picture a club, a venue, an event of contemporary dance music. you’re outside the main room, maybe in the toilet, in a corridor, upstairs, in the cellar, or maybe outside the building. sound comes through walls and round corners.
these are some of the ‘other rooms’. other beings are in these rooms, playing, maybe interacting, coexisting. some other rooms inside that outside are you inside, and rooms inside you. how a body hears through other senses than the ear. the room between how something sounds and how it first feels, and then.
the room between inner perception and outer reception.
inside you some other you’s. some rooms are derelict. some remain closed. rooms morph. a third mind or third person objective looks at yourself as an outsider, from the outside. maybe observing your species from the outside.
these are starting points. perception levels. game options.
play. loud.
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in february ’21 anton anikin invites me to contribute to SHTO, ‘rave culture’ and ‘the death of rave’ are mentioned in the invitation, also the word ‘unrave’.

“SHTO is a series of unique experimental acoustic open-air events, where the central element is the space between the sound sources and listeners, which is unusually large for musical events — over 300 metres wide and more than a kilometre long. in it, music dissolves and takes on new qualities, it differs from the original, and it becomes literally tangible. powerful sound sources which are located far away on all sides of the space create an unusual effect, individuals perceive music as a huge sound mass moving around, or as in a dream.

i invite the visitor to plunge into this ambience, and not just listen to it, but to be in this environment, to become a part of it. SHTO is a portal without a portal.”

rave music broken down to vibrating walls and distant echos. the being and beings moving through all this, in all their forms, are focal points. this game may serve other senses of ‘room’ and movements therein, relations to spaces, also inner spaces and motions, listening into one’s selves, a pulse, rhythms, heightened anticipation, emotional and physical responses. and how would a culture dying sound?
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decomposed feb ‘21 - jan ’22 in zug and brugg. mastered by riccardo mazza. front photo by andrew phillips. back photo by mikhail kuzmin.