It is the year 2022, and our existence as Sapiens is symmetrically divided between a physical and a digital experience: the digital is overbearing our lives to the point of leading us to reclassify 'real life' into its own new, clearly delineated space, a new syntactic container called IRL, in real life. The dynamics of these two spheres, far from being divided and, on the contrary, increasingly interdependent, currently revolve around a few large corporations. The latter centralise and 'cultivate' the data of individuals with the same frenzy with which society itself voraciously throws itself at the products of an increasingly resource-poor Earth. These new 'cybernetic lords of the rings' (cit.) use increasingly powerful techniques (with the help of Artificial Intelligence algorithms) to guide our beliefs, our consumption, and ultimately our behaviour.
The Internet was supposed to save us, yet it risks becoming our nemesis.
Funnily enough, the web was born with a spirit of sustainability and decentralisation: the idea, which originated within the US military when developing its first incarnation, was to have an information network that would be impossible to take down with a single attack.
As is often the case, capital, this time in the guise of the database moloch, has packaged 'convenience of use' into a competitive design and by-products. This capital has thus captured the monopoly of certain essential services, such as searching for information, sharing images, and all other forms of content.
The Internet was supposed to unite us, but it has instead become a tool in the hands of a few to divide and enclose us.
Perhaps music, often at the centre of the most important cultural revolutions, will save us.
Not too long ago, first rock & roll and then the brit invasion completely changed the popular culture of the 1950s and 1960s, from fashion trends to romantic relationships, from the most common social behaviours to new consumer trends, towards a new lifestyle in open antagonism with the previous generation and its worn-out and obsolete tools.
In the following decade, music became the soundtrack of protest against war and social norms considered obsolete. Artists themselves realised the immense power of music, leading to one of the most important events of the 1980s, Live Aid, which brought the issue of world hunger to the general public and gave them the opportunity to contribute to progressive change. In those years, music became central to raising awareness about the scourge of AIDS and, especially in the United States with the birth of Hip Hop, about the spread of crack cocaine.
Music has also driven the most important revolution of recent years: the internet. Sharing mp3s has not only led many new users to discover the net, but it has also helped to develop important technologies such as peer-to-peer (which underpins blockchain), defining their survival despite the closures of Napster and the advent of the centralised sharing economy.
Today, music and art again contribute to the spread of peer-to-peer logic, this time reinforced by blockchain, smart contracts, and NFTs. At the same time, they are front and centre of a digital revolution pushing towards decentralising the value of our digital lives. The web user and his digital wallet become one, navigating the web and connecting to new services and content platforms while retaining complete control of the value generated, shared, and digitally 'experienced' on these platforms. By taking possession of these tools, the hope is that the user can finally claim ownership of his interactions, of the value of his creativity, be it musical or visual, and can incentivise others to believe in these ideas, becoming their co-beneficiaries.
From tenants of other people's space, we would become, in all effects, citizens of the Net, with new honours and burdens.
This new way of using the Internet allows us to dream of a more humane technological future, where perhaps by connecting with each other, networking, and decentralising power, we can finally recover our identity and individuality.
In homage to this decentralisation, ROBOT Festival has chosen to spread the event across several locations in the city of Bologna, greatly enriching the festival experience. From the 5th to the 8th of October, you will find us at the Accademia di Belle Arti, DumBO, Palazzo Re Enzo, the Oratorio di San Filippo Neri, and the TPO – places that are very different in terms of history and vision, but just like the future we dream of, their plurality makes us richer and more interesting.