In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats at the Barbican
In 1989, a well-produced VR experience based on the current UK rave scene would have been unimaginable, and not only as a result of the technical limitations of the era. Acid house was an underground movement, with no clear potential for curatorial mainstreaming; warehouse parties were characterised by sweat and basslines, two earthy qualities which should not translate to what you might expect to be hands-off disembodiment and isolating virtuality.
However, ‘In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats’ by artist Darren Emerson is enjoying an expanded world premier at the Barbican. Between now and August 3rd, you can, by booking in and checking in, see and feel how surprisingly well this piece evokes the excitement, danger, subversion, highs and MDMA-inspired camaraderie which led 1989 (or, some will tell you, 1988) to get labelled by the music press as the Second Summer of Love.
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The technology is stunning. Along with a lightweight headset that fit easily over my glasses, the staff at Barbican were to kit me out (along with five other visitors) with handheld controllers and haptic vests. Suiting up was a little like dropping a pill: something was clearly going to take effect, but given all this unfamiliar, disorienting paraphernalia a possibility for things to go awry also concerned this reviewer.
Perhaps I should foreground my own expectations for a moment. I was 16 in 1989, too young to join rave convoys, intrigued but ultimately wary of psychedelics. I stretched my curfew to attend two pop-up raves at repurposed venues within the city centre of Cambridge. And on Mill Road, I once witnessed a car passenger yell “Aci-eeeeeed!” at me as he sped by. It was mid afternoon.
So my 60-minute experience at the Barbican, despite the distancing special effects of prosthetic tech and artificial vision, was to provide me with what are now my clearest memories of that culture, time, place and lifestyle. It was a journey and an education, but also a playful event, during which one felt only slightly stupid to be moving to the beat in a sensory black hole. Staff will be used to the spectacle of half a dozen silent disconauts vibing to an unheard tune.
The experience was broken into chapters, and there is a real feeling of ‘coming up’ to the first of these. Using my handsets, I put a black 12” single onto a waiting Technics deck and, as the music took off, I was able to fly above the groove and then descend into the vinyl canyon and follow the stylus towards whatever might be in-store ahead. In another head-rushing sequence I was to find myself floating at high speed down a motorway at night. Then upon arrival at the rave there came an electrifying game in which, in co-operation with other visitors, we were able to capture a giant all-seeing eye with fizzing blue energy beams – Ghostbusters-style.
Interspersed with these sensational moments are info-taining scenarios where, for example, one can join a trio of CGI mates, first at home in the early stages of a Friday night. As you explore the flat, rave fliers speak to you, spliffs are passed around, and EQ levels dance on the stereo. Or you can hang out by the red Golf, by a payphone at a service station: when it rings, you had better be ready to go. Or… in a moment which is quite a bad trip… you can find yourself helping West Midlands Police build up an incident map. But reflecting about my ten minutes spent in a drab police station office, I have to say that, as I was to pin photos and fliers to the map, it conferred glamour and notoriety rather than guilt and criminality on the party organisers.
All of this scene-setting culminated with a party sequence. My handheld controllers became glow sticks and I began a mid-life shuffle. Thanks to the body suit, I was able to feel this party in the chest. Several nights like this during the late 80s could have transformed me, as they did so many people andI was within touching distance of a euphoria that might yet have changed my life. But in this case I could not forget my plastic ski grips, my fully-wired vest and my comfy but bewildering goggle set.
Cue an elegiac epilogue in which one must gaze down on the aftermath as dawn breaks over the party-haunted fields of the rural midlands. This artwork offers a quasi-religious experience for those who were there at the time, an amazing opportunity to relive and reflect on the all too brief nights of youth. I would have liked, of course, to feel the same way. But protected from my fellow Tuesday morning ravers by a visual bubble, my hour-long re-introduction to a landmark moment in dance music culture was something of a voyeuristic one.
The music was, and remains, great. Joey Beltram and Orbital tracks stayed with me for the rest of the week. But the VR rave experience is not really a case of ‘Dance as if no one’s watching’, as it must have been at a party like Amnesia at 3am. It is rather, ‘Dance as if you are not fully there’. The kit and the contrivance of it all rendered me actually quite shy about getting on down. But I still had to dance; one absolutely had to. It would’ve been unbearably stiff-necked to explore this subculture, to end up in a room full of shadowy bodies and light shows, yet remain stock still and unmoved.
When I returned to reality I got talking to the visitor who had shared my quadrant of this virtual zone: he was a German veteran of techno clubs for whom this secret party phenomenon was equally distant. It’s not usual to leave an exhibition happily chatting to a stranger, but that is how I saw many people leave this particular show. It is a bit special that way.
Does it deliver anything like the live experience? Not altogether. My actual memories, though limited, are a bit more visceral and wild. VR technology is by contrast slightly atomising and removed from the real. But as a museum ready presentation of a key moment in recent cultural history, there can hardly be an equal of Darren Emerson’s epic creation. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m about to fire up an evil music streaming app and listen to the official playlist: to find my way into a past I can dream my way into if nothing else.
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