About
About. What? Why? How?
What?
fREĖQUENCY is a collection of research and art projects launched in 2019, covering areas that include a digital ethnography of Silent Disco (part of the MSc Digital Anthropology core module practical project), a collaboratively curated design of an immersive multimedia exhibition to help the hearing-impaired, and a series of improvised participatory drawing sessions where DJs, songwriters, musicians, poets, and modular geeks as a whole, metaphorically representing "frequency makers", take part in, to create images as the visualisation and storytelling of the frequencies they echo with.
The digital ethnography of Silent Disco is aimed to look at the synchronicity of group dance experiences in the digital age by researching Silent Disco events in London with complimentary comparative showcases. During the experiences, the headphones as digital materiality are that one key role which tunes in, connects, disconnects, and reconnects people - all motion in one, switching between the channels.
Drawing from the chanting rituals in different religions in the ancient time to the sense of oneness, togetherness and unitedness that party people bodily gained from Silent Disco events where digital devices become the essential wearable mediation; from the sense of lonesomeness that these parties purposefully design to dissociate the participants, disorientate their perception of time and space, to the nuances of the cueing techniques of the music, lighting and space design that ultimately bring people and weave motions together - this digital ethnography attempts to illustrate how human beings in the modern age engage with one and another on the dance floor (moreover, other social settings as well), create and respond to awkwardness amongst inter-personal interactions, and the reflection during their bodily communication.
Image: Silent Disco at the Natural History Museum, London. Three channels are shown in the picture, each colour represents a channel.
Photo credit by the author @joaweyang
Why?
A few questions will be looked at:
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What does it mean to be "on the same page" / "on the same frequency"? —— the sense of unitedness, connectedness and oneness in the mass crowd and how are they formed?
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How is empathetic resonance created in the community? Are we all in little tribes? Does each channel represent a tribe? How do participants identify their sense of community, belonging in Silent Disco?
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Awkwardness, disconnection, estranged experiences.
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Communitas and canalisation: if the channels represent different genres in music, become the canalisation of a certain level of frequency, how does the shift between channels help us to understand "perspective-shifting" and standpoint fluidity?
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What's the role and power of the DJs? Trip-designer, tracks-cuer, vibe-navigator, or energy-uplifter, even shaman? Is DJ a form of dictatorship? Why (not)?
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What's "flow state" and "in the zone"? How do digital devices (headphones, electronic music, and the built environment as a whole) transform participants' experiences and their interconnections in the mass?
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What does synchronicity mean for Silent Disco, and everyone in life in general?
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How the individual experiences have an impact on the collective, and vice versa?
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Through this process, with musical lenses, the project hopes to bring in alternative perspectives of how we, as individuals in the digital era, identify and appreciate the elements (such as social backgrounds, political views, gender and sexual orientation) in the formation of modern synchronicity.
Video: Silent Disco at the Natural History Museum, London. Participants from channel green singsing "Someone Like You" by Adele.
Video credit by the author @joaweyang
How?
This digital ethnographic project was conducted within
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Boogie Shoes Silent Disco Tour (Queen-themed events at Covent Garden)
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Silent Disco from the museum lates series at the Science Museum and Natural History Museum
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Silent Disco virtual Ecstatic Dance on ZOOM
between November 2019 and May 2020.
After obtaining the approval of the field sites stated above, participant observation and semi-informal interviews were performed at the venue and after the events through coffee chats / video chats. All participants, DJs, event organisers were given a research information sheet and asked for their explicit informed consent before contributing. People I have talked to: first-time Silent Disco goers, experienced Silent Disco goers, DJs, event organisers and filmmakers of the events.
Identifying the digital aspects of London Silent Disco events, this research was also supplemented by analysis of sound, space and atmosphere design. Methods included researching Silent Disco's origins, technical functionality, digital soundtrack design, music-cueing techniques, etc. Extensive media materials such as photos, video clips, soundtracks from the events were taken over the period.
For ethical reasons, all participants' names in this research have been anonymised and personal details removed.
Website structure
This website serves as one of the displaying platforms of project fREĖQUENCY, with an emphasis on Silent Disco experiences specifically. On the website, you will explore three case studies that showcased three categories of Silent Disco events: Boogie Shoes Silent Disco Tour, Museum Lates, and Virtual Ecstasy. Each category is archived into a "channel": channel blue, green, or red - "RGB", the three primary colours that reflect the omnipresent everything on this planet from human perceptions.
When you click ("Tune In" button) into each channel, you will see the case study with contextual narration, participant interviews, together with media materials to portray how the events were like for you to (re)live that experience; then the analysis part ("Analysis" button) where you will delve into the matrix, tap on the puzzles, to explore what's "behind" those experiences. The puzzle pieces are where more theoretical discussions relating to the ethnography underpin. Something about the design of this page: why the puzzle pieces? Inspired by the film The Matrix (1999), the book Matrix Warrior: Being The One (2003, Horsley) and the book The Art of the Start 2.0 (2015, Takeo Kawasaki), I designed the case analysis pages with matrixes in homage to these enlightening pieces.
Matrix Warrior: Being the One author Jake Horsley compared the red pill to LSD, citing a scene where Neo forms his own world outside of the Matrix. When he asks Morpheus if he could return, Morpheus responds by asking him if he would want to. Horsley also describes the blue pill as addictive, calling The Matrix series a continuous series of choices between taking the blue pill and not taking it. He adds that the habits and routines of people inside the Matrix are merely the people dosing themselves with the blue pill. While he describes the blue pill as a common thing, he states that the red pill is one of a kind, and something someone may not even find. In the book The Art of the Start, author Guy Kawasaki uses the red pill as an analogue to the situation of leaders of new organizations, in that they face the same choice to either live in reality or fantasy. He adds that if they want to be successful, they have to take the red pill and see how deep the rabbit hole goes. (Wikipedia: Red Pill and Blue Pill)
In the "Gallery" section, you will see materials including images, drawings, field notes, video clips collected along the way, to illustrate and make sense out of the experience; whereas the "fREĖQUENCY future reimagined" section displays the design of the immersive multimedia exhibition which helps the hearing-impaired. "Gallery" and "fREĖQUENCY future reimagined" sections are extended research beyond just Silent Disco, yet never escape its holistic discourse. They aspire to take the metaphorical and philosophical projections of Silent Disco and turn into long term research to seek further meanings in "frequency" in the future.
Video: Silent Disco at the Science Museum, London. Participants from channel green singsing "Bad Romance" by Lady GAGA.
Video credit by the author @joaweyang
Acknowledgement
This project cannot be done without great support from many people. I would like to thank Professor Charles Stewart by being the first person ever who encouraged me to turn this random idea into an actual project. Sometimes, a word of encouragement and the belief in somebody with the benefit of the doubt, help them take it seriously to listen to their true calling, child-like curiosity, and use that trust as an opportunity expander to make things happen.
I also would like to thank Dr Hannah Knox, who gave me great advice and have been being incredibly supportive along the way as my programme tutor during my training in the field of Digital Anthropology; Rui Luo, an amazing documentary filmmaker who followed me for half of the month, documenting some of the Silent Disco scenes and turned them into a short documentary; San Mu, an artist based in Beijing, one of my greatest friends who always inspires me to use my imagination to create art, who spares long hours to hop on calls with me despite the major time difference, helping me to see this topic via rare perspectives which I'd never thought of; Han Zhang, a dear friend for years, an architect based in LA, who contributes architectural aspects of the research which I aim to build into on a long run.
Thanks to all the DJs who created these memorable experiences, especially DJ Stack Daddy, who was one of the DJs of my first Silent Disco experience ever in Dragon Burn China, 2019, DJ Z U L U from Ecstatic Dance Beijing and DJ OSARA from Ecstatic Dance Bristol for sparing time and hopping on thought-provoking conversations with me through the virtual interview under lockdown. The list goes on... Were it not for those inspirations from the experiences, project fREĖQUENCY would not exist in the first place.
Thanks to all the people I have interviewed for taking the time to chat with me. You have no idea how powerful your narration has helped me to re-picture and re-imagine these precious moments from Silent Disco events in London, and beyond.
With the best wishes from the bottom of my heart to all of you - safe journeys in all channels and dimensions.
