Old spaces, new rave

Old spaces, new rave unfolds as a distributed performance across an outdoor site, where listening, movement and position are inseparable. The work dissolves the notion of a stage, allowing performers, audience and landscape to co-constitute a shared but continuously shifting sonic situation. Within a defined area in the forest, listeners move freely and encounter the work through personal headphones. What is heard depends on where one is, how one moves, and how one relates spatially to others. Three performers are situated within the field, each contributing a distinct layer that shifts as they move, converge or disperse. A persistent sonic ground extends across the site, forming a dynamic field rather than a fixed backdrop.

Position operates as a compositional parameter: to move through the space is to reconfigure the work. Each listener encounters a unique but related version, shaped by proximity, orientation and displacement. The piece unfolds as an evolving topology of sound rather than a fixed composition.

The performance is developed within the research project Information Retrieval in Embedded Systems for Audiovisual Artistic Processes (IRESAP), a collaboration between Mälardalen University, the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, and Dalarna University, in partnership with Ericsson, Spotify and teenage engineering, and funded by the Knowledge Foundation (KKS). The work draws on ongoing research into distributed performance, merged realities and the role of information access in artistic processes.

Old spaces, new rave proposes a decentralised listening situation, without a single centre, perspective or stable form, where the work emerges through the interplay between bodies, signals and site. The performance is experienced through personal listening devices. The audience is invited to bring their own headphones and mobile phones.