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REWIND: Refraction Takes Over Bangkok Devcon Week

Bangkok, you were absolutely incredible. 🙌 From dancefloor-filling selectors to thought-provoking discussions, last week was a celebration of art, technology, and community.

Refraction DAO
REWIND: Refraction x TOWNS - Brussels

Nearly 1,000 attendees joined our event last week in Brussels at Reset. Dana Kuehr & Catalina warmed up the dance floor, setting the stage for the legendary Move D's transcendent set. Tijana T closed the night, keeping the energy high until 4:30 AM.

Refraction DAO
REWIND: LUKSO x Refraction - Austin 

This March, together with LUKSO, we had an incredible evening at Austin’s favorite natural wine watering hole LoLo, exploring themes of identity, ownership, and the New Creative Economies through immersive art by Cibelle Cavalli Bastos and Tabitha Swanson.

Refraction DAO
Beyond Boiler Room: Exploring the Future of Creator-Led Streaming

Understanding the necessity and the asymmetries of live streams is what drove our most recent research project in partnership with Livepeer - trying to think through what the future of live streams might look like and, also, crucially, how Web3 technologies might intervene.

Refraction DAO
REWIND: Creative Grants - Refraction x MaHalla - Monster Mutations (Berlin) with, Frank Bretschneider, Moderna, Maya Wada

Taking over a 9000 square meter former turbine hall, Monster Mutations provided an alternate space to explore the outer reaches of the consciousness cosmos.

Henry Ivry
Creatives First: Gayance

Gayance's mix traverses the Black diaspora, playing each track on their own terms and allowing us to see the vibrancy and vitality of Black culture outside of cultural gentrification and fetishization.

Henry Ivry
Creatives First: Kontronatura

Moving with dexterity through his record bag, Brazillian DJ Kontronatura builds lines of solidarity throughout the Black diaspora. Starting with some of the most exciting names in contemporary Brazilian club music.

Henry Ivry
Can DAOs Save Community Radio? — The Local vs Global Approach of MCR

Behind the good vibes, internet stations are having something of a crisis. But recent Refraction grant recipient Miami Communiity Radio believe that web3's community focus holds the key to longterm sustainability.

Henry Ivry
Creatives First: K6V & David Zhao

Tellingly titled, "Functional Music 4 Dysfunctional Mind," DJ K6V describes the mix as "hard music for fantastic babies in hard times." 

Henry Ivry
Creatives First: Perpetual Care

Joel Eel of Perpetual Care comes through with the first in our seasonal mix series. Intimate and warm, filled with moments of beauty and surprise—this is the sound of a community coming together to create, as he puts it, "our own universe of sound." 

Henry Ivry
A Subaquatic Journey Through Sound: Father Dukes Playlist

The ocean is the site of rebirth, a place of curiosity and a home for an alternative, Afrofuturist ideology that continues to pulse through Black culture. In her mix for Refraction, Father Dukes explores the resiliency of culture, and music as a force of vitality and creation.

Henry Ivry
Minted Chaos: Season 02 Community Mint Results

We invited the wider Refraction community to dive into Abstract Turntablism by applying some of the techniques developed by Detroit's Pure Rave collective. Listen to the results, now available to mint on Nina Protocol.

Henry Ivry
Black Exodus Technology: In Conversation with Abu Qadim Haqq

For over three decades, visual artist Abu Qadim Haqq has created artworks for Detroit techno and adjacent electronic music that depict entire worlds, decolonial incursions beyond human experience, fragmented within the space and format of vinyl records.

DeForrest Brown Jr
Chaotic Mix: Pure Rave

For the final Chaotic Mix, Detroit collective Pure Rave set aside expectations about DJing as we're reminded of the sheer wonder that electronic music can bring.

Henry Ivry
Chaotic Mix: quest?onmarq

For the third instalment of our Chaotic Mix series, the New York native presents an eclectic three-act mix that spirals from chaotic good to chaotic evil.

Henry Ivry
Chaotic Mix: Leevisa

For our second Chaotic Mix, the Seoul-based DJ, producer and composer Leevisa delivers immersive world-building through contrasts and unexpected left turns.

Henry Ivry
Tracing the Blurry Lines of Experimental Turntablism

John Chiaverina explores the history of turntablism and its interactions with dance music, culminating in the work of Pure Rave, a Detroit collective working with Refraction as part of its Minted Chaos season.

John Chiaverina
Chaotic Mix: Bergsonist

For this season's theme, we asked New York-based artist and musician Bergsonist to create a chaos-inspired mix. Listen here as she touches on everything from Swedish field recordings to classic Detroit house to percussive African workouts.

Henry Ivry
Minted Chaos: A Community Experiment in Chance Dance with Pure Rave

For this season's theme of Minted Chaos, Refraction and Pure Rave are partnering on an audio experiment inviting the extended Refraction community to create their own Chance Dance audio piece in Pure Rave style. Selected tracks will then be published on Nina Protocol.

Pauline Le Mell
Incidental Party Music: Pure Rave Brings Experimental Turntablism to the Dancefloor

While Pure Rave cites experimental turntablists like Christan Marclay and Maria Chavez as influences, they also are working within the rich history of Detroit electronic music, with an origin story linked to the Motor City's robust and historic dance music scene. 

John Chiaverina
REWIND: Refraction x Zerospace (NYC) with Aluna, LATASHÁ

Working at the boundaries of hip-hop, deconstructed club, and stoner electronics from the likes of 063N13, JWords, dreamcastmoe, LATASHÁ, Prefuse 73, and Aluna, the ZeroSpace lineup complemented the visual world that reflects the diversity and vision of the Refraction community.

Refraction DAO
Signal Strength: How Internet Radio Is Creating a New Space For Global Sounds and Culture

Internat radio stations have popped up in cities on almost every continent, dedicated to platforming a diverse array of sounds from places big and small, bringing local micro-scenes to the entire world.

Sean Finnan
REWIND: Refraction x Carnegie Hall - Public Records (NYC) With Epic B, Hitmakerchinx & Uninamise

FLEX AVE showcased Flex Dance Music icons Epic B, Hitmakerchinx, and Uninamise, who set the stage for the subculture's distinct contortionist choreography, tracing the kinetic connections across Black music history while building Afrofuturist worlds of sound and dance.

Refraction DAO
REWIND: Refraction x FWB - Bambi's (Toronto) with Teen Daze

Teen Daze takes us back to an unforgettable night in Toronto with this exclusive Refraction Radio mix ✨

Refraction DAO
REWIND: Refraction x FWB - Public Records (NYC) With Ron Trent

Relive the energy of our March event with Ron Trent, the don of house music past, present and future.

Refraction DAO
Announcing: S02/S03 Refraction DAO Creative Grants

For Season 02 + 03, Refraction DAO will launch a Creative Grants programme through an open call worldwide to the community.

Kaitlyn Davies
Refraction NYC

3 days. 4 events. Over 80 artists. Find out what we've got planned this week during NFT.NYC.

John Chiaverina
Rethinking the Value of Music in Web3

The advent of web3 presents an opportunity for alternatives that exist outside of this imaginary stranglehold but, in order to start thinking about music outside of our current model, we need to start thinking about the value of music differently.

Henry Ivry
Sounds and Visions: An A/V Playlist of Nicolas Sassoon's Work

French-Canadian visual artist Nicolas Sassoon walks us through some of the highlights of his catalogue, featuring works inspired by electronic music as well as the natural landscape of British Columbia.

Nicolas Sassoon
Real and Imagined Landscapes

Exploring Island geography with Nicolas Sassoon and Yu Su

Henry Ivry
Revolution or regression? Changing perspectives on music NFTs

While much of the talk within the world of Web3 is prone to hyperbole — there are endless promises of revolution, not to mention the tech world's favorite buzzword: disruption.

Henry Ivry