When is an all-night dance party not a rave? When it's the lead event for the 2001 Taipei International Arts Festival.
On Saturday, a line-up of DJs and VJs (a new type of DJ who integrates visual elements in performances) from Australia and Taiwan will serve a psychedelic combination of visuals and beats that will be familiar to most clubgoers at Nankang's 101 nightclub as the launch party for this year's arts festival. The show is titled Cyber Fire Cyber Time.
By trying to attract a young and adventurous audience, the event is a bold move on the part of its organizers, who are well-aware of Taipei City Government's deep suspicion of rave culture and its association with drugs.
GRAPHIC COURTESY OF KIM BOUNDS, TOY SATELLITE
This show, however, has the potential to transcend the traditional rave, with stilt walkers, art installations, a fashion show, dancers, video artists -- a whole array of talent to assault the senses and stimulate the mind.
Pushing Boundaries
In line with the theme of this year's festival, "Eye on the Future," the center of attention at the party will be Toy Satellite, a multi media group from Australia, whose members have been pushing the boundaries of dance, electronic music, video and media arts over the past 30 years.
PHOTO: JULES QUARTLY, TAIPEI TIMES
The group has been collaborating with Taiwanese electronic artists Monbaza, DJ Ty, DJ Jimmi, Lin Chung (林強) and others, over the Internet for the past four months, sharing ideas and swapping video and sound files in preparation for the party. And over the past two weeks they have been in Taipei working with their Taiwanese counterparts in a studio and at workshops to produce new tracks and images. As a collective, the coalition of artists is known as Eyedrink.
The venue, 101, will contain five giant screens for projections, live camera feedback loops of the audience and other visuals sampled by two Toy Satellite VJs, John Power and Kim Bounds, along with VJs Austin Chang, and Vince from Taiwan. Referring to the real-time use of images, Vince said: "We will be putting together a whole load of images, cooking them up and serving them up hot."
A massive sound system will pump vicious beats and ambient sounds taken from vinyl, CDs, and hard drives and mix these with a fusion of sound clips from Taiwan, Australia and from other places around the world. About 3,000 people are expected to turn up and the whole event will be recorded for a DVD.
PHOTO: JULES QUARTLY, TAIPEI TIMES
The result will be "a totally new perspective on electronic music and vision mixing," said festival director Serina Chen. "The reason for this show is that in many other countries which I have visited, cutting edge art is linked with electronics. It is likely to be the medium of art for the 21st century and we don't want to use the word rave [because of its negative connotations]. We want to introduce cyber art."
"I don't think the government is against electronic arts. They are afraid of rave parties, which they equate with drugs. We want digital art, which is already rich, without drugs."
Taiwan, she said, already has some of the best equipment but the approach to electronic music and vision mixing is different. "We have invited Toy Satellite over to help our electronic artists develop another logic toward the medium. Australian art already has good links with electronics and we want to promote that here."
In return, she said, Toy Satellite will be introduced to another culture and this will be an inspiration to them. "There will be a process of stimulation from both sides."
To set the ball rolling, an Australian street theater group, Stalker -- which performed at the Sydney Olympics opening ceremony -- will put on a show that blends acrobatics and architecture on stilts, outside the venue at 8pm.
Then, at 9pm, in what should be one of the most innovative segments of the night, Toy Satellite will perform its "narrative electronic concert" Undercurrents, in which all the images and music that have been developed over the last four and a half months will be segued together in a two hour presentation. The show should evoke contemporary classical composers like Prokofiev, Philip Glass and producers like Adrian Sherwood of On-U Sound, only "juiced up" a bit, said Andrew Garton, composer and co-founder of Toy Satellite.
"This is the culmination of a lot of work that we have been doing for a long time ? consisting of Australian electronic music, found material and sounds that we have been playing with together, not unlike the way jazz improvisation works," Garton said.
"Originally we were planning to exchange our expertise with Taiwanese artists ? but as we got further into it we found that the people were actually doing this stuff themselves. So we really haven't got that much to show them technically, which made us think more along the lines of a collaboration and writing together."
After visiting Kuanghwa Market (光華商場), Taipei's central cut-price computer market, it was even more obvious to Garton that the hardware and software were obtainable in Taiwan, but it's potential was not being fully exploited artistically.
"We are used to working in the context of different cultures and electronic music and we want to show that bureaucracy and lack of funding should not stand in the way of a good idea," he said, adding that rave has been perceived as a low-end cultural experience rather than high-art, an impression which Cyber Fire Cyber Time aims to change.
The third segment of the night will be from 11pm to 1am, when Taiwan's DJs get a chance to show off their spinning skills.
Trying to open minds
DJ Monbaza says dance music should be "more about DIY (do-it-yourself) and less about inhibitions ... We want to open minds, not tell people what is right and wrong. Electronic music is a new lifestyle in which you can express all sorts of different things. People need to be shown a new way of thinking, to let them live and enjoy life more."
"As far as the police are concerned, they are also our friends and we want them to understand that it is safe to have a party and that we are responsible," he said. "We are promoting a positive revolution, an evolution."
Among the Taiwanese DJs, Lin Chung's set of ambient, acid and industry tunes, will be one of the most eagerly anticipated. DJ Ty will play a jazzy drum and bass set, which he said he hopes "will merge Western techno house music with a Taiwanese and Chinese feel inside."
Following these acts, Andrew Garton will return for a stint on the decks as his alter ego DJ Speed Vinyl, to spin a set of Melbourne, German and eastern European material, that he says will be a "harder, angular kind of music" that will not have been heard in Taiwan.
Later in the evening will come more music from the Eyedrink DJs, who will be jamming with more of the tracks that they have been developing together.
Topping it off will be Toy Satellite member Andrew Sargeant lulling the audience with an ambient set.
He says, "I'm no DJ, I'm not into vinyl, never have been. I am not into the whole DJ-playing-other-people's-music-as-a-God-thing. All the girls say get some decks and play, you'll look good. But, I want to do more than that," Sargeant said.
"What I do is create sounds. I compose music from all the sounds that I sample and synthesize, that I create from software. No vinyl involved," he says. Audio bits recorded in Taiwan for his performance include sounds of heavy machinery, traffic and rain, even muzak derived from elevators. "The essence of the city here."
He is interested in community politics and the Australian Aboriginal experience, a facet of his country's culture that he wants to impart and thinks will be particularly relevant to Taiwan.
A narrative element in the piece will feature a young Australian Aboriginal boy speaking about his experiences. "It's very powerful and always brings a tear to my eyes. I think it's important to the crossing over of the two cultures.," Sargeant said.
Sargeant is also on a mission to convince people who think that because electronic music is produced by machines that it is somehow less human and therefore less expressive than other musical forms. "The fact is, nearly all music is relayed through the medium of electricity because of amplification. An electronic instrument produces music that is just as `real' as a piano, which is a machine. It is played by people and that is the point."
"Electronic music is international, not just American or Western, it's all over the world. The vibe is already here and we're just adding to it. Perhaps we can loosen it up a little," Sargeant said.
For VJ John Power of Toy Satellite Cyber Time "is a challenge. It is not cinema, it is not an art gallery and it is not a rave. It's a mindstream, an attempt to express [a sense of community] through music and visuals."
What: Cyber Fire Cyber Time (數位派對)
When: Saturday, at 101, No. 71, Hsin-nan Street, Nankang District, Taipei. (台北市南港區興南街71號)
Tickets: NT$800 at the door. Advance tickets for NT$500 can be bought over the Internet at http://www.ticket.com.tw or call (02) 2341-9898.
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