Published in
RADAR Magazine #1
April 2024
RADAR Magazine #1
April 2024
Though the metaverse may widely evoke sterile and dystopian digital landscapes, its lesser known corners host a lively and free spirited community that dances non-stop in limitless virtual spaces. Join us on a trippy tour of the VR nightlife scene.
The last couple decades have seen the steady expansion, to near explosion, of the techno scene in France’s culture and nightlife worlds. Now commonplace, raves are no longer feared. Everyone and their cousin seems to be a DJ, and since the start of the pandemic, new collectives and events have been mushrooming in every bar that can fit a controller.
For better or worse, techno has been either mainstreamed or democratized, depending on how one feels about the phenomenon. Whether it’s wanted or not, techno is everywhere. And even if the music itself may remain a matter for connoisseurs, since it requires a certain ear and familiarity, the aesthetics, atmospheres, and formats derived from the techno subculture have spread to all of nightlife and the more fashionable cultural circles. If it's urban, artsy, and cool, electronic music is involved.
This expansion comes with its lot of paradoxes: one can welcome the fact that the values upheld by the community have an opportunity to spread. Some prejudices, particularly around drug use, are relinquishing their tenacious grip. But this sometimes comes at the (very) heavy cost of exposing the techno community to spaces that are increasingly less safe for those who used to find in them a protective enclave within mainstream society. Historically, the techno community has been a haven, a rare and sacred space for many marginalized minorities. Under the loving maternal gaze of queer, sex-positive, revolutionary and counter-cultural movements, rave culture was birthed underground, in direct opposition to any established system. But it has come a long way since the Second Summer of Love and the arrival of techno in France in the 1990s. What do underground, alternative or revolutionary mean when the crowd that fills La Gare/Le Gore [popular club in the north of Paris] on Saturday nights is sensibly the same as the one at any local (above-ground) bar?
But when the alternative becomes the norm (which almost always ends up being the case), othered spaces find their place elsewhere. Human creativity generates new margins, where there is still room for dissent. This is true of the techno scene, which is already somewhat in the future, straddling the real and the possible. Take a trip into the real underground scene that is currently putting itself on the map in virtual reality.
// “She raves in the metaverse”
Some months ago, as we were walking away from a party where the music had felt indecently loud, a friend was telling me about a DJ she knows who struggled with tinnitus and can no longer go out. She closed her story with the sentence, "so now she raves in the metaverse..." Excuse me? I asked, taken aback. I hadn't heard anything about the metaverse since its meteoric (and quickly forgotten) appearance a few years ago. I didn't know people actually went there.
Accompanist is the DJ in question, who after several years playing in the Boston and Brooklyn underground scenes, was forced to stop due to hearing problems. She then discovered the techno scene in cyberspace, which allowed her to recover that part of her identity by reconnecting with the community and the music. Mordio has been part of the Berlin scene for years, and since discovering VR, he has been exploring sounds and tech-savvy creativity in both worlds. Both DJs guided me through this parallel alternative world, pioneers at the frontier of tech and humanity.
A note on the jargon – it is generally preferred to talk about VR (the acronym for virtual reality) or cyberspace rather than metaverse. Metaverse connotes the tech giant Meta, and makes the term feel corporate, closely associated with the commodification and formatting of the internet. IRL is the acronym for "in real life".
Before you go clubbing in cyberspace, you have to gear up. Expect around $600 for the headset and game, plus some for the sensors that can be added to your ankles for full-body tracking. Since virtual reality headsets were introduced to the general market in 2015, their popularity has remained limited and the worlds they open up are still relatively unpopulated. Those who feel comfortable in VR often come to it from video games or computer science subcultures, and tend to be acquainted with virtual instincts and programming skills. But virtual reality is becoming less and less limited to tech enthusiasts, and its popularity is growing, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic and the first lockdown, which sparked interest among a new wave of curious users. Apple’s recent launch of its Vision Pro headset, released in February 2024 in the US is quite telling of this.
The game that allows you to connect to a network and go to parties is called VRChat. You take the form of an avatar and wander around a virtual map where you can meet other users from all over the world. It's very similar to the games we used to play back in the early days of the internet — think Habbo or Club Penguin. The only difference is that in VR, there's no distinction between yourself and your avatar. You feel like you're in the virtual world, you are your avatar, and you can talk to the person you're talking to as if they were right in front of you. Everything is in 3D, you can get closer, gesticulate. Apart from touch and scent, you experience a rather strong sensation of contact: the technology is advanced enough to be effective, and the brain fills in the gaps, to a rather alarming effect.
Once suited-up to enter cyberspace, you need to find your party. By hanging out on Discord or Reddit, major hubs of the cybertechno community, you can find groups where flyers for various events get shared. On the Discord /Vrchat Party Hub, Captain Duck, an enthusiast, centralizes all the parties taking place each day, similarly to Dice or Resident Advisor. After picking your party, you put your headset on, connect to VRChat, slip into your avatar, and enter the club... without leaving your room.
// Entering the space
Oftentimes, finding the actual party is a bit demanding. “There’s a playful aspect to it,” Accompanist explained. “You jump into this environment, and you have no idea where you are, and you have to figure out where you go from there, and typically they design it in a way that’s fun. You have to find the door, figure out how to open it, then go through halls or take elevators, etc. People get very creative with it.”
There are an estimated fifty or so clubs operating in VRChat. Ghostclub is the most well known and most revered, the virtual alter ego of Berghain, a pillar of the Japanese scene but known everywhere. But there are others that have made a name for themselves in the English-speaking scene, such as Concrete, HEIST, Dieselworks, Loner Online, SHELTER, and 1Q84, the club that Mordio co-created with Ryft. VRChat can be thought of as a city: there are the big clubs that everyone knows, those that you discover by chance, those focused on specific practices, such as alcohol or sex or a certain genre of music, and those that are ephemeral, open for one night only, to end up existing only in the party memories of the lucky few who had access to them.
Mordio described the best known ones: "Ghostclub is, I think, the oldest and I would say it has the most developed map, with lots of details: there's a game developer behind the project. Concrete offers one of the best visual experiences I can imagine, and a very good sound selection. And then there's HEIST, which is in an airplane..." The diversity of clubs is endless. Each one has its own identity and specific features, and just like in the real world, you can have your favorite places depending on your tastes and niche.
Accompanist shared that the first time she got on, she immediately realized how this sticks for people, “because, you really do feel like you’re in a different place. Your brain is split, you know you’re in your apartment, you can smell it, you feel your feet on the floor, there’s no transition to getting there other than putting on the headset. But I really do walk in, and it’s a club in a skyscraper, everything is rainbow-esque and it’s mostly empty. It looks a bit tacky. It feels like you’re in an anime, but not as 2D.” Generally speaking, VRChat’s aesthetics and avatars fall into two big categories, with styles leaning either towards video games or anime.
The VR sound experience is one of the reasons why the music scene has been thriving in the space. The spatial audio used in most VR headsets creates a three-dimensional, immersive listening experience, with sound appearing to come from different directions and distances. Unlike traditional stereo sound, where audio content comes from two channels (left and right), spatial audio adds height and depth as extra dimensions. This technology mimics the way sound travels in real life and allows you to perceive sounds as if they were coming from specific points around you. Many settings can be controlled in the headset, from light intensity to sound volume, making the experience very accessible and adaptable to different forms of disability or impairment. You can even select between two sound tracks: the program separates the music played in the venue from the surrounding sound, i.e., the voices of other users. It is possible to mute the conversations and listen only to the DJ’s set.
// Encounters and communities
The techno scene in VRChat is mostly appreciated for its community, it is primarily a social game, for meeting and connecting with players from all over the world. The music scene has gradually grown to become an important part of this world, but relationships remain the foundation of the experience.
Accompanist continued the tale of her first night out in cyberspace: “People were playing Pong in the corner, and there’s a bunny with a cigar, and a person who looks like a human being, and I think there’s a little floating thing, like a little blob. And I go up to them and say “hey is my audio working?”, and they say “yeah we can hear you”. It takes me a second to realize it’s real, that I’m interacting with actual people. Everyone had pretty standard voices, except for the bunny who sounded like a very old man with the biggest Boston accent I have ever heard in my life. Oh, by the way, the bunny had enormous tits.”
VRChat is international. It hosts a vast Japanese community, as is often the case with cutting-edge technology. The English-speaking community is dominated by the United States, but there are people from all over the world. Mordio is currently looking to develop the European community. According to him, "the big advantage is that it's global. I have friends in every country thanks to the VR community. When I go to the US, I know I have a place to stay in Utah, in Los Angeles, everywhere... My friends came to Berlin to meet me and they all stayed at my place. They are real friends, and there comes a time when these bonds become real. It feels like you're escaping into VR, but in fact, you're connecting with people as an artist, or making friends there. I think it's important to demystify all that." Virtual friendships have existed since the dawn of the internet. In VR, it's easier to connect, and the technology offers a much more immersive and humanizing social experience than a simple chatbox. You can talk with your body, much more naturally than seeing lines of text printed on your screen. There's nothing simulated about the relationships that develop in this world. "I have all these connections with these real people, for real," Mordio insisted joyfully.
The cyber scene gives users a chance to reconnect with certain core values of the techno community, combined with those of certain gaming and internet communities such as can be found on Reddit, Discord, or online forums. The internet has always been a place where shy people and weirdos could socialize, where the most frowned-upon or taboo passions could be expressed and feel less isolating. For Mordio, "this community is truly sacred." VRChat spaces are centered on care and inclusivity, offering themselves as "safe spaces" for all types of self-expression and marginality. The freedom of the avatar allows individuals to explore and express the gender identities that resonate with them, and the community is careful to cultivate a space where people can express themselves freely, without fear of discrimination. In other words, if everyone is in a space where the very fact of being there is already strange, there isn't much room for judgment in the eyes of others. "We're all doing something a little weird by being here, so in a way, we have nothing to hide," explained Accompanist. "I've always liked being around people who are a little weird, it's much more fun. And it's a very comfortable way to do it. Sometimes I see myself in my apartment with my silly headset and my little controllers and I think I look ridiculous. But everyone else I talk to is doing the same thing, so it takes away any awkwardness."
The pretentious or appearance-centric turn that the IRL techno scene has taken is not applicable to VR. "Everyone is shockingly nice,” said Accompanist, “nicer than in most real-life environments. I have several theories about this: first, no one has anything to hide on themselves, so if you have any kind of body dysmorphia or complex, it's just not there. It's also a familiar environment, and everyone is excited to meet someone new in this world; everyone knows each other, it's very small, in a way. And it's like anything you're passionate about, you want to share it. I think it also has to do with the culture of solidarity and open-mindedness in the gaming world.”
As a DJ, there are no limits to the possibilities of playing: since we are not confined to the walls of existing clubs, there is not the same scarcity that can make the IRL techno scene so hard to access. Without the gatekeeping that perpetuates the hype or style of certain parties, in VR there is a sense of returning to a bygone era of the techno scene, "it's like the 90s, with a feeling of 'we're together' rather than 'me and my cool crew'," said Mordio enthusiastically. "Social media has had a big impact on the techno scene. It's become much more fashionable and much more focused on appearance, about how I look when I dance. I think values have changed a bit and we need to rediscover them," and VRChat offers a new stage on which to revive them. "VRChat has these values at the heart of its development. It's as if the cyber scene is healing itself, protecting at all costs this atmosphere of trust and community that is becoming increasingly rare on the internet and in the real techno world."
// Unbounded creation
The concept of co-creation was perhaps the single most recurrent one in all the conversations I had with cyberspace users. VRChat is a space for experimentation and total freedom in terms of the worlds it generates. Mordio explained that “the game has only one original map, and everything else is user generated, created by the community." Each avatar and each map is created by users, for users, and responds to their needs in real time. VRChat is an internet blind spot, in the most generative way, where there are no rules for the moment, allowing the community to draw them up themselves. Mordio and Accompanist both mentioned this: "The creativity there is incredible because people are constantly trying to invent new things. As soon as there's a new update to VRChat and we have new possibilities, everyone helps each other to create even crazier experiences." Ryft, Mordio’s co-creator of the 1Q84 club, celebrates that "VR offers the greatest freedom of expression of any online platform. You can be anything you want, do anything you want, including things you can't do in real life."
Avatars open up a whole world of possibilities and self-expression, and some people are eager to push the boundaries. If you don't know how to do it yourself, you can pay a developer, sometimes hundreds of dollars, to create a custom avatar according to your whims, so that the avatar communicates an essence of who you are. VRChat can allow a trans person from a cultural desert who cannot afford gender-affirming processes in real life to live for a few hours as a cyberpunk anime girl with cat ears, proclaiming their love of hypnotic deep techno while dancing on stage in a club in the middle of a Formula 1 racetrack.
As such, the impression of a return to Web 1.0 is not limited to the fact that VRChat is a type of game that’s a throwback to being online in the early 2000s. Although young, the history of the web already has several chapters. "One of the great things about the old web was that everything was created by users. We would visit websites and blogs that were built by you and me; anyone could create a page and we could access that information. There was a lot of creativity and few limits to what was possible," Mordio recalled. Today, we operate in Web 2.0. Over the course of the 2010s, we have shifted towards an ultra-formatted web, largely managed by tech giants Google and Meta. We do not have the ability to modify or alter the content of most of the sites we visit. The average person doesn't need HTML to browse the internet, whereas anyone could find themselves writing a few lines of code in Web 1.0. If you've had a Skyblog [French Myspace] or early age Tumblr, you've probably already done a little coding. Web 2.0 is rigid and blackboxed; the companies that manage it format the entire appearance of websites, from the font to the way a photo appears on the screen. The rules are predefined.
What is happening right now in cyberspace feels like Web 3.0. In VR Chat, we are witnessing a shift from 2D to 3D, a technological breakthrough that paradoxically resembles a bygone era of the web, when the internet was characterized by a DIY atmosphere and a customized aesthetic, tailored to the tastes of user-creators. This requires patience and skills in coding and digital design, as the same software used for video game design, such as Blender, is used. Worldbuilding, which consists of inventing worlds that oscillate between reality and imagination (particularly in video games), is a major component of VRChat. For Accompanist, "it's kind of the coolest part of this whole world. It's what I really love, and I don't know if this DIY aspect will last. For now, VRChat isn't a game linked to a company or brand. It's a bit like the internet in the 90s; there's no big way to make money from it yet, so it remains a true community project that people are passionate about. A few artists and promoters, like the person who groups party flyers on Discord, take money on Patreon, but that's it. I hope they don't start charging admission to clubs, because that would completely change the ecosystem."
// The music
The music scene took a while to develop in VRChat, as the taste for electronic music took time to build. The pandemic accelerated this process, with clubs closing and some DJs turning to the virtual world. This was the case for 2TD, a musician and DJ from Los Angeles, whose IRL work was suddenly halted at the start of the pandemic. After meeting 3D designer Kye, the two decided to create their own club, SHELTER, one of the biggest in the cyber scene. Players sometimes even discover the techno scene through cyberspace, without ever having been to an IRL rave before. The scene is made up of a mix of amateurs, professionals, and novices, and the quality is notably on the rise.
Because it bypassed scarcity, cybertechno multiplies opportunities for DJs to play sets, test them live, and get real-time feedback. A crowd is a crowd, whether virtual or real, and the feeling of seeing the effect of your music on a group of people live is roughly the same, according to the DJs I talked to. A DJ featured in Resident Advisor's documentary on the VR techno scene explains that there is "a virtually infinite space; we're not fighting over the few renowned clubs in a city or the Friday night hotspot in NYC." The scene is global and constantly evolving, 24 hours a day. As a result, it is changing rapidly, free from the geographical and spatial constraints of the real world.
Mordio found an audience for his music that he couldn't find in Berlin, and experienced a kind of musical renaissance. "These people of the future understand my sound of the future," he said with a laugh. "The VR scene offers great freedom to sound explorers because there's a club for every niche. In real space, big clubs and big cities have to select what's trendy because they have to fill the room for financial reasons. And that's not the case here. I really liked dubstep, UK bass music. And I saw how my parties were going, with fewer and fewer people, until they almost crumbled in my hands. It wasn't easy. When I discovered VRChat, I found parties for that. I didn't need to go to Bristol to find the crowd I was looking for. Then I met Ryft, and we decided to build 1Q84 and organize a party there with only that type of sound. My booking was entirely based on that. And the scene grew, with more and more people who used to play completely different stuff starting to play the same kind of sound, the same tracks. If you have a bit of an underground love for a specific genre, VRChat is a place where you have the opportunity to create a space for it, the audience is really open to listening to new things."
// Underground
While the IRL techno scene grows steadily more mainstream, the weirdos, dissidents, and all those marginalized from IRL party scenes and society at large have been finding respite in cyberspace. Accompanist reported that "there are certain fetishes that are really normalized now IRL, like BDSM, which is no longer taboo at all. Furry fetishes [an interest in anthropomorphic animals] are still on the fringe and remain very strange to many people. This is what we often find in VRChat. And it's the ideal environment for that, because you can really move around and be an animal."
Cell-bind is a Ghostclub event, particularly known for its kinky and sex-positive tendencies. "It's one of the biggest parties in the VR scene right now," according to Mordio. "A little more kink-focused, working avatars [sex workers] can really show off what they can do. And you see things there that aren't possible in reality. That's one of the unique aspects of this scene that you don't find anywhere else. You can talk about Cell-bind, but it's hard to show, because it's like Berghain—it's unshowable."
Referring to the subculture and underground aspects of cyberspace, Accompanist came back to the broader techno scene: "I like the weird, niche aspect of techno. And I think the underground will always move forward; people will always create new things. Trying to create a virtual world that exactly replicates real life is futile. It will always be a poor imitation, so we emphasize the parts that are a little weird or different, and we create another world, a kind of parallel universe. And it's fun to have a secret. That's what I loved about the techno scene in the beginning. It's fun to rediscover that and take it with you wherever you go throughout the week." The techno cyberscene is sufficiently developed and creative to be seen as an innovative artistic project. But it will always maintain that slightly strange, marginal background in which raving was born. "It's always niche passions that are at the root of what becomes popular, and it's no different in VR," says a dancer in the Resident Advisor documentary.
// Questions and limitations
Of course, VR comes with its limits and concerns. Many people decide from the outset to prioritize real life over virtual interactions. This is the case for Accompanist, who "always gives priority to IRL. That's the only reason I hesitate to book myself as a VR DJ,” she said, “if I commit to mixing for a party and something comes up IRL, I find myself in a bit of a bind."
For Mordio, VR becomes interesting when it builds bridges with reality and allows for more experiences and real encounters. "I have 1Q84 in cyberspace, but if I ever had the money to start my own club IRL, I wouldn't host any differently than in my cyberspace club. I'm learning how to promote events there, I'm learning how to book artists, because I do it in VR, but I have these connections with all these people for real now."
Clubbing in VR also offers a unique experience for many people who would not dare or would not have the opportunity to go out clubbing in the physical world, for accessibility, budget, or geographical reasons. There are countless significant limitations that prevent people from putting themselves in situations where they would not feel completely safe. In VR, these limitations are removed, to such an extent that it sometimes emboldens people to enter the real world after having gained VR experience. Accompanist once met “a person dressed as a fairy who said to her: 'In real life, I'm 6'4 and weigh 200 pounds, and I just don't feel comfortable dancing around other people, but in cyberspace, I can do whatever I want, and I feel good about myself. And actually, over the summer, I went to a pool party [in real life], and I shamelessly danced all night, which I had never done before.’"
On the other hand, there is concern circulating about the escapist use of VR, as a loneliness-driven response that turns one away from the real world thus leading to even greater isolation. But this is no different than any other virtual technology. As with everything on the internet, there are extreme cases, those who use it to escape, who do not strike the right balance. "Some people stay in it full-time, but they're not people who wanted to be in reality in the first place. For some, it's their life, but I don't think that's the vast majority,” Accompanist explained. Mordio shared his concerns: "I'm always worried that people will get too sucked into the virtual world. It should be used as a system for connecting, not isolating." Forever unresolved and certainly relevant, these questions are however not new, they feel like a variation on the fears and doubts that all new technology tends to surface, with the new twist that is the three-dimensionality and immersiveness of VR technology.
Is virtual reality an oxymoron? More broadly speaking, virtual reality raises questions about what the world is, what reality is. VRChat offers the possibility of perpetually building and improving worlds in which we feel like we are really there. These are living, evolving spaces whose very existence is undeniable, and which are actually defined worlds in a much more tangible way than the “real world”. This raises the vast question of simulation and simulacra, which has flooded both science fiction and philosophy for millennia. What is developing on VRChat is an expanding world at the frontiers of technology and human experience. A raver testifies at the end of the Resident Advisor documentary that "reality and virtual space are becoming increasingly intertwined. We will soon be having incredible experiences, seeing things that were never possible before.”
// Generating utopia
Futurity, queerness, inclusivity, co-creation, generative, self-management... The vocabulary of cybertechno is similar to that used by activists and communities working towards a society based on horizontal self governance and mutual aid. The techno community in cyberspace is experiencing a form of utopia. On YouTube, people are moved to tears as they testify to the solidarity and pure friendship they have encountered in these spaces. In this sense, cyberspace can be liberating. Being and doing whatever you want, freeing yourself from societal, geographical, physical, and psychological limitations, unbounded self-expression... It may be too good to be true, but it is not too good to be virtual. According to Gilles Deleuze, "the virtual is not opposed to the real, but only to the actual. The virtual possesses full reality, as virtual." Deleuze's virtual is not the unreal, it is the possible, the alternative. In this sense, utopia exists in virtuality, in our imaginations, which already gives it a certain existence, and in VRChat, which virtually offers itself as a world where this utopia can be experienced and developed in a tangible way.
In the words of all those currently shaping the cyberscene, the recurring message is that the goal is not to replace real life, but to remain a space for music lovers to meet and discover new things, where relentless creativity and dedication enable them to overcome the many financial and personal obstacles that can hinder a real rave experience. The baseline values of solidarity and shared self-expression remain at the forefront of the ethics of these techno events.
In the real world, industry professionals and party-goers alike lament the commodification of the music scene, where events are increasingly focused on profit and where it is becoming difficult to evolve without prioritizing money. Here, there is no monetization. The scene is not (yet) corporate, there is no intra-world monetary system. Everything is based on crowdfunding, independently, on people’s drive and initiative. VRChat offers a space that is increasingly difficult to imagine in reality, where companies have not yet intervened, and the techno cyberscene remains a collective project of passionate enthusiasts, rather than a profit-generating machine. It remains to be seen how this will evolve and what will develop to allow these worlds to continue to grow without falling into excessive commercialization. For Mordio, it is essential to protect the grassroots nature of VR platforms and prevent excessive corporate influence. "If someone completely derails from the community and wants to sell and starts talking about the metaverse and profit, etc., they get woken up by the community itself." The cybertechno community is extremely protective of this collective project, precisely because it is generated by itself, for itself.
Virtual reality is currently where the techno scene converges with gaming culture, and thus resurrects from its soulless neoliberal fate. Creativity, values of sharing, care, inclusivity, curiosity, and celebrating uniqueness all find their place here and energize a new festive scene that remains far removed from the capitalist mechanics which have been bogging down the IRL techno scene. This is how I now understand the appeal of a world (and even a virtual one) where people can feel at home, safe, and respected, because they have shaped it themselves, collectively, from scratch.
Techno cyberspace today appears as a welcoming, healing home for the early internet’s broken dreams. It is both the future and the past, a forward movement while rebuilding and protecting what has degenerated in our use of the virtual world. The techno scene and the virtual world are both shifting, sprawling creatures that are constantly diffracting and refracting each other, their horizons as diverse as they are difficult to define. But regardless of definition, virtual reality has given rise to an unexpected marriage between the worlds of electronic music and online communities, whose promises and futures are intriguing, to say the least.