Entering the first room of Diage festival, you’re immediately presented with an elevated DJ booth surrounded by four large obelisks on each side that flash animatedly with wrap-around LED lights. They resemble the monolith from Space Odyessy; something to be worshiped, a harbinger of the future that will quickly come. This is a future where technology is viewed as a medium and there’s no limit to anyone one particular art form. Here, new worlds are created utilizing all the senses and tools available. Big, warm vibrations spill from the sound system, enveloping the body while video art is projected on massive screens and LED walls. Lasers flash overhead in intricate patterns, often criss-crossing in a high arch up into the ceilings like a vaunted cathedral of light. This is techno-utopianism at its best.
To get to the festival, you hunt through a ghost mall, searching multiple floors with mostly empty shops dotted by the occasional restaurant or salon left standing. As you go deeper and get closer, fog creeps into these vast empty spaces, spilling out of the machines at the event, hidden nearby behind closed doors. But there it is, finally, on the top floor, and once you pass through the checkpoint, the ceilings are three stories high, there are wide dance floors, and the climate is set to a comfortable room temperature. People lounge in groups on the floor like any other outdoor festival, but now there’s no rain to worry about or burning sun to hide from.
The crowd at times resembles an old-school horror movie, with an audience lit by flashing grayscale lights, willingly submitting themselves to some type of mass hypnosis. They all stare upwards intently, wide-eyed with a slight smile on their open mouths. The flashing images on video the size of an IMAX project silhouetted aliens lurking about menacingly by 404.Zero, a fitting subject matter for the scene unfurling around you. At a later point in the festival, Amnesia Scanner even uses the vintage circus-style hypnosis spiral, seeming to drive the point at home. But of course, this is all just part of the fun—a mysterious atmosphere that allows the imagination to run wild, and there’s certainly no conspiracy going on.
It’s been a good time for tech art in Bangkok recently, with Diage just one of several events exploring the culture. Unformat launched their showcase in August and the Collective hosted their inaugural event this month as well, each bringing together light and motion artists with solid electronic music. Many artists participated in all three of these events, highlighting the importance of such nights to bring the community together as a whole rather than being spread across different parties and venues.
Diage is more than just a party, however. A dozen locally-based artists created video work that’s exhibited during daylight on the shapely obelisks, tall and skinny things that give new meaning to the idea of vertical video as usually defined by social media. There’s also a heavy educational element, with numerous talks and classes in the run-up to and during the event itself. There are even people sitting cross-legged in the middle of the dancefloor with laptops, casually coding at peak time. Here, the nerd is saint.
The guests are a mix of international headliners, local rave stalwarts, and well-respected underground DJs from across the globe. There’s the nostalgic A/V show of Ghostly alum Shigeto and Daito Manabe, the club pop performance of Coucou Chloe, and the EDM-light of Lorenzo Senni. The mood shifts from exploratory and introspective, with shimmering synth pads and virtuosic Ableton programming; to tropical vibes that blend club music with elements of reggaeton and soca. At the very end of the weekend, the NONOTAK duo take to the stage to close things out, bringing with them their installation of scrims set up in the pattern of a weightless cross. They face each other at their stations, with white lights glowing and flashing in front and behind them, their silhouettes cutting stark shadows in between. It’s a fitting end to the night, one that doesn’t close a door but rather opens one to a wide future of possibilities. Diage is just the beginning.
