ArcSoc Review: Magnavox Odyssey

TOBIAS DE MONFORT-JONAS considers this most conceptual of nights


What is me?

That is the fundamental question that the University Architecture Society asks of each of us at their first Michaelmas night.

Set in the Fountain, the counterpoint of Cambridge’s beloved Cindy’s, the laser cut-out pacmen dangling from the ceiling reassert the predetermined pathways of my socio-biologically constructed brain. We have arrived (at the Fountain); this is music.

So conceptual

Silver leggings, pink harajuku wigs and leopard print flies through my vision in a fractured collage of modernity, but let us not stereotype, at least not without due consideration of the archetypal interplay of class-determined ethically sourced fashion initiatives – I believe I spotted some converse.

The evening, underscored by an expressively eclectic mixture of Whitney Houston, artistically placed Britney and, of course, a strong electro selection, explored the tactability of space, commenting, one assumes, on postmodern gestural forms.

As often the case with electro and related beats, the materiality of ritual began to take centre stage allowing the sometime theatre goers to melt into matter. If capitalism has reduced us to exchange value, then it is with the spiritual trance of regular beats, the relinquishing of ego, that a sense of communality may be returned to us.

Surrounded by deferred geometric forms, beautiful people (I hope I don’t offend) and the pungent mingling of beard conditioner and rollies, it is with this kind of initiative thanks to arcsoc that such recontextualisation may lead to a greatly desired semiotic transformation.

Priced at £6 for the average punter or £4 for members (although being a member costs £15, I don’t understand either), I might conclude that if you like music other than the lion king medley, this may be one to watch.

Power to the people, vegans and James Blake.