CommentStreams:8a2c2a03df36a6848f8b801cbd0a763e

Thank you for your text! I really appreciate the dense, poetic quality of your writing and how it weaves together so many rich ideas in such a compact space. I particularly like how your text opens with references to rave as a way to reimagine spaces. I also see how our topics resonate through the discussion of music, sound, and techno-culture. Because my background is in sound and music research, I will focus on this particular topic, even though I know there are some broader frameworks in which you are basing you research and analysis. Therefore I consider that clarifying some underlying principles could help the reader navigate certain ambiguities in key terms (this was my experience, especially since topics like film theory are less familiar to me). For instance, it is unclear to me what are you referring to with the term “techno”: are you referring to the specific genre of techno, electronic dance music in general, or a broader aesthetic category? Similarly, “techno-aesthetic” seems to draw on Simondon’s philosophical framework but seems to be referring to use to describe the aesthetics of techno music. Another term that I found confusing was “recursive rhythms.” I think it might be better expressed as “repetitive rhythms,” aligning more closely with spatiotemporal frameworks like Deleuze’s or Lefebvre’s. Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis often addresses broader life gestures rather than the microstructures of musical beats, and distinguishing these levels could add precision. For example, the idea of techno disrupting everyday rhythm (Sunday morning at Berghain anyone?) fits Lefebvre’s larger framework but might contrast with more detailed analyses of musical repetition, which is also a key aesthetic feature of genres such as “minimal techno” through their rpartial inspiration in the repetition of melodic-rhythmic patterns found in the American minimalism of the 1970’s (Steve Reich, Julius Eastman, etc). An engagement with some musicological sources could also strengthen your argument. For example, Mark Butler’s work could be explored in more detail, and Salomé Voegelin’s discussions of sound in relation to spatial phenomenology might be relevant. Joanna Demers’ Listening Through the Noise also provides a general framework for the aesthetics of electronic dance music and could ground your analysis in the specifics of rhythm’s interplay with space, time, and collective experience. I found your example of the sphygmograph fascinating, as it connects bodily measurement and rhythmic representation to themes of control and individuation. It reminds me of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Primal Sound (https://archive.org/details/rilkeprimalsound/mode/2up) However, the final section’s shift to technologies like Google Maps and Strava feels less connected to your central argument. These technologies are interesting but don’t clearly link to the rave experience. Discussing networked technologies for sharing music, like Boiler Room, SoundCloud, or community radios, might better reflect the techno-rhythms and aesthetics of networked rave, which is also a term that is not necessarily clear Please take these observations not as critiques but as points for discussion and reflection that we can develop together. I’m really looking forward to continuing this conversation and digging deeper into our texts.