big ups Joe Sansom on making this doc:
anybody know what the trump sample one is at the start? Couldn’t find it in the tracklist
imo regardless of aesthetics this movement is very important with regards to imagining new futures and using tech to communal and convivial ends. Renick Bell at 7:30 recognising the fear of algorithms in society – a large part of this is our obsession with dystopia (Black Mirror etc.) and complete incapability to imagine different futures
also at 9:20 – Lucy Chesman’s concern about coders and developers not being able to survive as they’re making everything open source: this is 100% why we need universal basic income (or thereabouts)
these people are moving technology forward, quickly, openly, communally, and they’re being punished financially for it
ok i went and saw it and ofc this is rlly good and i fully agree with algorave’s motives and methods, but i wish it wasnt as short as this, i feel like this rlly could have benefited from stretching it out to like 30 min and showing setting up algorave events and a short history of the movement and stuff. hell i cant believe they didnt even autechre, which ra had that big interview 2 and half years ago about how they were probs the first to rlly do it:
also, yeah when i see shit like this in the film:
yeah couldnt u at least put like at least two women on here? smh
W00dy, Malitzin Cortes, and Nancy Drone are a few of the female algoravers I know of…
@criminiminal i got to see w00dy perform a couple days ago at a house show in Savannah 
they brought much needed noise and energy to the sleepy city
i stumbled across a massive 3.5 day online algorave being streamed at the following link. there’s like 150+ performers from all over the world. it’s live now.
good stuff!
heck yeah, that’s awesome, thanks for the tip! I love watching livestreams of this stuff.
home to one of the top three art schools in the country and there’s no scene? I find that hard to believe…
As a person who’s written his own algorithmic composition patches in Max/MSP and supercollider, I can see some obvious merits when it comes to using algorithms as a sole composition tool or aid for composers, and I definitely think it’s good to break down the barriers and make the path to entry a lot easier for people of all stripes, for obvious reasons. That being said, there’s a lot of fart sniffing going on in that RA doc that kind of irks me. At it’s core, the music produced is still rooted in some preexisting genre (IDM, DnB, Acid, Techno, Ambient and so on) and yet the take away seems to be that it’s a whole new genre of music or scene, when in reality, it’s just a method of composition.
Probably the first to really go HAM with it for sure, but there were a lot of guys in and around that scene that were also utilizing max and whatnot (considering Kit Clayton works for C74.) There’s a google doc spreadsheet of their AMA with reddit and there’s some nice Max/MSP stuff in there also. They use the shit out of zl objects as I recall. Also reminds me I saw Jamie Lidell and Jimmy Edgar in Vancouver in '06 and tried to pick Jamie’s brain about Max/MSP because it seemed virtually impenetrable to me back then, all he said was “it’s easier than it seems.”
I can see sort of see why people would have issues with algorithms and the role they can play in society. When it comes to certain things (YouTube and Netflix come to mind) it tends to eliminate the critical faculties that you use when choosing things, instead deferring to a machine to in essence, make your tastes for you. That’s probably just the tip of it tho 
Really enjoyed the doco, glad RA have recognised their shortcomings but also having a issue with RA and their features and often films feeling like the dont have enough budget / only can pay writers to hit a certain number count.
The Caterina Barbieri feature felt like the writer, who wrote well, hit his count he was being paid for and wrapped it up, could have gone sooo much deeper. Would love to hear more and more and more on these great insights into artists and scenes
believe it. haha.
i’ve been to some great shows here but they are independent, starved - under threat from noise complaints, code violations, shitty speculative landlords. SCAD doesn’t really channel money/creativity into the city. instead it is one of the leading proponents of the city’s gentrification and loss of identity.
you could say the city has a scene despite the fact it’s home to one of the top three art schools in the country not because of it.
“you could say the city has a scene despite the fact it’s home to one of the top three art schools in the country not because of it.”
that’s very much a pattern that i’ve come to see as a hallmark of any ‘actual’ (re: with some IRL component to it) scene in these late-web 2.0 times, @headlessghost…a few committed individuals living out of time and out of pace within increasingly stifling and ubiquitous normative structures.
enjoyed reading those tweets @weirdoslam…pretty funny and damn on-point. i do have to wonder why there doesn’t seem to be many other (non-corporate-backed or promoter-backed) dance music sites out there trying to cover just a handful of the countless things left out of the RA narrative. i do think one of the biggest issues about the contemporary dance music press landscape is that there are very few sites that don’t have a direct financial investment in local and/or international nightlife (rolling my eyes at using that word but coming up short on the synonym front). like, RA retains their out-sized influence because we all allow them to…and i’m so not making excuses for the way things are or saying to accept them, not in the least. i’ve just been thinking about how we’ve gotten to this bizarre state of shittiness in which we all exist and no one seems particularly happy about things. it is disappointing to see a deep and wide-ranging scene like algorave (which I admittedly know painfully little about) and see it so visibly reduced into something that feels designed to be shown to advertisers and investors. sorry, kinda ranting here…i just wish we could go beyond ‘let’s savage RA’ to someplace like, let’s all make music blogs* again and not give ALL the influence to one single site. i know, wishful thinking, but it’s frustrating seeing an outmoded, centralized press trying to cover such an inherently decentralized world.
*or whatever…just independent platforms that don’t live and die based on advertiser money or private interests…don’t know if that is even possible, just clear that there needs to be something else. and of course, forums like these are a solid start.
Haven’t seen the documentary but I wouldn’t blame RA too much. It’s not their fault that other people are not creating their own blogs and platforms for supporting underground music RA doesn’t cover. It’s not their fault that people are too lazy to look for other music that is not featured on their website. I would rather encourage too invest energy in creating alternatives instead of bashing RA.
yeah pal, i think them shutting down the polls was proof that they dont rlly want to be the only voice around, its just that there’s few others like them, and somehow they ended up to be the biggest.
totally agree @zurkonic it’s stifling. and it seems to be regardless of the country you live in. there have been some great conversations about scenes and cultural spaces on these forums. i was reading through an exchange written by @nickecks a month or so ago. really enjoyed that.
we are committed here though… tonight we have an irl meetup/potluck with folks in the diy Savannah scene to determine collective strategies for moving forward. (i’d personally like to see us take to the streets with noise music action/performances a la Indonesia…)
what i’m concerned about is that the repression of culture in favor of advancing neo-liberal numbness belies greater repressions of marginalized communities. PEOPLE ARE HUNGRY HERE! not just for good music but for food. and folks are too consumed with netflix to do any sharing. i volunteer with the local Food Not Bombs sharing food every week, the little we do is much appreciated by a houseless community feeling increased pressure at the hands of gentrification.
things are quite brutal and i fear it will only get worse before it will get better…
yeh def hint of truth to this. they could have made tech house with the same software haha. But then some methods of composition lend themselves to specific genres, like a 303…
Thinking this thread might be interested in this journal article by Sally Jane Norman called “Setting Live Coding Performance in Wider Historical Contexts”:
https://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/63403/3/sjn%20live%20coding%20final%20revised.pdf
