Back to the Future: 8-Bit Culture and Nostalgia

note: the songs embedded throughout are not particular to the paragraphs they follow, they are intended to serve as listening music for this post


Growing up, I never had videogames. But every Christmas Eve, I'd go over to my cousin’s house. She was a few years older and allowed to have the videogames my parents never let me play. Christmas Eve meant being with family, but mostly it meant playing SNES or N64: MarioKart, Yoshi’s Story, Sonic the Hedgehog. Not coincidentally, it was my cousin who turned me on to 8-bit music. A number of years later, when I was in my early teens, she showed me the GameBoy program she was using called LSDJ. It was a game cartridge, but people used it to make music. I was spellbound. Excuse me as I wax nostalgic, but as I go on you’ll see that chiptune music, and 8-bit culture as a whole, is all about nostalgia.

composing music in LSDJ

Zach Robinson is 22 and a senior at Northwestern University. He makes his own music under the moniker D/A/D, and while his music admittedly draws on “a different kind of nostalgia,” he’s an avid fan of 8-bit music and often dabbles in 8-bit production as well. Zach’s been listening to 8-bit music “since 1994,” when he was “playing videogames, GameBoy, all that stuff” and explained to me that “everyone who’s making [8-bit] is in a ten year radius of the early ninties.” While saying “ten year radius” opens up questions of where the first 8-bit music really started, what Zach means is that everybody making 8-bit music is doing so based on a shared experience: growing up in the early 1990s.
Too Dramatic (Anamanaguchi Remix) - Ra Ra Riot

The NES, released in 1985, presented the most complex musical system in a video game console at the time of its release, delivering “a built-in five-channel PSG [programmable sound generator] delivering two pulse waves, a triangle wave, a noise channel, and a sample channel” (Collins, 2007). Going past the technical jargon, what this meant is that composers for videogame soundtracks had access to an unprecedented wealth of musical creativity. Discussing the music of video games, K Collins describes the aesthetics of 8-bit music as “the result of a culmination of knowledge, creativity, and constraint” (Collins, 2007).

The NES’ predecessor, the SNES, is now one of two main tools (alongside the GameBoy) for composing 8-bit music. Notably, both are Nintendo products. As Zach explained to me,

“Nintendo has been way on top of this since the beginning. LSDJ on GameBoy is a sequencer, Mario Paint was a big sequencer when you were younger. These are music machines. And it goes back to these Japanese composers just writing music on these four-track [machines], they only have a sine, a triangle, a noise and a square wave. And they're writing on these soundchips, it goes back to that--they just had nothing, and they created some of the most iconic melodies in music. If it makes noise, if it makes rhythm, you can make it into an instrument... I think that 8-bit music is part admiration, part nostalgia, and then it's mostly, like, innovation.”

You can hear Zach’s enthusiasm when he references the music-making process. His three criteria for 8-bit music—admiration, nostalgia, innovation—sync up nicely with the three put forth by Collins—knowledge, creativity, and constraint. Zach’s conception that the GameBoy and SNES are “music machines” signifies some larger ideological shift in the way the 8-bit generation thinks about what it means to create music. 8-bit contains original compositions, but it is undoubtedly a remix culture, appropriating elements from disparate media and pasting them together.

Nullsleep - Salvation for a Broken Heart

8-bit also involves a strong element of hacking. The songs produced on video game consoles are generally called “chiptunes” (which can be used interchangeably with 8-bit as a genre tag). René Lysloff defines chiptune as “mod music… in which composers create full-blown mods using only computer-created sounds, often simply modified sine or square waves” (Lysloff, 2003). Lysloff also makes note of the “challenges and limitations” of making chiptunes, which results in compositions that are “astonishingly creative and rich in expressive nuances” (Lysloff, 2003). This video by Extreme Animals (who played at the show in Queens in October) illustrates the points made by Zach, Lysloff, and Collins quite well.



Here, Extreme Animals combine elements of heavy metal, chiptune, mashup, and even a film theme (Harry Potter) to create an original composition. When on stage, they perform with a guitar, a computer, and an SNES buried in hacked connections and wires—no doubt they’ve destroyed the mental block that says a videogame console cannot be a “music machine.”

John Egenes defines remixing and remix culture as “the 21st Century’s new folk process… a return to communal way of experiencing our art and our intellectual creations” (Egenes, 2010). 8-bit targets the core of the population who feel that “on some level, everyone is a musician” and operates by providing a truly alternative mechanism for music composition and creation (Egenes, 2010). This communal experience and exchange of art occurs in the online sphere. Sites like 8bc, 8bitpeoples, and micromusic serve to facilitate the sharing information, music, and images amongst members of the 8-bit community.

8bc is 8-bit culture's main online hub. We’ve come to see 8-bit as a mod culture, and as a remix culture, and by looking at 8bc, we can begin to see it as a fan culture as well. Both a site for uploading and sharing compositions and a forum for communicating with other members, 8bc features 664 pages of musical submissions and the most expansive 8-bit forum on the internet. Every song uploaded to the site is available to download for free. Most musicians who use the site use it to test out new compositions and get feedback. Users can comment on tracks and offer their views and constructive criticism (the site makes a point of calling it such). Almost all of the comments are enthusiastic and encouraging, asking the uploader for more or telling him/her to keep at it.

Hexadecimal Genome - Bit Shifter

Lysloff writes that hierarchies exist on these kind of sites, and that those hierarchies are “based primarily on prestige and authority” (Lysloff, 2003). 8bc is not exempt, and more notable bands like Anamanaguchi have pages filled with comments and questions. While, like nearly all virtual communities, there is a hierarchy based on length and quality of participation, 8bc is an overwhelmingly positive place. It is rarely subject to trolling or vicious arguments, and its users are committed to keeping it as a safe space to share music and ideas.

8bc also acts as a point of entry for a new member looking to get into the scene. Right on the home page anybody can download the latest music and enter the forums. And everything is free. This situates 8-bit as more than just a fan culture, but also a gift culture. “Made up of three elements related to the gift: to give, to receive, to reciprocate,” a gift culture takes fan participation to the next level (Hellekson, 2009). Giving, receiving, and reciprocation can be found on 8bc in the form of feedback, musical compositions, or original images. Users readily and happily swap their creations. In 8-bit culture, the consumers and producers blend. They generally are of the same age group (the ten year radius of the '90s), and participate in the same online spheres (8bc, 8bitpeoples, etc). At the Anamanaguchi show I attended in October, nearly everybody was under the age of thirty, and many musicians could be spotted in the crowd for other acts while they themselves weren’t performing. Members of the 8-bit community give back.

Pokémon Red & Blue - Gym Leader Battle Music [HQ] by Cocodayc

But that’s just how it appears on the inside, and I must admit, my affinity for 8-bit music and culture (though I’m not an active participant), renders my position toward picturing 8-bit in positive light. Many people outside of the culture view 8-bit as a gimmick, and don’t think it’ll last as a genre. Perhaps that’s why Zach felt the need to defend 8-bit to me in our interview,

“You wonder, ‘How big can it get?’ and then you realize, wait, this is like, videogame music. People are gonna have a really hard time with this, this couldn't be on the radio. I feel bad in that sense…"

But not everyone on the outside views chiptune badly. 8-bit rock band Anamanaguchi have steadily ascended to popular status, scoring the music for the Scott Pilgrim video game last summer and touring throughout the US. The Village Voice describe Anamanaguchi as chiptune’s savior, touting that,

“If chiptune does finally go mainstream, Anamanaguchi will surely lead the charge, and if they pull it off without relying on the nostalgia crutch, they could survive even after the games that inspire them are forgotten—or, in their case, never even remembered: All four band members are younger than the Nintendos they program.”

Which brings us back to nostalgia. A 2010 study on music-evoked nostalgia postulated, “the triggers of nostalgia during musical episodes are the particular associations the individual has formed between a given piece of music and both past events (i.e., the autobiographical salience of a particular song for a given person), as well as basic emotions that these events evoke” (Janata, 2010). This serves as a proper explanation for 8-bit indebtedness to pop-punk. Bands like Weezer and Blink-182 serve as core inspiration for a number of 8-bit bands, simply because that’s the music they were listening to at the time they were playing videogames. It’s not too far of a stretch to say that 8-bit aims for nostalgia by attempting to create autobiographical salience instantaneously. When Anamanaguchi perform live, the almost always include a cover of Blink-182’s “Dammit,” resulting in large mosh pit and singalong. Everyone in the crowd with whom “Dammit” resonates experiences an intense rush of pleasure, a result of nostalgia and the linking of a song with personal emotions and associations. Even though Anamanaguchi may be “younger than the Nintendos they program,” they definitely haven’t outgrown the pop punk phase, nor do they seem to want to.



In The Village Voice, Anamanaguchi frontman Peter Berkman said 8-bit culture “reminds [him] of car culture in the '50s, back when cars were simple enough to open up and fuck around with. That’s kind of the appeal of the system in artistic ways as well: It's almost like breaking electronic music down. Who needs high-end production when you can do it yourself?" That’s the ethos of 8-bit right now. It’s DIY, it’s a mod culture, it’s a fan culture, it’s a remix culture, it’s a gift culture: it is many things. 8-bit has its niche and its following, as Zach explained, “They're nerdier, really tech savvy, love videogames, love nostalgia. It works really perfectly.” To those core constituents, going mainstream is of no concern, all that matters is (re-)creating memories. And why not? I’d listen to anything that reminds me of Christmas Eve with my cousin.


Word Count: 1820
Works Cited

P.S. Merry Christmas!

8-Bit Culture: Works Cited

Karen Collins. "In the Loop: Creativity and Constraint in 8-bit Video Game Audio" twentieth-century music, Vol. 4 (2007), pp. 209-227

John Egenes. "The Remix Culture; How the Folk Process Works in the 21st Century" PRism Online PR Journal, Vol. 7, No. 3 (2010), pp. 1-4

Karen Hellekson. "A Fannish Field of Value: Online Fan Gift Culture" Cinema Journal, Vol. 48, No.4 (Summer 2009), pp. 113-118

Petr Janata, et al. "Music-Evoked Nostalgia: Affect, Memory, And Personality." Emotion, Vol. 10, No. 3 (2010), pp. 390-403


René T. A. Lysloff. "Musical Community on the Internet: An On-Line Ethnography" Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 18, No. 2 (May, 2003), pp. 233-263


links and videos provided in-text

Critical Review #8: "Polka Contrabandista"

Elijah Wald describes corridos as ballads with intriguing stories and social commentary. Songs of Mexicans and Mexican-American immigrants, corridos tend to take the political view that "drug abuse is entirely a Yankee problem," and that Mexicans crossing the border are "simply poor Mexicans servicing a demand in the United States" (222-3). Narcocorridos, the type of corrido that focuses on crime, take an special interest in drug use, and often counter the notion "that the narcotraficantes use the drugs themselves" (223). Wald uses English translations of lyrics to make the music accessible to his readers, and uses the lyrics to back up his claim that by staying true and consistent as a style of song, "corridos have proved their enduring power" (229).

Discussion Questions:

Wald says that "corridos continue to include social commentary as well as hot crime stories" (217). Can we view this dialectic the same way we can view Slick Rick's "Children's Story?" Is this type of storytelling--a combination of crime and caution--intrinsic to non-native music?

Fieldnotes #2: 8bc.org

8bitcollective (8bc.org) is a large hub for sharing user-made 8-bit tracks and has 31,415 members (as of 11/28/11)

site divided into three columns: login/comments, latest submissions, upload music with a navigation bar at top

registration is free and allows you to upload music and post on the forums

website in a struggle to support itself/pay for hosting - i almost had to do fieldnotes on other (and less universally-used) websites because 8bc was down all for a full week prior to 11/27

the forum has sections such as...

"new to 8bit?" which offers introductions as well as a thread on "how do u make 8bit music?" which is 5 pages long and was started in 2007. the thread gives instructions for downloading and installing LSDJ and a gameboy emulator for people to get started making 8bit music on their computers.

 "constructive criticism" for posting tracks and getting feedback from community members. interestingly, rather than posting tracks and asking people for comments, most of the threads in this forum are people offering feedback to other users. these threads get hundreds of posts. 

[organized by thread title / original poster / number of replies / number of views]

"gigs, venue, travel" which offers a sticky on how to put on a gig and is also a place where bands inquire about places to play (and then sleep) and forum members inquire about 8-bit culture across the globe (one user asked about 8-bit culture in the Philippines)

"upcoming shows" for show listings

"meet ups" to facilitate meetups

[organized by thread title / original poster / number of replies / number of views]

"releases" where people post when they release songs or collections of songs

the music page features 664 pages of submissions

this is where a lot of feedback happens. user roboctopus commented on this song, saying, "This was pretty cool. I dig the lead and that stereo kick. There's almost a church organ quality to the chords. I think the guitar could be more distinct in the mix though." like roboctopus' comment, most of the user feedback is incredibly positive and encouraging. people generally abide by the mantra of not saying anything if they don't have anything nice to say, which is refreshing for the internet. it's definitely not like youtube comments.

all the songs are available for download. 8bc is not really for monetizing final products, but more for sharing works-in-progress.

the first music submission was entered in 2005.

the fourth submission on the site was by anamanaguchi, and it was a cover of "you gave your love to me softly" by weezer.

anamanaguchi's musician page is one of the most popular on the site, garnering 500 views on all but 2 of their 34 submissions.

bit shifter is also a well known musician and an incredibly active forum member.

searching the music page for "cover" returns a tremendous number of results, which unfortunately aren't sortable by views or musician. covers range from "suzanne" by leonard cohen to the power rangers theme song.

pop songs are also very popular for covers. searching the covers for "katy perry" returns 11 songs, "lady gaga" returns 8, "beatles" returns 8.

Critical Review #7: wayne&wax

In a post called a "linkthink," Wayne Marshall writes about the emergence of reggaeton in the digital age. Based on a 4/4 kick pattern and a 3+3+2 polyrhythmic snare pattern, reggaeton can be easily made with simple computer music software, such as Fruityloops. Marshall was introduced to the genre while substitute teaching, (he even includes a sound snippet of himself rapping at kids to sit down and start their work) and he portrays the music as extremely resonant with the youth he instructed.

One of the keys to reggaeton for Marshall is the interchange of snare sound every 8 or 16 bars. He sees the "timbral change" as something intrinsically electronic and digital, something only accomplishable on computers. Producers acquire massive libraries of snare sounds from friends or from the internet, adding to the universal accessibility of the genre.

I especially liked Marshall's use of screenshots (taken in Fruityloops) to illustrate the music he was describing. It added to the universal feel and accessibility of the beat and samples he was talking about, and gave a visual representation of what it looks like to "draw up" a beat.

Discussion Questions:

Marshall suggests that "it would seem only a matter of time before unremarkable synth textures and one-finger melodies are replaced by the vibrant strains of salsa samples, indian flutes, and whatever else one wants to fit into its solid template." Has reggaeton become the "omnigenre" that Marshall predicted? What should we make of the "omnigenre" model, and how closely can one genre own a beat (think bhangra, jungle, Wilson Pickett)?

Critical Review: BBC 2 Jungle Documentary

The BBC2 documentary on jungle depicts the genre as London's answer to hip-hop and reggae. A mostly black genre, "jungle gets people moving by sampling the old songs that everyone loves and mixing them in with fast dance beats." Similar to hip-hop and reggae, jungle deals with DJs and MCs structuring a track. It takes influence from soul and reggae, appropriating black music while speeding it up and adding intense breakbeats. Jungle also follows the structure Les Back outlines, where "a cultural form developed in Jamaica is transported to Europe, re-made, and then, re-connected as a tradition, becomes re-cast in the present" (211). The idea of the bedroom producer persists, as the documentary takes us inside a bedroom studio. The bedroom producer helps enforce the point that jungle is a music for everyone, and that the people producing the music are exerting explicit control over its creative outcome.

In the second half of the documentary, we hear about General Levy finding chart success with a jungle single and being the first jungle act on Top of the Pops. This comes in stark opposition to the scenes before, where DJs discuss the value in having records (dub plates) that nobody else can play. The end of the documentary portrays jungle as something that will be immediately influential because of the waves it has stirred.

Discussion questions: Is there anything wrong with General Levy finding mainstream success? This is a conflict we've been dealing with all semester. Is it possible to release authentic music through mainstream channels? To use the mainstream in a way that doesn't contradict the message of originality and artistry? Does music that has a strong tie to place have a harder time utilizing the mainstream? An easier time?

Interview Excerpt: Zach Robinson

Zach Robinson is a fan of 8-bit music. He also makes music under the moniker D/A/D

Tristan Rodman: How would you categorize your relationship, as a listener and a fan, to 8-bit culture as a whole?
ZR: I mean, so, okay. There's a couple ways to look at it. In terms of like, 8-bit music, I've been listening to it for a while. How do I put this... Listening to 8-bit music recreationally with bands like Bit Shifter and Anamanaguchi and those guys, for a while... but when you really wanna trace it back, I've been listening to 8-bit music since 1994, when I was playing, like, videogames, and GameBoy, and all that stuff. Our generation has an incredible connection to this music, and that's why everyone who's making it and listening to it is mostly is in, like, a ten year radius of the early nineties. 'Cause that's where those sounds are coming from. I'm a fan of it, I think 8-bit music and videogame music as a whole is an incredibly diverse and powerful genre and it's just as intricate as pop music or classical music--it's great melodies, great progressions, intense technical ability is required to create it, it's a good subgenre.

TR: What role do you feel the internet has played in the proliferation, the sharing, of this music?
ZR: It's played everything. I would say everything. If 8bitpeoples is responsible for a community, 8BitCommunity is responsible for a community, Nullsleep, BitShifter, Anamanaguchi, every big--Starscream is on there I think--every big 8-bit artist went through 8bitpeoples at some point... That's how I heard that stuff first, and I know thats how most people heard it, it's that--it's the internet--and the people that use the internet the most, and the people that I feel use it to its fullest and would go 8bitpeoples are the ones that would appreciate that music the most. They're nerdier, really tech savvy, love videogames, love nostalgia. It works really perfectly. Everything really works for 8-bit music in that sense, but at the same time, there's a glass ceiling, and Anamanaguchi scored Scott Pilgrim--you imagine, "Woah, that's huge, that's a huge deal, they scored a Scott Pilgrim videogame--and seven years ago Pete [guitarist for Anamanaguchi] was making Power Supply in his basement, and now this specific music, you wonder, "How big can it get?" and then you realize, wait, this is like, videogame music. People are gonna have a really hard time with this, this couldn't be on the radio. I feel bad in that sense, but I think they [Anamanaguchi] rise to the challenge.

TR: How does one go about turning a GameBoy or an SNES into a musical instrument?
ZR: Technically, it's hacking. You know, Pete [of Anamanaguchi] hacks the Super Nintendo, he hacks the sound card and burns it onto cartridges. There's a lot of old school sequencers--you know Nintendo thought of this, regardless of 8-bit music being kinda popular in the past seven or eight years, Nintendo has been way on top of this since the beginning. LSDJ on GameBoy was a sequencer, Mario Paint was a big sequencer when you were younger. These are music machines. And it goes back to these Japanese composers just writing music on four-track machines, they only have a sine, a triangle, a noise and a square wave. And they're writing on these soundchips, it goes back to that--they just had nothing, and they created some of the most iconic melodies in music. If it makes noise, if it makes rhythm, you can make it into an instrument. I think that 8-bit music is part admiration, part nostalgia, and then it's mostly, like, innovation. And that's why I think people like it.

Critical Review #6: "Fear of (and Fascination with) a Black Planet"

David Hayes argues that white rap fans in Scottsville, a suburb of Toronto, have a skewed (and potentially ignorant) interpretation of race relations because of their involvement in and incorporation of hip-hop culture. He sets up Scottsville as racially homogenous, a mostly white area with a nebulous cultural definition. The kids Hayes interviews appropriate hip-hop styles and attend hip-hop concerts. He uses his subjects' failure to acknowledge other hip-hop scenes as a way to argue that they are wholly unaware of the meaning of hip-hop. The Scottsville youth focus mostly on gangsta rap, though "they embrace the street narratives of gangsta rap without interrogating those claims through sources of information" (71). The youth view themselves as post-racist, and as a result, eliminate the systematic racism that hip-hop rose in opposition to. They romanticize "locales prominent in many rap texts because these spaces are characterized by traits their town lacks" (72).


Discussion Questions:
How important is it that Hayes' interviewees are Canadian? It seems to me that Hayes is assumptive of a continuity between American and Canadian culture in relation to hip-hop, is that the case? Can hip-hop be understood as North American? Or is it an intrinsically American form?

The rap fans in Scottsville set up a clear dichotomy between East and West coast rap, leaving other American hip-hop hubs out of the equation. Is it fair for Hayes to set up this opposition between Biggie/Tupic and other rappers like Chingy, Ludacris, and Nelly when his subjects little mention of them at all? Can Nelly really be viewed as a member of the "wider field of hip-hop" (69)?

Signals and Noise: Anamanaguchi in New York City

The Museum of the Moving Image looked like one large pixel. The cubic structure occupies half of a city block in Queens, New York and illuminates like a lego brick stuffed with LED lights. I walked in and picked up my ticket, which came in the form of a lenticular wristband—it changed shape and color depending on how I looked at it. I turned to my left and saw an entire wall covered in a collage of YouTube video diaries—up close it looked like a collage of pixels, from a far it looked like a full image. The pixel seems an appropriate metaphor for the evening, and for 8-bit culture itself. The pixel is at once the part and the whole, the small component of a larger picture and something to be looked at independently. For 8-bit culture, there do not seem to be insiders or outsiders, merely many different people combining to make one aesthetic.

Anamanaguchi were one of many attractions at Signal to Noise, a night thrown by the museum once a month which features bands, DJs, art exhibits and interactive installations. While I waited for the band to start, I went upstairs and checked out the museum’s main room. Inside were arcade games and old console systems, available to play, but mostly as objects to-be-viewed-in-a-museum. The statement was not lost on me: games like Frogger and Asteroids should be seen as art. The whole night backed up that tone, treating videogames and associated 8-bit cultural items with a supreme level of respect and reverence.

Another large part of the evening was interaction. Whether it was a human-scale bubble popping game projected onto a wall upstairs the banter of bands in between songs, or the wall that displayed any tweet with the hashtag #SignalToNoise, the line between involvement and consumption was blurred. Most people in attendance took photos or posted tweets, creating their own media out of the evening. It was an evening to be enjoyed and re-lived, looked back on with a sense of fondness and nostalgia similar to the feelings of nostalgia evoked by the video game consoles upstairs.

Before Anamanaguchi officially started their set, they stood on stage joking, swapping riffs and laughs. Guitarist Peter Berkman plucked out the notes of the star-spangled banner to test his guitar tone. Quickly those notes transformed into the opening riff to “Dammit” by Blink-182 and drummer Luke Silas joined in. Within seconds, the entire crowd recognized the song and started dancing. Everything swirled in a moshpit and the then music stopped. A confetti popper went off a second too late. “Yo, that was fun man,” Berkman said, chuckling. The band then proceeded to finish setting up before announcing that they were “officially” ready to start the show.

Musically, Anamanaguchi take a tremendous amount of influence from pop punk and metal. The guitarists grew up trying to be “shredders,” and the songs come at a frantic pace. When not called “8-bit music,” the genre is referred to as chiptune, a call on the chips used to create the synth and drum sounds. Anamanaguchi transform white noise snares of an NES and the whining squarewaves of the GameBoy cartridge LSDJ into songs that move around simple single-line melodies and, though instrumental, follow a verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus structure. The pop punk comes through when these melodies shift on top of heavily distorted power chords reminiscent of blink-182 and Weezer. Consistent with pop punk and metal, the main bodily reaction to the music is moshing and slam-dancing. It’s done with a certain token of irony, but only a very small one. The rules to the mosh-pit are consistent with the rules at hardcore punk shows—pick someone up when they fall down, don’t let anyone get hurt.

The community centers around a shared sense of nostalgia for the videogames and music, both of which are reminders of the comforts of childhood. The members of Anamanaguchi are college-aged, and their aesthetic focuses around the pop culture of the 1990s. It’s music to play Pokémon to, and it’s re-appropriation of a timed-out mainstream culture that constitutes the aesthetic. It’s not videogame culture in the sense of Call of Duty: Black Ops or Battlefield. It’s decidedly lo-fi, an homage to reductive pixels and non-fluid graphics. It's a throwback.

The audience fully bought into the aesthetic that night. It was unclear whether the venue created a unique experience for the show, which was a very real possibility, but the cohesion of the evening made it feel like a true subculture. I felt implicitly welcomed. Because of its base in nostalgia, anybody who shares a sense of his or her childhood is encouraged to participate.

When Anamanaguchi had technical difficulties, they played a chiptune cover of the recent Britney Spears hit, “Till the World Ends” over the PA and the crowd went nuts. Everybody bought into it, jumping to the beat and hollering along. The layer of irony was already so thin that this moment dissolved it altogether. There was no shame or communally acknowledged sense of mockery. It was genuine fun. It was the same feeling everyone felt when the band launched into an impromptu Blink-182 cover during soundcheck, and the same feeling I got when I first stared at the outside wall of the Museum of the Moving Image.

Everyone was welcome as long as they checked their pretentions at the door. If this was going to be a night of fun, nobody could half-ass it. It felt unique to me, a culture that operated by putting everyone on an equal plane rather than setting out rules for insider status and subcultural capital. Signal to Noise and Anamanaguchi melded pixels with soundwaves, creating a unique existence for a night that called so much on the collective, shared, and remembered experiences of playing videogames as a kid.

I should note that I do peripherally associate myself with this scene. I’ve been to shows and art exhibits many times, and I know a couple of the performers. The account I provide of the openness of 8-bit culture may be so because I have the prerequisite knowledge needed to fit in. I remember playing Pokémon on my GameBoy as a kid and loving the music, and I remember being in awe when I heard Scott Pilgrim was going to be a major motion picture. I’m unclear as to how the scene would appear to someone who is outside the generational cutoff for this scene, but I would hope that it would appear as open and fun loving to anyone else as it does to me.

Word Count: 1108

Critical Review #5: "A Style Nobody Can Deal With"

Tricia Rose outlines the process by which the stylistic elements of hip-hop culture mirror hip-hop's narrative of "social resistance and affirmation" (82). Rap music's flow expects a broken drumline while DJs layer and scratch sections on top of each other, creating an angular motion. Breakdancing moves follow a similar pattern of fluidity interspersed with sharp movements--popping and locking. Graffiti artists use soft and "sweeping" letters in contrast with more rigid fonts (81). Rose describes it in sequence: "create sustaining narratives, accumulate them, layer, embellish and transform them," then "plan on social rupture " (82). When viewed together, the style forces a juxtaposition of fluidity and rigidity, a metaphor for the world from which hip-hop culture emerged.

Questions: How does this tie into Rose's claim that hip-hop "plays on class distinctions and hierarchies by using commodities to claim the cultural terrain?" (80) Also, can the styles of other subcultures be viewed through this same lens? Can it be universally asserted that the stylistic elements of a subculture mirror a narrative of "social resistance and affirmation?"

Fieldnotes, Signal to Noise in Astoria, 10/11/11

This weekend I went to an event at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, NY. It was called Signal to Noise and featured performances by many hybrid visual/sonic artists and a performance by 8-bit rock band Anamanaguchi. I walked into the museum to see a large video installation, a pixel wall of YouTube diaries that, when viewed from afar, gave off the impression of a pixelated image. The pixel aesthetic was very prominent throughout the night, mirrored in the fonts on all the signs, the art on the walls, and on the clothing of the attendees. The music in the first room (a DJ was playing) was loud, focused on squarewave basslines and stuttering beat-repeat effects. I walked upstairs and looked at the video game exhibit in the museum. They had classic console and arcade games on display and to play, and they were treated as art objects to interact with. Downstairs there was an interactive game exhibit that involved people's bodies popping bubbles on a projection screen. In the room with the live music, there was a projection of a Twitter feed displaying any tweet with the hashtag #SignalToNoise superimposed upon a camera feed of the audience.

As the band started playing, the audience was heavy on moshing. There was a boundary between the mosh pit and those standing outside of it. It was full body music, influenced by pop-punk, metal, and indie rock. Anamanaguchi played 8-bit covers of pop songs while having technical difficulties. The audience got really into it--irony disappeared.

Those in attendance presented a unique hybrid between "hipster" and "nerd," often blending the two aesthetics. Both men and women wore mostly graphic tees and jeans. Sometimes the tees had videogame logos on them, other times ironic cultural criticisms. One shirt read "Fucking White People" in white on a black fabric. The man wearing the shirt was white. My friend Macklin told me he'd heard at least four languages spoken--English, Spanish (he said it sounded like Catalan), Japanese, and another unidentified Eastern European language.

-As a subculture, 8-bit treats videogame consoles and their visual and sonic aesthetics with the utmost respect.

-All of the exhibits and events presented some audio/visual hybridity

-Almost every surface of the museum was white and blacklit, almost all the walls had something projected on them

-Both the musical and visual aspects of the performances and exhibits were predicated on mashup and re-approriation

Critical Review #4: "Just Add Performance"

Question 1 for the author: It seems as if there is an immensely different nature to playing these games in actual space in front of real people than creating a virtual performance for YouTube. What do you make of the divide between the reception of Rock Band and Guitar Hero performances in virtual and actual arenas? How does this division in reception reflect the ideas of camp and sexuality that you discuss?

Question 2 for the author: How do you approach using YouTube comments and other public and virtually published sources for critical analysis? What is the proper ethical code when dealing with these sources? How accurate can we perceive them to be without knowing much of the identity of the poster?

Question for the class: Do Guitar Hero and Rock Band constitute real performance? Do you agree with Miller's suggestion that putting the time in on a plastic kit is a valid and productive musical endeavor? How specific is this idea to the drum kit, the only instrument in the games which directly mirrors performing on its real-life counterpart?

Initial Topic Proposal: 8-Bit Culture

For my final ethnography project, I'd like to explore the virtual and real life elements of the 8-bit subculture. 8-bit culture interests me because of its presence across many media, and I want to explore how a culture that is entrenched in digital history represents itself in real life. There's also an interesting tension to explore, which is how 8-bit culture is getting appropriated into the mainstream. What does it mean that Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World became a movie? What does it mean that Anamanaguchi, a canonical 8-bit rock band, wrote the soundtrack? In addition, I'd like to explore the style of 8-bit culture. Does the pixelated reduction that is present in the music and the art come across in the way members of the scene represent themselves physically? If so, what does that look like and how does it alter our perception of the culture?

I'll take a look at the many online forums and hubs for 8-bit music and culture. These include 8bitpeoples, 8bc, 8bitguerilla and micromusic. These sites have forums and serve as places for conversation, as well as music creation and sharing. A large part of 8-bit and chiptune music is the creation of 8-bit covers of popular and rock songs. I'll be attempting to interview performers and artists both electronically and in person. Anamanaguchi are playing a show in Boston on December 1st and I hope to attend and interview members of the band. When I am home in Los Angeles for Thanksgiving I can also conduct in-person interviews with people who are active members of the scene, both in its online and in-person manifestations. I'm also hoping to find some students at Brown who are involved in the culture as well.

I think this will make a really interesting project because of 8-bit culture's relation to media and distribution, as well as its translocal nature.

Critical Review #3: "From the Mission Myth to Chicano Nationalism"

Mina Yang explores the Chicano movement in Los Angeles through its musical and political roots. She starts by giving historical context on immigrant life and the cultural pastiche Los Angeles, unpacking two contrasting mythic narratives of Mexican American life. One myth is that of the mission, where "music permeated every aspect of life, endowing everyday vents with magic and gaiety." (102) The music that accompanies this myth is filled with lyrics of romantic heartbreak and sorrow. The other myth, much more real, is that which accompanies the musical "corrido." Rather than lament heartbreak, lyrics of corridos "dwell on the details that flesh out the immigrant's misery with excruciating realism." (106) Yang proves music an integral part of Mexican American culture, and important element of their identity -- "defined ethnically by what they were not." (107) As civil rights movements picked up nationally and locally, Mexican American appropriated music as a political form. Los Angeles became a hub for the Chicano subculture, entrenched in both political activism and a musical style that borrowed elements from all of the minorities of east Los Angeles. This subculture came to define a generation of Mexican Americans and "gave the Chicano generation its first taste of independence from Anglo and African musicians and recordings, even if [their] sounds reflected the mixed heritage of Mexican American culture." (114)

Questions:

How did the Chicano subculture break the binary of black and white? If, as Hebidge suggests, subculture presents a binary between the mainstream and the independent, what aspects of Chicano subculture allowed it to turn the strict lines into a gradient? Was it because this subculture was "self-enclosed?" (114) Also, what role did Los Angeles geography play in giving this musical subculture a very unique political association?

Critical Review #2: "Translocal Connections and the Goth Scene"

Paul Hodkinson discusses the translocal nature of the goth music scene in England, tracing its presence across geographical bounds. He reveals his position as a "critical insider" and aims to "assess the consistency of the goth scene from place to place and to establish the extend to which it was experienced as translocal by participants." (132) Hodkinson describes two categories of cultural connections that goths experience. Identity and and taste comprise abstract connections, while connections through travel commerce and media make up the concrete. His interviews with members of the culture reveal their connection to each other across local boundaries, mostly through gatherings in physical (music festivals) or virtual space (online communities). Connections between goths depend far less on a locally-based community, and much more on a shared aesthetic. Shop owners and DJs share information about what sells, and through compilation CDs and curated stores, goths can find music and clothing that fit their common style. Hodkinson writes this account to prove that musical subcultures don't have to be rooted geographically in a single area, that they can exist translocally or in virtual space.

Questions: Hodkinson says that "goths perceived that they had more in common with other goths hundreds or thousands of miles away than they did with most nonaffiliated members of their immediate locality." (134) Is this commonality something that is unique to goth subculture? What traits of goth music culture make it so that this is possible? What is the relationship between the translocal nature of a scene and the connection between its members? Is isolation from the "immediate locality" what fosters translocality?

Critical Review #1: "Exploring the Meaning of the Mainstream (or why Sharon and Tracy Dance around their Handbags)"

In "Exploring the Meaning of the Mainstrem," Sarah Thornton details the subculture of club music both subjectively and objectively. She begins her essay with a personal account of attending a series of acid house raves, profiling the events as she experienced them. She then branches out into a larger social discussion of the culture and its ethnographic complications: how club culture deals with gender and class. As the subtitle indicates, she discusses the notion of "handbag house," and the Sarahs and Tracys that were icons of what some perceived to be the mainstream. The handbag being an image of housewifery and adulthood, Sarahs and Tracys are decidedly un-hip. This subjective approach (Thornton portrays the world as its participants see it) culminates with a discussion of subcultural capital--the knowledge of certain members of a subculture that ascends their status. Before transitioning into her objective account, Thornton acknowledges the impossibility of being both a participant in and an observer of club culture, as the two are implicitly disconnected. But as an objective observer, Thornton fails to "find a crowd [she] could comfortably identify as typical, average, ordinary, majority or mainstream." (106) This substantiates her main argument that the concepts of mainstream and subculture are fluid rather than rigid--"mainstream culture" is actually to broad and assumptive to view with a sociological lens.

Discussion topics: How does social media affect the hierarchy and exclusivity of club culture? How much cache lies in secrecy--does Twitter ruin this subculture or enable it? What happens to the idea of "mainstream" when there is no majority? Based on the data Thornton gives, women are far more likely to go out dancing than men. What does this say about the nature of socialization in the subculture?