| 2022 | Darren Emerson |
| CH,EN,FR,SP |
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I find myself longing for an Acid House scene I never experienced. My own journey into
dance culture didn’t start in 1989 but in 1995, at Club UK in Wandsworth. The memories of
that first night are blurred and indistinct, I can still close my eyes and feel the excitement
and the rush of being on a stage dancing, t-shirt off, sweaty, a burning sense of connection
to everyone in that place. I could feel the music so intensely and intuitively that for the first
time in my life I felt truly free.I long now for Acid House because I feel connected to those people who forged those first
parties. I long for Acid House because I want the adventure of not knowing where I am going, to be with friends and out-on-a limb. To be only vaguely organised, yet it is the vagueness itself which is the real gift. No smart phones, no GPS, no selfies, no CCTV. Let’s just see what happens…Creating immersive experiences over the last 9 years in many ways has reminded me of
those days. Devising work where you are striving for a feeling, the recreation of an emotion
within the context of a story and the fragile recollections of the lived experience. Not
knowing the ending is what has made the creative and technical journey so fulfilling. It has
also allowed me, within an artistic practice, to re-examine and re-contextualise the history
that is both lived and observed. To understand as an adult the nuance of political decisions
and societal conditions that have created the narratives that we as a nation accept and
adopt as the truth.Like the distant memories of Acid House, I hope this experience captures the feeling and
energy of the setting and creates new contextual narratives about the scene. Ultimately, I
want it to celebrate our universal desire, whatever our age, to feel connected to others, to
have the support of a community and to dance together till dawn.
– Darren Emerson, Author, to Docubase
In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats is a euphoric interactive virtual reality adventure and embodied VR installation taking audiences back to the heyday of the UK’s illegal Acid House scene of the late 1980s. Grab your friends and go in search of an illegal rave set over one night in Coventry, UK in 1989. This virtual reality experience brings to life the stories of promoters, police officers, and rave-goers, whose rivalries and relationships drove a working-class revolution in music and society. From poster-strewn bedrooms and pirate radio stations to a police headquarters and empty warehouse events, you’ll step into the shoes of rave culture pioneers as you witness this social phenomenon first-hand. Feel the anticipation, trepidation, excitement, and euphoria that was Acid House through an explorable room-scale virtual world and multi-sensory simulation. This room-scale, free-roaming VR experience utilizes archive, 3D modeling, volumetric capture, interaction, 360 video, animation, haptics, multi-sensory, and a pumping soundtrack of legendary and contemporary electronic music pioneers. Using contributors and collaborators from the UK’s rave past, this piece of immersive art uses creative non-fiction to re-examine what this moment means through the intersection of documentary, interaction, and embodied music experience. This is an adventure into one of the most important cultural revolutions in UK history, celebrating multiculturalism and community, through the prism of late 80’s politics and society.
Check out this additional clip for a deeper look into In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats:
Behind the Scenes Making of Films: Episode 1 https://youtu.be/qp1IKcS4JOs?si=SjNP_vHvyzM3xkp3, Episode 2 – https://youtu.be/d7VUtkB_i0g?si=ok0Vw8VaCNTuOsc7, Episode 3 – https://youtu.be/j3bHGiqwSWk?si=qQxem_vyhBJsZ4Sj
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/arts/article/my-ecstatic-eighties-rave-in-vr-goggles-and-a-vibrating-vest-g3hn7tlfg, https://archive.is/HQIss, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jul/19/vr-show-ravers-old-new-back-early-uk-acid-house-scene,
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