Ambient Event Paradigm
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To live well is to melt well. To induce melting we must not freeze audience, dancer, media, and ethos into separate academic, or commercial disciplines. The dance must grow out of living traditions of potlatches, parties, polkas and underground nightclubs. One rather short and harried tradition, the technology-assisted ambient performance is beginning to mature into a paradigm, a mnemonic blur of sock hops, discotheques, slam dances, house parties, raves, and trance dances. The essential structure of an ambient event is to surround revellers with the gift of stimulation. Performers emerge from the party like bubbles from a brew, interacting with the audience ceaselessly. Chemical, biological, and electronic media engulf both audience and performers. The living are swallowed by cameras, recombined with other images, and spilled back into the room again, all in syncopation with the music.
The object is not to isolate components of the dance for worship, analysis, or sales. Needless to say, commercial values and academic categories wither the spirit. The object is to integrate the senses and the disciplines, churning everything into a frenzied ecstasy. Buttressed by the good will of a community of friends, and fueled by whispers of complete abandon, such an event, at its best, re-wilds an urban milieu.
But we must be wary. In his dystopian novel, "Brave New World," Aldous Huxley warns of an artificially created religion. Participants pop a pill called "Soma" and enter an elaborate "Solidarity Service" in which a spirit is introduced electronically from above. All belief imposed upon us by managers, priests, and commercial club producers is a dreary prospect. It is a golden calf, a Disney World spectacle. Supplication to a hierarchy of mechanisms is substituted for mutual trust and sincere mental exploration. Running out to the nearest hilltop and howling at the moon has more spiritual potential than such exercises in crowd control and pocket change extraction..
It is of paramount importance that any psychedelic or ambient event be grounded in a living community, and built by consensual labor and imagination. Tasks may be divided up, but the spirit of collaboration must be nurtured throughout the entire process of planning, building, celebrating, and even clean-up. The simple ritual of a meeting, attended by as many participants as possible, maintains the vision and genuine solidarity of any project. Meetings are significant subroutines spinning within the larger process of ritual building. They are needed frequently on a weekly, and sometimes daily, basis. They should be conducted with humor and grace.
If the universe is truly vast, amazing and beautiful, then we must arrive at this truth freely, generation after generation, ritual after ritual. May we never finish the job of tweaking our systems of belief.
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--RITES--
--1--
Secure a large room or outdoor
area.
--2--
Set up sound systems, screens,
and other media in a circle facing in towards a large dance zone.
--3--
Invite an audience into the center
of the circle. Be sure to invite enough familiar people to seed conviviality
and trust.
--4--
Performers, musicians, and media
operators rhythmically interact with the audience and each other until
everyone is as alive and inspired as possible.
A Convergence of Two Paradigms
Nerve Circle's ambient performance, "Evolution of the Grid," blocked by the peeps in blue in 1988. Ebon Fisher (left) is attempting to negotiate with the police. Fisher was evicted from his South Boston loft a week later.
©2004 Ebon Fisher