Future Music
03 February 2013 | CTM Festival, Berlin, Germany
Virtual Futures presents Christoph Fringeli (Praxis Records, Datacide), Tony Marcus (i-D.) and Dan O’Hara (Philosopher of Technology) who reunite for the first time in over 18 years to contextualise their VF 1995 panel which made the claim that,
“The machinic phylum has been re-coding our minds & bodies through the most violent contortions since analogue synthesizers first colonized the imaginal soundscape. Electronic music is the teacher, to warp Juan Atkins’ phrase; techno in its many hybrid forms is training humans to navigate the machinic future. Nevertheless, those who are the ostensible ‘producers’ of these post-human soundtracks are no longer the progeny of major record labels bent on global domination, but instead are truly integrated into the anonymity of white label culture. These young autonomous individuals are at the forefront of technological phase-change: here we present an opportunity for the uninitiated to witness the interaction between the human & the machine that supports & creates these virtual soundscapes.”
The 2013 panel will analyse how human agency has been subsumed by an increasing automation by non-human agents, as control over identity, society, and economics is relinquished to biases of robotic processes. Techno-evangelism attempts to brand, market, and, most importantly, sell the wonderment afforded by a wilful obedience to the future. They resound with the same transcendentalist fantasies of cyberpunk fiction – indeed speculation and futuristic thinking has become an art, and like any popularist art form, it has become an industry.
By revisiting 1995’s Future Music panel, Virtual Futures will explore the implications of a new ecology – where music is no longer made but grown, thus demonstrating a quality of artificial life. In 2013 music doesn’t go viral, it is viral. And all the while we are left to question who, or what, is listening?”
The CTM Festival for Adventurous Music and Art have invited Virtual Futures to revive their 1995 panel ‘Future Music’ as part of their ‘Death of Rave’ Discourse Track on Friday 1st February at KUNSTQUARTIER STUDIO 1 Mariannenplatz 2 10997 Berlin.
Panelists
Tony Marcus, London-based Tony Marcus is a writer, who was a regular contributor to i-D and Mixmag magazines, covering the dance music and rave scene for a period of 10 years (1991 – 2001).
Dr. Dan O’Hara, Philosopher of technology and co-founder of Virtual Futures.
Christoph Fringeli, Editor of datacide magazine, runs Praxis records and co-runs Sub/version records.
Moderated by:
Luke Robert Mason, Director of Virtual Futures.