Gabber: Raising Hell in Technoculture

Gabber is a hardcore electronic dance music genre, typified by extreme speed and overdrive, which developed in the Netherlands, with Rotterdam as its epicentre, during the early 1990s, when house music-inspired dance events dominated. The use of distorted noise and references to popular body horror, such as Hellraiser, dominated its scene, and soon gabber was commented on as ‘the metal of house music’, a statement that this article aims to investigate. Applying a genealogical discographic approach, the research found that the electronic noise music aesthetic of industrial music was crucial for the formation of the sound of gabber. The hardcore electronic dance music that developed from this is at once ironically nihilistic, a contrary critique, and a populist safety valve. The digital machine noise of hardcore seems to offer an immersive means to process the experience of (emasculating) fluidity within post-human accelerated technoculture, itself propelled by rapid digital capital and information technologies

Ionic liquids at electrified interfaces

Until recently, “room-temperature” (<100–150 °C) liquid-state electrochemistry was mostly electrochemistry of diluted electrolytes(1)–(4) where dissolved salt ions were surrounded by a considerable amount of solvent molecules. Highly concentrated liquid electrolytes were mostly considered in the narrow (albeit important) niche of high-temperature electrochemistry of molten inorganic salts(5-9) and in the even narrower niche of “first-generation” room temperature ionic liquids, RTILs (such as chloro-aluminates and alkylammonium nitrates).(10-14) The situation has changed dramatically in the 2000s after the discovery of new moisture- and temperature-stable RTILs.(15, 16) These days, the “later generation” RTILs attracted wide attention within the electrochemical community.(17-31) Indeed, RTILs, as a class of compounds, possess a unique combination of properties (high charge density, electrochemical stability, low/negligible volatility, tunable polarity, etc.) that make them very attractive substances from fundamental and application points of view.(32-38) Most importantly, they can mix with each other in “cocktails” of one’s choice to acquire the desired properties (e.g., wider temperature range of the liquid phase(39, 40)) and can serve as almost “universal” solvents.(37, 41, 42) It is worth noting here one of the advantages of RTILs as compared to their high-temperature molten salt (HTMS)(43) “sister-systems”.(44) In RTILs the dissolved molecules are not imbedded in a harsh high temperature environment which could be destructive for many classes of fragile (organic) molecules

Culture instead of a state, culture as a state : art, regime and transcendence in the works of Laibach and Neue Slowenische Kunst

The thesis examines the significance and effects of the Slovene art collective NSK (founded 1983), particularly the group Laibach. NSK employ traumatic and controversial imagery (Nazi-Kunst, Socialist Realism) as part of an extremely complex response to various political, historical and aesthetic ''regimes'' that structure their political and cultural environment. Its interventions are mapped through discussion of specific works in the media it operates within including music, art, philosophy, theatre and design. The subject is approached via an integrated representational strategy that seeks to illustrate NSK's relation to political and cultural trends (including the disintegration of socialism and the influx of capitalism) through in-depth analysis of the content of its works. The sources ofNSK's aesthetic extremism are located in historical tendencies and the political structures with which the groups interacted. It identifies the sources of the wide range of historical, political and artistic motifs used by NSK, and recounts some of the key works and their significances and effects. The discussion centres on the interplay between state and culture in NSK's work and the way in which NSK have preserved a space of utopian post-territorial imagination by using the imageries of the totalitarian state and other regimes. The thesis concludes that it is possible for an artistic practice based on the "demaskiog and recapitulation" of regimes to temporarily disrupt and transcend such systems

NSK

The NSK State was created in 1992 in the wake of Slovenian independence and the breakup of socialist Yugoslavia. Founded as a utopian social sculpture by the Slovenian arts collective Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK), the NSK State has no national or physical boundaries and exists as a virtual state or a state in time. As a collective cultural work, the NSK State has opened temporary embassies in numerous locations and issued passports, some of which were used by NSK citizens to escape war-torn Sarajevo in the 1990s. The NSK State is also part of the wider “micronations” movement that has grown increasingly visible and received critical and theoretical attention in recent years.</jats:p

Industrial Activity: Kraftwerk's Radio-Activity as dystopian sonic template

Radio-Activity (1975) deals with the most dystopian themes the pioneering German electronic group ever addressed. It was released shortly before the emergence in Britain of what became known as industrial music. The paper will argue that the more sonically radical and conceptually dystopian elements of the album were a strong precedent for industrial music and the way in which it used electronically-generated sound and noise. The minimalistic electronic percussion, oscillator and voltage sounds, shortwave radio recordings and collages of sampled voices deployed by Kraftwerk here can be directly compared to industrial's use of noise as a texture, within and against a pop format. The use of these sonic elements to explore dystopian and ambivalent subject matter is also relevant here. Geiger Counter manipulates the fears surrounding radiation and The Voice of Energy features an alienated, electronically processed vocal that gives voice to fears of technological domination. The use of simulated and actual radio sounds and news reports on News has parallels with the near-contemporary work of the British group Cabaret Voltaire and their use of similar materials and themes, for instance on the early track Baader Meinhof. While Kraftwerk took this sample-based technique no further, it would become a key stylistic trope of industrial music. Uranium is a chilling soundscape that coldly dramatises the lethal potential of the element, and uses electronic sound to communicate a sense of ominousness. Another important parallel to be considered is the use of sonic and conceptual ambivalence. The album was the group's most controversial, with some seeing it as being uncritical of, or even consciously aestheticising nuclear power. This overlooked Kraftwerk's documentary ambition to present tone pictures of everyday technological life, as well as their sly irony. The presenation of extreme and disturbing subject matter in industrial has generated even more severe criticism, with many being disturbed by its sonic-conceptual ambivalence. With these questions in mind, Radio-Activity will be compared with examples from groups such as Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle, Clock DVA and others, illustrating some of the related approaches that appeared in the wake of the album. Both Kraftwerk and these artist consciously used what were then the still-alienating potentials of electronic sound, manipulating and ambivalently exploring technophobia and the darker side of late 20th Century ideas of (post)-industrial progress. Due to the controversy generated by its apparent “over-identification” with nuclear power, it has been relatively overlooked and is seen as less influential than those before and after it, yet it did exert a hidden influence as what Slavoj Žižek terms as a “vanishing mediator” between the approaches informing the elektronische musik of the Cologne School (which Kraftwerk members were fully aware of) and industrial. From there the still under-narrated industrial's effect on subsequent forms including Electronic Body Music (EBM), New Beat, Techno and certain strains of electronica can be traced, expanding our understanding of Kraftwerk's stylistic and conceptual influence further than previously

Electrowetting with an Interface Between Two Immiscible Electrolytic Solutions

Abstract not Available.</jats:p