My ethnography:

The sonic landscape that comprises walking from outside the LCC building to the Sound Arts Department signifies various cultures, modes, and roles involving engagement and relationship with the environment, and social forms of communication. The outer plaza features a heavy presence of student activity as an area of leisure, where the sound of various languages being used to communicate indicates UAL and LCC’s international community. In entering the building, concentration or lack thereof of voices further highlights designated communal spaces and the ascribed social role of said space. The consistent energetic chatter that resides within the cafe area implies less social restriction and an emphasis on expressive communication in contrast to the quiet voices in the library, which hint at a different designated purpose of this space.

As a practitioner and listener, I notice I am most focused on voice and the implications of sound on social relationships and what they imply about the social purpose of different spaces. The fact that I chose to document places of high or low concentration of volume and voices makes me think that I am most drawn to examples that feel overt in nature, and extracting data and perspective from what those spaces may imply.

Here is my informal draft structure:

Ritual is ever-present in our lives

Black metal = pagan, natural occult folklore landscapes through electric amplification and distortion, longing for nature, and expression of a dystopian urban environment

Techno = EDM as modern ritual, techno and gabber

Through a sensory ethnographic analysis of VMO, I will argue that the band’s synthesis of black metal and EDM cultures reconfigures and reclaims the pagan ritual for the modern day through the primitive use of technology in performance 

Visuals: corpse paint, costumes, strobe lights, 3d graphics, anime + the crowd dancing, moving in waves, the flinging of bodies,

Sound: trance leads, screams, techno and gabber, metal breakdowns and blast beats + the sound of other people screaming

Touch: body contact, fear, excitement, collective movement

Synthesized

Paint = neandrathals

Costumes?

Whether intentional or not there are allusions inherent in the visuals supporting the performance through the symbolic synergy to what is expressed in the music