. Part V. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/33/part/V/crossheading/powers-in-relation-to-raves#term-music↩︎