This chapter is different in structure from the others in that it does not have one overall theme, but three parallel concerns that may be defined thus:

The becoming shaman section of this chapter deals with the individual methodology of transformation, the raving on the plane includes information for educators teaching multi-disciplinary arts courses that would include a rave section. The assessing musical education section looks at the various methods of assessment for the arts, which rather than defining a teleological process, give us the notion of aesthetic processing (non-teleological) packs.

I wish to locate this chapter within a theory of education that concerns itself with the emergence in society of computer technology, yet designates the wildman or shaman or sorcerer, as a pre-conceived agent, who, as a user of this technology, cannot be rigidly categorised into a comprehensive notion of ‘the subject’ (as recipient of computer education). The change of agency and technological usage involved, can be expressed in terms which Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari have called, "blocks of becoming".Such blocks of becoming, are unstable, complex crossing points; they act in a variety of manners to be explored here through the application to a computerised field of learning. This tactic avoids a linear appropriation of technological change and agency, which would lead to an evolutionary or progressive model of learning, or one that has been designated to remove us from a state of nature (even though computerised society is theorised as establishing a substantial difference from agrarian and industrial societies, its learning parameters reveal techno-tribalism). The figure of the wildman, stands in a dual movement to bind us to the dark areas beyond rationality, and to release us from identification with a complex individual (with rights) in a post-modern, computerised environment. That which is posited, is a drift in imagination, where the shaman can be thought of as learning in computer technology; and this figure digitally combines with the praxis of the rave and with aesthetic appreciation in the learning cohort. Located amid the collective praxis of teaching and learning, the intensity of musical reference cannot be denied; this referentiality is at its most intense regarding learning about the transfiguration of electronic music. Teaching the wildman today involves learning about and through electronic music, as well as understanding how the nomadic shaman roams across planes of learning that are mediated by music and in aesthetics.

The introduction of the shaman produces a type of delirium which is irresistible to contemporary man. Exploration of this delirium is to position an escape route from current notions of psychic disease, and to make it possible in terms of curriculum content to enter into the type of ‘immanence’ that music presents to popular culture (the learning in the rave). The question of immanence is directly tied to that of the machine by Deleuze and Guattari in their first volume of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, by figuring the notion of "desiring-machines". Immanence does not produce necessary conditions for the evolution of the system under analysis, but acts as a plane on which the full complexity of the phenomenon may co-exist (in this chapter it is the [shaman-raving on the plane-aesthetic education]). On this plane, machines do not evolve mechanically given the calculation of the starting parameters to set goals, but symbiotically progress hybrid complex behaviours to alien rhapsodies, in terms of involuted invention and intensive biospheres (the Excursus is a complex machine in which all part coexist and interact in this manner). The multiple transformations of the ‘blocks of becoming’, make tracks towards the becoming-[x], which Deleuze and Guattari have theorised. The shaman causes localised disruption through the figures of werewolves; or acts as mythological creatures in the history of demonology, never reconciling their behaviour with cultural and societal norms, or to reactions against them. They implement what is forbidden; they are a methodology to scramble the coding apparatuses that contemporary society operates (the normalisation of morality in democratic sedentary society). This process may be understood as the transmission of taboo or "the power of infection" of which Freud wrote, (this is accelerated and intensified in an electronic environment). In nomadic societies, the splitting of the shamanic ritual into veneration and horror has not yet occurred; the figure of the priest is not one of worship, but encapsulates intensive variations of fear in a "vibratory spiralling movement" (heightened and extended through the global media-sphere).

The transmission of taboo is the site where this chapter works. Here, the mixture of the sacred with the profane is confused; the shaman, learning about music and raving in computer technology is not an educational experiment designed to demonstrate the flexibility of the new medium, but extends our understanding of agency towards the farthest reaches of imaginable horror and fear (and the social units which deal with such emotions). This is not in order to write the script for a horror film, but to take us within intensive variations that set up connections and thought patterns discernible as the type of puissance of the masses by which computer technology operates (in the rave, through the digital and in aesthetic education). Just as the cyberpunks hack into prevailing capitalist codes to augment their collective zeitgeist; shamanic contagion cuts across technological determinism (the use of technology to determine the state of progress or evolution of a society), to open up a way of thinking about computer technology which feeds back into the fear of society at large in whose palm it rests. This is a complex loop, and one in which the learning parameters have been extended and made flexible enough to cover the behaviour of the shaman with the delirium of the rave and units of aesthetic learning. Information is not the primary aim of this form of learning, but is subsumed by the transmission of vibrational molecules, taboo, intensity and the fluctuations of learning by the electronic cohort that are passing through our educational establishments.

At the apex of the power relationship which is being used and understood in the Excursus, sits the laughing and elusive shaman. The many anthropological studies which have been carried out to understand the shaman, reveal the predominance of shamanism in nomadic hunter/gatherer societies. Shamans are importantly associated with everything to do with movement, with rituals of flight, with the control of fire; and with the journey from life to death. The period of initiation for the novice shaman, is a time of mental instability where they experience strange dreams, or are taken by violent fits, or have to leave the tribe to be alone in the wilderness in order to ‘come to terms’ with the powers which are beginning to possess them. This process has been well described by Mirea Eliade in his book, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. The learning of the shaman confers knowledg e from the dead which include rituals about movement, the use of drugs and the signs and symbols of their craft; for example, the Cobeno shaman (of Mexico), "introduces rock crystals into the novice’s head; these eat out his brain and his eyes, then take the place of those organs and become his ‘strength’".The shamans as such have to die before they are endowed with magical substance (that allows them to move freely), and thence they are able to communicate with the spirits in the fulfilment of their shamanic following. This death is rehearsed by the enactment of powers which defy death; for example, masters and neophytes walking barefoot on fire without seeming to burn themselves, or the exchanging of eyes, ears and tongues between novices and shamans, or the piercing with hot rods in the chest and the stomach. The central motifs of dismemberment, gashing or opening the abdomen remain constant, the novice’s body being cut up and reassembled (this is the shamanic learning process).

During the initiation of the medicine man in Malekula, the novice is asked to lie on a bed of leaves, while the Bwili (medicine man), cuts off his arms and legs. The victim is required to receive this dismemberment with laughter, and if he does so, the Bwili cuts off his head, after which the novice is still required to show no sign of discomfort. The Bwili puts back the body parts, and the rite of passage is thereafter negotiated. According to the Kiwai Papuans, the initiate has his bones replaced by an óboro (spirit of a dead person); after which the power to summon the dead is achieved, and the shamanic powers are bestowed. Among the Dyak of Borneo, the brains of the neophyte are taken out and washed, in order to clear the mind so that it may receive the mysteries of evil spirits. Gold dust is sprinkled into the eyes so that they may see the wanderings of souls, barbed hooks are planted on the tips of fingers, in order that they are able to seize the soul and hold it fast, the heart is pierced with an arrow so that it receives the suffering of the sick. The impetus for the learning process of the shaman is the necessary connection between the savage rearrangement of the flesh, and the augmentation of psychical powers. In contrast to the suggestion that the mind is watered and serviced through mechanical and neutral activity using computer technology; the lessons of the shaman rock the stance that logical games (playing with objects) are painless and non-intrusive (as in the case of the organisation of the modern state, which portrays itself and the learning processes which it engenders in those terms). What is learnt by the seers, healers and mediums, is the personal experience of pain, and the full possibility of being taken to the brink of death, beyond which one is able to make objective judgements as oneself or ‘I’.

The litany of horrors confronting the prospective shaman, take many of their energies from the residues of festal ecstasy that were played out in terms of sacrifice, cannibalism, and the enactment of predator and prey relationships. Such a music of death was theorised by Georges Bataille in his, Theory of Religion, as the domain of the sacred and the threshold between the human and the inhuman. The purpose of the sacrifice according to Bataille is to destroy the ‘thing’, so that the community may enter into the world of immanence and be absorbed by the richness of sensuality associated with blood rites. Sacrifice also contests the primacy of utility in the group, as the useless wasting of human life demonstrates that production and power are not wedded in an unbreakable union, but may be wrenched apart through the glorious and ultimately consumptive act of sacrificial death. In contrast to the precept that real power requires the control of productive forces, the sacrificial sacred prioritises the unreal force of immanence, and the loss of the human which occurs as the thing and its duration are destroyed through death (mythologised). Bataille charts the rise of the military and industrial orders, which placed a blockade around the domain of the sacred, and constructed a world in which productive forces were allowed to expand in order to meet ever increasing material needs. In effect, a schism was introduced, which took autonomous industrial and military human beings away from the violent intimacy of the sacred order; the industrial humans found clear consciousness through the object-orientated clarity of scientific thought; the military humans used reason and morality to understand the systematic growth in economic power that the empire had provided.

Bataille gives us a convincing account of the loss of the sacred world of primitive society; yet with regards to the shaman, it is one which does not fully deal with the heterogeneous nature of sorcery in nomadic society. The power of sacrifice was one of a sedentary people, for example, the Aztecs; who employed it on a grand scale to establish a priest class via a massive hierarchy of blood (fear of the masses). Whether this was an employment of the sacred realm of immanence, or merely an economy of terror as Christian Duverger has argued; it is impossible to know. Elsewhere in the series of essays, Literature & Evil, Bataille makes it clear that the Aztecs provided his model for the articulation of a theory of religion, which went along the lines of his notion of dépense (expenditure) or useless waste. Thus, even though the idea of expenditure is useful to help reconcile the sacred world of myth with the necessity of blood, it does not provide enough divergence to fit into the notion of shamanic contagion in computerised education. The fundamentally Hegelian historical subject, which desires by negation of the ‘I’ with the not- ‘I’ (and conquers by destruction of the not- ‘I’), which Bataille took from his reading of Alexandre Kojève; is perhaps a comment on the political climate of post-war Europe, which however, in a post-modern context of global capitalism (the markets) such a placement seems to have regressed in theoretical importance. The discovery of that which is uniquely human or sacred seems to be irrelevant given that fluctuations in global economics may result in the up rooting of populations, starvation and wars. The placement of shamanic contagion as a methodology for learning with computers is a means of communication designed to complexify the subject, and to make it resistant to historization (in an Hegelian or Marxian fashion), and the pressures of sedentary society and, thus, able to pass via the electronic networks that bind the activity of the markets. To establish a theoretical stance that may be used as a methodology for transmitting the vital learning to which this thesis alludes, we need to look in more depth at the transformations of the shaman in terms that Deleuze and Guattari have called ‘becoming-animal’.

There are any number of ‘becoming-animal’ which have been attributed to the shaman. The shaman takes possession of the animal form (or is possessed by it), in order to shed his or her human skin and to travel in the dimension of the spirits. Eliade speaks of the secret language of the animal-spirits, in which the shamans become fluent, and use to establish an existence in illo tempore, where the separation between humans and the animal world has not yet occurred. The Buryat shamans describe a process called khubilgan, which may be translated as ‘metamorphosis’; the spirit-animal serves as a double or alter ego, which enables the shaman to take on its form and to pass through the dimension of the animals. The animal form of the Tungus shaman is a snake, whose motions imitate those of the whirlwind during the communication with the dead: the Chukchee shamans turn themselves into wolves, the Lapps become bear, reindeer, fish: the Semang hala can change into a tiger, as can the Sakai halak and the bomor of Kelantan. During the initiation of the Carib shamans of Dutch Guiana, the neophytes are taught how to turn themselves into bats and jaguars, which is part of a long period of ritual, dancing and intoxication with tobacco. Witchcraft in England also has the idea of being able to turn into animals firmly rooted in its folklore. In 1673, the testimony of Anne Armstrong, gave elaborate accounts of witches who are able to turn themselves into animals. They may appear as hares or cats, at Allansford they danced in the likeness of bees: Anne Baites, it is related, turned herself into a cat, a hare, a greyhound and a bee: Dorothy Green of Edmondbyers and Mary Hunter of Birkenside bewitched a mare by turning themselves into swallows and flying around it forty times.

Becoming-animal defines a plane of consistency (immanence), which allows for the multiplicities of transformative change to emerge. We do not have to restrict the formula to becoming [only]-animals, but in the context of sorcery, the becoming- [x] is ‘blocked’ or streamed into a definite tendency towards the limit fringe between animals and humans. To this extent, the shaman is a figure of the ‘borderline’. Sorcery operates in the regions where species merge and separate. Iain Hamilton Grant has located this process in the formation of a zoopoliteia, whereby the sorcerers use the borderlines to make barriers against the erosion of phyla (e.g. human and animal species); and to intensify the demons on the thresholds, which act as the motors for transhumant becomings. Grant is speaking about the demonology of the ‘New Earth’, where the notion of the sorcerer is taken away from an anthropological study of hunter/gatherer society as nomadic, and used as a metaphor for the politics of biology which infects much of our thinking about humankind today. The new scientific priesthood dictates a form of morality, which arrests the molecular becomings of the shaman or witch (as schizophrenia, as anti-social), and produces molar poles between which becoming may operate, (e.g. minoritarian politics, racial and sexual discrimination).

This is not to dismiss the working of libertarian politics; but suggests that the politics of becoming that vital learning needs, is confused by the construction of the ‘artificial earth’ which has come to dominate liberal, post-modern, capitalist society. To unpack the notion of the sorcerer that is useful for computerised education (techno-tribalism); we bridge the borderline of the demons, and indulge in the alliances and filiations of the shaman. Deleuze and Guattari have suggested that the contradiction between contagion through the animal as pack (phyla), and the pact with the anomalous as exceptional being (demons) is progressively fading. Edward Leach, when analysing Kachin sorcery, noted that "Kachin witchcraft is contagious rather than hereditary.... it is associated with affinity and not filiation." In this case the witchcraft was thought to be transmitted through the preparation of food by the Kachin women, and not through hereditary lines. Eliade gives several examples of nomadic societies within which shamanism is transmitted through filiation; yet even in these scarce cases, the power of the sorcerer is only accepted via the proof of the individual’s ability to communicate with the spirits, and to perform the rites of the shaman successfully to the advantage of the nomads he or she is affiliated with. The overwhelming evidence of the shamanic craft, is of a spontaneous vocation, not necessarily deriving power from familial genetic material; but acting through the contagion of the pack (becoming-animal), from the pact with demons, spirits or the Devil - and through the individual talents of the ones who are chosen to become shaman - in the contemporary scene, the exceptional teacher (as unique learner). As a methodology for teaching, shamanism is an approach to individuality which circumvents the need for rights or the artificially constructed rational man of the Enlightenment.

The construction of the man of the Enlightenment was a reaction to medieval Europe, where the fear of witchcraft reached its zenith between 1600-1650, with witch trials and the public executions of the suspected sorceresses. The patriarchal organs of the state, i.e. the aristocracy and the Church, instigated a gynocide, which was directed at unmarried women and widows, who were ruthlessly hunted down and exterminated. The men in power used the common fear of secret communities able to work together without the auspices of hereditary filiation, in order to evoke the suspicions of the majority. The impulse which places shamanic contagion at the heart of learning through computer technology, recognises that the politics of becoming involved, describes a plane of transformation that challenges established power structures, and augments the realm of the sorcerer from its diminutive modernist position (the duality between primitive and ‘civilised’ societies). It is not that ancient rites spontaneously emerge into social life; but that post-modern tribalism enables shamanic contagion through information and feedback loops, and conducts the formation of alliance which does not depend on familial dependency, (e.g. internet groups, global communication and interactivity in the new digital media, and the filiation that these media affords and promotes). This is a method for learning which is developing beneath the major narratives of the rational, and it is where the becoming-shaman is taking place through unique learner/teacher relationships (singularities of the digital curriculum).

This becoming of the borderlines operates in packs. An example of this type of becoming, which demonstrates the shamanic teaching method; lies in the hunter/gatherer society of New Guinea, where the various tribes spoke 700 mutually incomprehensible languages. There were no elected or hereditary chiefs, and the pursuit of head-hunting was a singular achievement. Young men sought out the bravest and most spectacular warrior on the battlefield to kill and cannibalise his body. Through this process the spirit of the enemy was interiorised. Men who kill more than once were regarded as twisted killers. ‘Big men’ were deemed as such by the power of their memories, the ability to tell stories, and not by military prowess. In New Guinea, the initiation rites to enter the secret society of the shaman were confused with the general rites of the tribes. On the island of Dobu, to the east of New Guinea, the ‘true’ sorcerers were considered to be the women, who acted directly through dreams, where their souls flew to their victim, and destroyed them from within. Men could perform the magical practises only by established charms, which were thought of as not being as powerful as the unconscious witchcraft of the women. Eliade describes this type of shamanism as ‘decadent’, because of the loss of the direct transmission of the secret societal structures, and the general acceptance that anyone can perform some kind of magical journey. The sedentary war machine of the men in New Guinea, had taken precedence after the repeated invasions of the Papuans (submerging the formation of packs); the borderline behaviour of the sorcerer was therefore driven into misunderstanding and rumour concerning women (the cannibalism still survived, yet the nomadic shamanism was lost). The method for teaching here is misunderstood if it mistaken from a sedentary or defence orientated society. The former plethora of war-like communities, demonstrate the movement and peculiarities of the minor languages, that underlie shamanic practice and teaching method.

Today, the tribalism of New Guinea has disassembled through the mining and logging exploits of colonial settlement. Yet the old violence is hard to suppress, often erupting in bitter disputes. The becoming of the pack works through contagion, epidemic, and as Deleuze and Guattari term it, "unnatural participation". Hereditary reproduction does not have the combinatory possibilities of heterogenesis; through which secret shamanic hunter/gatherer society can pass on a plane to infect ritual cults, war societies, crime syndicates, posses, internet zealots. These do not conform to the structures of the family or by degrees to the working of the state, but induce a symbiosis of disparate elements, gathered together in assemblages. They work from within to gather other forms of expression from without; garnering a fluidity of content that the state cannot suppress with its structure and legislation. As a method for teaching this kind of reproduction is most commonly found on the internet, or in oral and transitory groups that are difficult to understand unless you are directly within them (packs). In contrast to the methodology of shamanic learning, the family cannot match the contagion with its simple duality between sexes of the same species. For example, bubonic plague has gathered an unnatural assemblage of rats, fleas, bacteria, and transportation methods such as commercial maritime enterprises. In this manner the epidemic of the plague has spread, together with the fear about epidemic (characteristic of the herd and not the pack); the state organises the evacuation of humans and the positioning of strict quarantine conditions for anything entering the country; however, the family is prey for the Bubonic machine, as genetic pools are soon infected and destroyed. The organised state rarely eradicates the plague, as it always acts after the fact of infection (contagion dies out of its own accord). In the context of the emergence of new forms of life that are being represented as a methodology for teaching about the becoming shaman of computerised learning, the state is unwieldy and slow; it is a factor in the inhibition of becoming, it slows down the processes of change so they may be understood and categorised as knowledge (but not lived).

The secret society of electronic shamanic contagion, acts by reflex so that it is not recognised by the state as a secret society, and it is therefore difficult to control. In a similar way to cockney rhyming slang, which was developed in the c19th, as a secret code to be used to evade comprehension by the police (before it was familiarised and domesticated by popular culture), the codes of the sorcerers are deliberately set in evasive and often painful formations, so that the deceleration of abstract paradigmatic models (e.g. the Christian God), and axiomatic factors such as morality, cannot so easily take effect (and slow down or divert the contagion). Shamanism was not written down, but it is transmitted orally, which is a process open and ready for transformation, mutation, adaptation and the breaking with tradition according to multiple and variant conditions (as, for example, happens in the electronic medium); unlike the permanence of the written word (the despotic signifier of the holy book). We can see the remnants of this transmission according to post-modern inscription on the body, or as Deleuze and Guattari put it, "tattooing, excising, incising, carving, scarifying, mutilating, encircling and initiating". These define the recording process of the primitive socius, which, according to Nietzsche, constituted a means of repression of the biological memory, and the creation of another memory; one that is collective, a memory of words (paroles) and no longer a memory of things, a memory of signs and no longer effects. This organisation traces its signs directly on the body, and constitutes a system of cruelty and a terrible alphabet.

Shamanic contagion reinvents this alphabet, and in the space of learning with computer technology, delves deeply into the way in which we communicate. The removal of the subject away from communal memory systems, (e.g. written language), and the placement in mediated digital experience (learning with computers), expresses the behaviour of the borderline, and introduces the methodology of the sorcerer into the teachers vocabulary. The febrile becomings of the shamanic initiate are of nothing compared to the inhuman possibilities that are presented by the concept of shamanic contagion given a digital plane on which to act. As Deleuze and Guattari suggest, we do not know what will enter into the multiplicity of becoming until it has happened. Sorcery does not follow a logical order, but follows alogical consistencies or compatibilites. The assemblages of the packs may follow post-modern Oedipal family lines, and end up as domesticated family pets; or they might follow Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and be entwined within the black heart of desolate and remote landscapes, beyond demarcation (in cyberspace?) Or more likely, the two themselves will form a line of flight, and result in the desolation of the domesticated animal, (through watching soap operas or satellite TV). When we express becoming (vital learning though computers) as working on a plane of consistency; it does not reduce the dimensionality of the concept. The plane of consistency cuts across concrete forms (content), to imbue them with forms of expression from the outside. The expression of the sorcerer is just one drawing on the plane of consistency, delimiting a means of escape, (from madness, from authority, from ennui). The dimensions that may be worked through on the plane of consistency shall intensify, until everything on that plane becomes imperceptible.This imperceptibility at n dimensions is called the Hypersphere or the Mechanosphere. It is the abstract Figure, or rather, because it has no form itself, the abstract machine, of which each concrete assemblage is a multiplicity (ref. virtual reality, Chapter 3); in other words it is a becoming, a segment, and a vibration. The abstract machine is the intersection of them all. The learning through electronic media that this thesis examines, i.e. the electronic body, cyberpunk, virtual reality and the internet; have these abstract machines, accelerated and enhanced through shamanic contagion, working simultaneously to divergent ends.

Becoming-animal within the post-modern units of computerised education (packs), creates different musics by which to live. The proliferation of these musics can be heard throughout the panoply of mediated digital experience (the media). Yet their intensity perhaps increases once we enter into a direct performative relationship, with what has been termed in recent history as, ‘the rave’. It could be said that ‘the rave’ represents the plane of computerised education, where the abstract machines of the imperceptible are most clearly at work. Fascination with the rave, derives from the extreme, accelerated type of cultural production which is engendered through this technological assemblage. The heterogeneity, and cross-over characteristics of rave music, present some of the most startling features of a micro becoming-music; they are in a state of constant flux, and elusive, fluid permeability. Whether the rave subculture in the post-modern educational context, is only a counterculture to the mainstream of the ‘90s, with its basis in the information-society, youth-culture of ‘GenerationX’ nihilists and their inevitable corporate hegemonic co-optation - and whether it is this music that ‘drives’ cyberpunk is perhaps debatable. Certainly, the pastiche nature of the rave has drawn its share of post-modernist critics, who see in it either the last gasp of late modernist capitalist culture, or the means of delivery from the ‘iron prisons’ of essentialism, that inform our combined oppression... this complexity inevitably leads critics to declare it to be the post-modern musical form par excellence, and makes its teaching a vital part of the post-structural perspective which I am proposing in this thesis.

The question of whether the musical innovation of the rave is the cause or result of certain sociocultural changes remains open. For some, the mechanical soullessness and obsessively repetitive rhythms of the rave, are simply by-products of youth grown up in a society hyperaccelerated by the ‘flexible accumulation’ of late capitalism and raised on the fragmented, ‘jumpcut’ reality of music videos. It is a warning sign of a society whose technology is out of control, and whose humanity and individuality are ‘disappearing out of sight’. It is also an imminent signpost to the end of music itself, and of some supposed vanishing authenticity that derived from earlier musics’ lack of technological mediation, production, or distribution. For others, techno represents a vocal, political cyberpunk reaction to the power of the multinational music recording industry, and an effort to restrain the homogenisation and normalisation of music; and to replace it with a new mode of creativity and aesthetic control which escapes top down power. Many of its proponents see techno at the rave as the ‘new punk’, it is an outpouring of total outrage and resistance to the ‘popification’ and ‘commodification’ of music.

There are a number of features about rave music that make it highly distinctive. The primary feature, is that it is electronically produced and reproduced. However, this is not unique to techno (the most electronic type of rave music), because many forms of rock and pop have used electronic synthesisers or electric guitars and amplifiers. Often the only ‘acoustically’ produced element in ‘acoustic’ music is the human voice; but with lip synching (as with Milli Vanilli) even this can be in doubt. Certainly, many opera composers (such as Todd Machover) have used electroacoustic techniques, and electronic music has long been a part of the art music avant-garde (such as John Cage). Even the most ‘natural’ sounding New Age recording of birds, waves, or rainforest animals were electronically recorded, amplified, and reproduced. For most individuals in industrialised societies, their hearing of music would be quite restricted without the presence of electricity (required as much for vinyl LPs and eight-tracks as for CDs, as well as for their radios and stereo speakers) and their favourite genres (including ‘world musics’ like Zouk) would sound quite impoverished without their (perhaps unnoticed) electronic embellishment. For some purists, technological mediation is eating away at the very basis of music, but it is also the means by which others are exposed to music they might otherwise not hear, if they had to physically travel to where it is played and performed.

The emphasis in techno music, is that it is deliberately technological. The ‘bleeps’ and ‘whirrs’ and video game sounds are a reminder to the listener that - ‘this was created technologically’. Techno is in some ways anything but alienating, because it is street-music... techno is about using technology in unanticipated ways, like the rapper taking the accidental motorised-turntable record scratch and turning that into a deliberate feature. Instead of having to learn to play an instrument, to read standard western musical notation, or to train one’s voice; to create techno you have to master computers, MIDI boards, and sequencers. This technology does allow certain elements to proceed automatically, but a techno-artist is expected to be constantly tweaking his or her equipment to produce the most original output at every performance. Different ‘house’ artists employ varying degrees of live accompaniment to that which the machines are producing, often incorporating live action from audience members invited to ‘jam’ along. Techno is usually played at 115 to 160 bpm (beats per minute), which is almost two to three times faster than other musical styles. Since most human drummers would quickly become exhausted at that pace, drum machines are essential to creating the rave. This steady, unfaltering beat, provides the ‘groove’ into which dancing, visuals, and any accompaniment coalesce.

Another element that is key in techno is ‘sampling’, which is the appropriation and modification of existing sounds and music. This is also not unique to the rave as rap and hiphop sample other artists’ music and short bursts of speech, and New Age often samples electro-acoustic effects from ‘nature’; what is particular about techno, is the sampling of unusual sources such as industrial factory noise, ‘sound bites’ from pop culture (especially from science fiction TV), and electronic noises (from Speak N’ Spell machines, talking clocks, video games, raygun toys, and other consumer kitsch); and the total transformation of other ‘light’ tunes (such as the Magic Roundabout theme song or commercial jingles) by radically accelerating and ‘bassifying’ them. Techno in the rave is performed by ‘DJs’. In some ways, the music has transformed the role of the DJ. In discos or other clubs, the DJ is often anonymous and is basically expected to maintain the continual playing of uninterrupted music, without making any individual contribution, except for his choices (the ‘playlist’); which is the same role that the DJ used to play on the radio, except that he is often expected to add loud, obnoxious, or inane commentary and voice-over. The role of the DJ started to change with rap and the motorised turntable; now they were expected to be the makers of music, by adding record scratch, slowing or speeding LPs down, and mixing two records together. They became an ‘MC’ (Master of Ceremonies) and were expected to be the force that made the pre-recorded music come to life. Virtuosity was now not just a property of musicians; DJs and MCs became the heart of club music, and they banked on their reputations and name recognition.

The techno ‘groups’ which release the music are not ‘bands’; rather than a division of labour based on who plays what instrument and who contributes what vocals, a techno group (e.g. the Shaman) is often made up of DJs with varying technical abilities. At a rave performance, the DJ is expected to make, and not just reproduce, the music. His ‘baseline’ is the pre-existing music he may have recorded on CD, but through various kinds of digital manipulation he or she is expected to ‘remix’ the music, by changing the tempo, pitch, reverb rate, etc. There is no ‘authoritative’ recording of a rave music song - it is often released in multiple ‘mixes’ which elect differing venues or audiences or desired effects (e.g. club mix, radio mix, rave mix, studio mix, space mix, etc.) The best DJs usually leave enough of the song ‘intact’ to recognise it (the vocal line, if it exists), but they are also expected to enhance it enough to ‘make their mark’ of distinction. The DJs are often not seen during the rave performance, and identify themselves through their recognisable ‘style’; the crowd may not even know when DJs are switching during the night. But they do know that a particular DJ gives a ‘good mix’ and if they are going to be at a rave that night.

The mechanical production of techno guarantees its redundancy - rhythms may shift, but they tend to stay constant on the drum machine until they are shifted again. Techno songs rarely feature any continuous variation of their bass line, as might be found in funk or rap. The basic complexity of the song may depend on the mode of electronic production, but most computer programs and synth settings impose a certain synchronisation on the output, guaranteeing a level of repetitiveness which, due to elaboration, is usually not perceived as obsessively monotonous. Techno music also varies in its mode of distribution as well as performance and production. Techno music is generally released in compilations (‘Rave Till Dawn’, etc.), although well-known groups may take a stab at releasing ‘one name’ albums. The recording labels which control these releases are often small independent publishing and distribution houses - some of which are set up by the DJs themselves. The techno artists try to avoid the multinational music industry, bypassing it in whatever way they can. For their part, the big record companies are confused by the absence of ‘stars’ in techno and the lack of ‘hooks’ to sell records by (although this balance has been addressed by recent developments on some commercial radio).

One venue in which techno artists are increasingly turning to is ‘cyberspace’ or the Internet - using sites such as IUMA (the Independent and Underground Music Archive) and other WorldWideWeb pages for distribution. Undoubtedly, most techno artists will strive to find alternative methods and find new technologies that will deliver music to their fans outside of corporate control; but it is also inevitable, as with any ‘alternative’ or ‘independent’ music that some will become part of the mainstream capitalist machine.

The term techno is at once used to refer to the scene as a whole and also a particular facet of it. For most people, techno (aka proto-techno, Detroit techno, or hard-core techno) is the progenitor and prime exemplar that existed before its diversification. Techno is the most minimalist, the most mechanical, and perhaps the least ‘soulful’ of all the subgenres. It is definitely the most aggressive, loudest, harshest, most severe and pounding; frequently hard-core wins over ‘converts’ from metal, punk, and industrial. Exemplars of techno include Kraftwerk, Cybotron, the collective Eutech and Headroom. The style of rave is usually more ‘soft’ and ‘accessible’ than straight techno, and more likely to win ‘converts’ from pop. It usually features female vocals and an easier, less grating tune. Most people think that it is a lot more comfortable to dance to, and a lot less sonically painful. Rave is more melodic than hard-core techno, and usually a lot more ornate, baroque, and embellished. Big name rave groups include the Shaman and LA style. Like techno or rave, house is itself a term that is often applied to the scene-as-a-whole, but it is also a subgenre of techno. For some devotees, house is the ‘blackest’, most ‘funky’ and hiphop of techno styles. House most clearly shows the roots of techno in ‘marginal’ black and gay musics... house is happier, more ‘party-like’ and more upbeat than the often pessimistic hard-core. It features lots of piano riffs and samples from rap and a very ‘liquid’ flow to it. Exemplars of house include Adamski, Dee-Lite, Kevin Yost and Jack de Marseille. MTV also finds that house music is the easiest to create music videos for. Trance is a popular European subgenre, especially in Belgium and Germany. One finds a lot more string sounds in trance, which often also uses more of the (sampled) ‘spoken word’. Trance is, of course, supposed to put you in another state of mind, and thus features the most mind-numbing (some might say, mind-expanding) rhythms. The pulse of the song is timed so as to mesh most effectively with the infracircadian rhythms of the body and the EEG of the brain. Good exemplars of trance include Eden Transmission, 808 State, Eat Static, DJs Danny Howells, Lucien Foort, Sasha, John Digweed, Christopher Lawrence, Tall Paul and DJ Dazzle.

Ambient is the most atmospheric and ‘spacey’ or ‘aural’ kind of techno music, hence the name. There’s a heavy use of echo and reverb to create an ‘enveloping’ feeling on the listener. Ambient shows clear roots in New Age music, as well as the synth sounds of groups like Human League or electronic-music pioneers like Brian Eno or Philip Glass. Ambient is meant to be more cerebral than straight techno - more likely to make you want to meditate than dance; for this reason ambient is often featured in the ‘chill out’ rooms at techno clubs, where people go to rest between dancing. It is designed to soothe the mind, calm the body, and lull the emotions into a reflective state. Some of the big names in ambient are the Psychick Warriors ov Gaia and Aphex Twin. Dub, also Breakbeat, Jungle or Darkside, techno, has Caribbean music as a strong influence; especially reggae, ska, and zouk. Dub uses some of the rhythms of reggae; but sped up, since reggae is usually played at a fairly slow tempo. Dub occasionally features sampled acoustic drumming and uses a lot of original vocals. Some people even hear gospel or spiritual in dub. Good exemplars include Phuture Assassins and DHD. Tribal techno most often imitates (but rarely copies wholesale) ‘Third World’ sounds and indigenous/Fourth World musics, combining them with electronic sounds to create a ‘modern primitive’ sound. Rather than sampling a particular ‘ethnic’ sound outright, like a lot of so-called ‘World Music’, tribal techno will simply borrow the ‘feel’ of Middle Eastern or Native American rhythms... tribal is supposed to sound the most ‘ritualistic’ and ‘primal’ of all the kinds of techno. Tribal techno often tries to create a vague ‘ethno-techno’ feeling which sounds ‘primitive’ but can be hard to associate with any known Fourth World tribe or group, although some often does sample outright the chants or rituals of such groups. Exemplars of the tribal style include Mere Mortals and Juno Reactor (techno-shamanism fits in well with this atmosphere if used in the classroom). Progressive techno of course is different from ‘progressive music’. For techno-philes, progressive, which was originally from San Francisco, features a more complex melody and layering of instrumentation and elaborate chord progressions. Acid Jazz in particular shows a sort of renewed interest in virtuosity, with instrument lines often ‘jumping out’ and coming to dominate the tune. Exemplars of progressive include Brother Love and React 2 Rhythm.

Raves are often held in isolated (and often desolate) places such as abandoned warehouses, condemned buildings, or old subway tunnels; sometimes they are held outdoors, often in forest clearings. News about upcoming raves is usually spread through flyers, word of mouth, or the Internet; thus bypassing standard means of advertising music performance or dance occasions (e.g. commercial broadcasting). Those wishing to find about raves discover a flyer with a number on it, and when they call that number it tells them the exact place and time. At a rave, people can expect to dance all night to the latest techno by the hottest DJs, quaff some XTC, (Ecstasy) or smart drinks, and be visually dazzled by technological multimedia wizardry of some kind: for example, oil screens, lasers, strobes, computer-generated graphicsl; perhaps even battling robots (at Survival Research Laboratories events). Raves are supposed to be ‘outlaw’ events, although of course there is nothing illegal about the event-in-itself. In the US, police close down raves for the reasons they ‘bust’ any party - i.e. too much noise disturbing the neighbours, or suspicions of illegal drug use. Only in the UK has law enforcement ‘targeted’ raves, mainly by passing incredibly restrictive curfew and social-gathering laws (Public Order Bills), and sharply restricting ‘the right to party’, often through selective enforcement of obscure laws, such as the Private Entertainment Act of 1967, which suggested that people required a license to provide such entertainment.

While the word ‘rave’ does connote a certain state of frenziedness, there are almost no incidences of the type of mob violence found at Altamont-style concerts or British football games. Raves are supposed to be spontaneous and self-organising, but the reality of the matter is that the high-tech equipment used to set them up doesn’t come cheap; so they are largely organised by ‘party entrepreneurs’, especially in the US. Ravers are ambivalent about this; they’d like to think that raves just ‘come together’, but most know that this is not the case. In an inclusive sense, ravers are anybody who goes to raves, but most ravers feel there is a style, mindset, and code that goes with it. Some ravers do try to cultivate a distinctive sense of identity, perhaps even superiority over other simple ‘clubbers’. In England, ravers are sometimes seen as another musically-identified youth subculture, following other ‘deviant’ groups as the teds, mods, greasers, hippies, skins, goths, and punks of the post-WW II period. Yet the recent development of jungle music and drum and bass, has been identified by some as being an important intervention in the linearity of white subcultural evolution. The recycling of multiple strands of musical heritage in British urban environments by using technology; marks a positive, involutive step by Black culture, where innovation derives from the type of DJ culture which has been going on in Jamaica for more than forty years.

Rave dress, like punk, is meant to question gender stereotypes, and de-emphasise race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, but it is also meant to be ‘more fun’. Many ravers generally do not ‘mark themselves’ through dress or body adornment except when they go to raves, and for this reason ‘full-time’ subcultures like the skins or the punks often do not mix with ravers. While there are ‘speciality shops’ that proclaim themselves to be exclusive dealers in ‘rave wear’, and shops that offer young clubgoers their own section; most ravers claim they get their outfits from second-hand stores. Part of the rave ethos is non-egoism, and people are expected not to overdress or show off their wealth, like they often do at more ‘exclusive’ clubs. Ravers do try and be outrageous - indeed, some techno clubs hire ‘party girls’ to show up wearing huge two-story hats: they are painted with gold paint, they have masks, or stand on oversized platform shoes; the club owners feel that they are ‘strange attractors’ that will bring people into the club. The main point of the scene, say ravers, is primarily to be yourself, to tell people who you really are, and to dress comfortably and leisurely. Most ravers would say that people are ‘not getting’ the Raver style if they focus specifically on outward appearance. More important is the ‘attitude’ and worldview of the raver, which emerges gradually after integration into the rave scene.

In the early 1980s, a particular style of hiphop and funk began to emerge in Chicago clubs. It largely grew out of the ‘Electro’ funk of African-American groups like George Clinton’s Parliament Funkadelic, and the ‘Glam’ disco popular among gay ‘queens’ and ‘flamers’. This sort of nameless style came to be known as ‘house’ music because it was supposed to be a distinctive concoction mixed uniquely in each ‘house’. Because it featured an aggressive resampling of other records, it was often called ‘acid house’; the process of sampling another LP was often known in the music business as an "acid bite." The legend has it that Acid House was discovered in England in 1987 by ‘industrial’ music artist Genesis P. Orridge, who was interested in it because he thought it had something to do with LSD. Supposedly Genesis and other artists began giving Acid House its particular ‘psychedelic’ tinge, and it became la musique du jour of the clubs of Ibiza. The first ‘raves’ were held in 1988, and rave-house quickly took hold in Manchester and other English urban areas. By 1989, it spread back across the Atlantic, bringing with it the English influence of ‘Northern Soul’, (another popular music style of the late 70s) and clubs in Detroit starting playing it, dubbing it ‘techno’, and proclaiming it as a hot European import. Techno also spread from England to the Continent around the same time, and DJs in Berlin and Brussels were turning it into ‘trance’. By 1992, techno had become the musical underground, and a massive alternative/indie scene in the US.

One of the most important other influences in techno was the ‘industrial’ music (created by bands like Ministry and SPK), a sort of post-punk sonic assault which featured the incorporation of factory noise, roaring engines, and clanking machinery into musical performance.Industrial music was anti-Muzak, like punk, and was meant to disturb the audience sonically. But industrial had only a small ‘niche’ market, industrial bands like Kraftwerk turned from the grating, industrial sound of noisy heavy machinery to the clean, smooth, post-industrial digital sound of electronics and computers. Part of the history of techno lies in the way in which electronic music came of interest first to the art music avant-garde, and only later to pop artists. The musique concrete of the 1950s, featured use of electroacoustically generated sounds such as ship horns and bicycle bells. Other avant-gardists like John Cage and Todd Machover became interested in sounds that were purely electronically generated, and used electronic devices to create spontaneous and unpredictable performances. Yet others experimented with tape mixing, a process of altering tape recordings once they are already ‘pressed’ to vary the tempo or pitch. As the technology matured, people began modifying the waveform of sound at a fundamental structural level, and seeing the ways in which music could move beyond what they felt were ‘moribund’ classical traditions. With the electric guitar and the amplifier, and later the synthesiser, MIDI sequencer, and drum machine, electronic music began to enter pop/rock.

House came out of the ‘guerrilla media’ revolution of the 80s. Like desktop publishing, and the use of personal camcorders to make video, the technology of house took media (in this case, music) out of corporate control and into the hands of the street (cyberpunk). Everybody could make music - and everybody could be ‘in the house’ to listen to it, because you could crank it out anywhere. House defied corporate rock, because the recording industry couldn’t silence thousands of digital resamplers ‘remixing’ their smash songs. It could also be said that, like the avant-garde electronic antecedents, techno is anti-technique; it does not rely on the musical score and often each performance of a techno song is entirely different, the ‘remix’ of it being dependent on how much ‘tweaking’ the DJ wants to do.

Rave is political in the UK, because the civil liberties tradition is weaker than the US, and ravers can claim to be striking blows for the right to freely assemble, speak, and party. Ravers basically want the right to rave and to use the substances that they want to use at raves, so they tend to go to rallies for drug legalisation, but are often politically uncommitted. Unlike the punk movement, which was clearly to some degree a manifestation of working-class youth and their discontent with unemployment and bourgeois society, (although it led to a wave of art-school imitators), rave culture is fundamentally not anti-establishment. The Zippies (Zany Inwardly Progressive Pagans), who are perhaps the most political wing of the Ravers, do, however, practice a type of countercultural politics. They don’t challenge the state or its policies, but instead claim to be part of an international ‘movement’ which transcends the nation-state and makes it illegitimate. They are interested in peace, ecology, and civil liberties, as well as democratising and humanising technology, which they feel is necessary for human spiritual growth and maturity. They tend to feel that raving is political-in-itself, in that it brings together people of all classes, races, and national origins and asks them to put aside their differences and to unify around the rave.

Another part of house ideology is that ‘everything is music’. For this reason, house artists explore the experimental creation of music from all kinds of unusual sources. Computers are used to generate ‘DNA music’ (by assigning musical sequences to the base-pairs), ‘galactic music’ (by transforming celestial radiation into sound), ‘biomusic’ (by translating the electrical pulses of the peripheral nervous system into sound), and ‘hypermusic’ (created by hyperinstruments which are basically acoustic but whose sound qualities are shifted by the motion of the performer and the instrument). Ravers feel, almost animistically, that there is music in everything, and that the key to releasing it is simply by using the right technology. Part of raving is supposed to be ‘getting in touch with your groove’ - like in New Age, the idea is that each person has a fundamental musical ‘self’ (a harmony that is rooted in their being), which they need to get in touch with.

The goal of house, say the ravers, is ‘phase locking’ - this is to get the group of people assembled at the rave into a synchronised, synergetic, collective mental ‘space’ or vibe. The rave is constructed to be a self-similar, unbroken, self-organising factual; thus no divisions are permitted, and likewise no egos, leaders, or partners. Ravers and Zippies are fascinated by chaos theory, and they believe that when the right number of people are all in one place, dancing to the right groove, a new emergent order around spontaneous ‘strange attractors’ can appear, and people shall ‘evolve’ into ‘mutants’ that will lead the human race into the chaotic, turbulent world of the 21st century. Rave is conceived to deconstruct dualities, especially collapsing the past and the future into a singular ‘modern primitive’. The oppositions between technology and spirituality, the primal body and the higher mind, and neo-tribalism and global humanism, are supposed to ‘implode’ at the rave, resulting in a technoshamanism; where the DJ serves as the initiator of the people into a sort of participation mystique, and they tune into the ‘vibe’ of Gaia. Techno is an accelerated music, and ravers believe history is accelerating. Unlike Christian millenialists, many ravers follow Terrence McKenna’s dictum that we are approaching a ‘singularity’ in time in the year 2012, and that after this point, time will fold into ‘hyperspace’. This "strange attractor at the end of time" is supposed to be dragging us all into it, and creating (as the date approaches) newer and more powerfully emergent forms of novelty.

The visuals are as important as the audio at a rave. Providing the visual accompaniment at many raves are computer-generated factual images and 3D rendered animation. But raves have also featured laser light, coloured-wheel lighting, holography, liquid oil projection screens, video projection, strobes, robotic characters, or other high-tech displays. Very common is the use of the Video Toaster to combine images from kitsch TV and movies, Japanese ‘anime’ cartoons, MTV music videos, advertising, and science fiction into a rapid-fire display which switches images at a rate, close to the 135 bpm of the music. Rave is a multimedia, multisensual experience, and thus there will even be attempts to stimulate the sense of smell and touch of the ravers, with incense and scented oils, dry ice, and fans. Ravers feel that this ‘sensory overload’ serves a purpose - to overwhelm the senses and to create a transcendent, synaesthetic experience.

There are many arguments as to whether techno is the critique or handmaiden of the emerging information (post-industrial, service-sector) society. Some critical studies see techno as part of the continuing ‘domestication’ of leisure, a sugar-coated pill to convince people to allow technological domination by the multinational corporations and a new form of commodity fetishism to get them to buy the latest technotopian gadgets. Another opinion is that techno is part of the ‘cyberpunk challenge’ to the emerging information economy - a radical questioning of the norm that suggests information (including sonic information, e.g. music) is property. It could be said that techno is an edged sword for corporatised, advertising-dominated, and mass-consumed broadcast media, especially when practised by ‘media hoax’ groups such as NegativLand; and it is part of a reaction against the threats to privacy, identity, security, and liberty that the ‘Information Society’ represents.Another dialectical strand has developed concerning what techno signifies about our society. For some, and in contrast to rave enthusiasts, the accelerating rhythms of techno show that even in leisure, people are unable to break free of the monotonous, inflexible, robotic, hyperaccelerated pace of life under late industrial capitalism, where people are working more hours with less breaks for less money.

Can educationalists benefit from more closely examining the rave, and using the information above? I suspect that theorists need to forget the idea that there are still ‘pure’, untainted, unmediated, ‘truly authentic’ or aesthetic musical formations, unsullied by contamination or western capitalism. (Or played loud enough for a whole village to hear without the benefits of amplification, recording, or broadcast). This is as indefensible a notion as the old anthropological idea that we were studying ‘primitive’ cultures in order to capture a record of them before they were ‘erased’ by modernity, industrialisation, and westernisation (in contrast to shamanic contagion as has been drawn out in terms of a learning methodology). All of our musics today are hybrid musics - "cyborg musics" to borrow from Donna Harraway - and they are all the products of technological processes. The ethnos of rave music may not be wholly distinct, and often seems to be trans-ethnic, but for some ravers it is redefining their very ideas of tribe, family, and nation. Most importantly, the ethos of rave music provides a laboratory for some of education’s ideas about the relationship between music performance (becoming-animal), culture, and the requisite ‘cultural brokering’ (how we learn). It is not just a white, western musical genre, which is spilling out all over the globe; but it is a deviantly hybrid formation of unstratified, accelerated heterogeneity (mutation). This form of mediation, combined with shamanic contagion in the digital mechanosphere; will lead to increasing instances of cultural innovation, and the accelerated transformation of societal certainties as they have been previously understood. Education cannot afford to be backwards with regards to this process, and the arts curriculum needs to incorporate the information and ideas that the rave carries with it. As a subject it provides a crossing point between the study of music, computer science, dance, drama and the study of post-modern society. It is also a concrete form of shamanic contagion, and as such, its communicative impetus shall be carried forth in terms of teaching as its pedagogic and social implications become apparent.

Before we begin to theorise education in terms of the virtual assemblage of abstract machines embedded in the formations of the rave; we need to investigate the notion of learning and feedback that we seek to induce in more detail. Children learning with computers present a virtual-becoming, and a multiplicity; which may take into account, as we have seen, forms of expression from outside of themselves, and present a consistency which is defined alogically. Creative writing, painting and dancing would fall into the scope of this type of becoming and learning of the borderline; but perhaps most cogent in terms of a particular theorisation, is the molecular becoming of music. Rave music presents a substantial difference in contrast to the formal learning of scales, and classical ‘correctness’ that has defined its scope in terms of "what the student has to learn to be able to produce good work". The heterogeneity of influence, form and expression in the rave expands exponentially, as the desire of the markets (techno-tribalism) pounds an amorphous drum for the invention of new musical-becomings. In this context, musical education is a test case for the workings of the sorcerer. As educators, we are less interested in what is properly called ‘music’, and more interested in the opportunity to teach our pupils about a subject which is as dynamic, diverse, unpredictable, contemporary and exciting as possible. To facilitate such a subject, a becoming-music-education apparatus is necessary, to examine the technologically mediated packs that are emerging.

Keith Swanwick has located, ‘layers of knowledge’ in the concept of musical education. Such layers of knowledge are a recognition that music is learnt about from a complex mixture of acquaintances, which Swanwick categorised as materials (knowing how), expression and form (knowing this) and value (knowing what’s what). He deemed valuing as being characteristic of the deepest levels of musical experience, whereby pupils may begin to find meaning in music. He interestingly cited an example of observations taken among the Venda people of South Africa, where the educationalist John Blacking noticed that when children begin to make discordant noise by banging objects together, they are not immediately told to refrain from this disagreeable activity by the adults present, but the elders in fact join in with the children, filling in where necessary and creating communal music. The becoming-music of the tribe is therefore produced, and story telling and dance are soon added to the celebrational emphasis that such tolerance engenders. Maori music seems to present a similar set of ideas, where the valuing process of acquiring music is accelerated from an early age, and the potential for learning music is not hindered by artificial barriers of pre-defined appreciation. Instead, the traditions of the Maori have been continued, defining a relationship with colonial influence, and have resulted in a fusion of ancient stories set to Country and Western or rock beats.

The temptation to overlay music education per se with aesthetic education, is however felt very strongly in the western tradition. This temptation takes a step back from the becoming-pack of the creative technological ensemble, and attempts to set criteria for its evaluation, and ultimately to judge it. In terms of the becoming-music of the sorcerer, the statement of an initial apparatus, which narrowly harnesses the energy liberated from the pack in the cause of a rational process; works against the alogical constancy of the musical plane of becoming. Rational analysis works through the barriers, ruptures and holes in the creative machinery, rather than following it (and changing with it in terms of the micro-processes on the plane of raving). The claims of the Italian philosopher, Benedetto Croce (1900), go some way to elucidate this point. He divided knowledge into intuitive and logical portions: the intuitive side being derived from the imagination, of the individual, and being productive of images; the logical knowledge is obtained through the intellect, of universals and the relations between individuals, and being productive of concepts. The relationship between the two types of knowledge is hierarchical: intuitive knowledge forming a base for the construction of logical knowledge, reminiscent of the Kantian apprehension of sensory data in synthetic a priori judgements; intuition embracing the elements of sensory data, which are henceforth worked into logical formats and categorical propositions.

Croce and Kant were looking to build productive machinery from the intuition and the intellect, and not overlay the workings of the imagination with the inhibiting factor of logical distinction. The hierarchical relationship was importantly perceived by them as being constituted in time, which meant that the production of the intuition happens before the mental schema of the intellect works. The psychologist, J. S. Bruner, made a similar map of knowing in an educational context. He defined the enactive as knowledge that we are able to know directly through the senses by actually doing things, the iconic is thinking in images, which enables us to hold in mind absent objects and events, and the symbolic, which is where language and other rule-governed systems and conventions of thought extend the possibilities of abstract reflection and communication. The iconic and symbolic forms of knowledge are both representational, in that they present the mass of information present in sensory awareness, and make it available for the intellect to use. Likewise, the intuitive knowledge of Kant and Croce, was meant to be a dynamic form of the imagination, which was not passive in its apprehension of phenomena, but actively sought out the content of the intellect from the multiplicity of sensory input.

This machinery can be useful to the technological pack (the learning units), to the extent that it is a creative synthesis of divergent elements in content and expression. Any attempt at the construction of a pre-set hierarchy, however, would give this machine a rigidity and slowness that is unable to deal with the multifarious change incorporated though the becoming of the rave. If the direction of the synthesis is towards a rational aesthetic (in time, in argument), and a methodology for defining ‘the good’ in music, it would go some way to counteract the movement of becoming-animal, the action of the shaman, and the divergence of the rave. The portrayal of the sensory universe as chaotic meaninglessness, is symptomatic of rational intervention in understanding human thought processes. The need for categories of knowledge, also deters the full becoming-animal of the pack in the process of technologically mediated change through raving, as representation presents divided planes and dualisms; rather than the alogical consistency of the plane of immanence. Becoming-aesthetic is a line of flight open to musical education; yet it is only one of a multitude, and one which is inevitably mixed with other becomings, (e.g. becoming-child, becoming-woman, becoming-alien), and it does not present a teleology of purity, sublimity or transcendence.

The main problematic for a useful becoming-music in education, is the awareness that assessment techniques in the arts are necessary; and the positing of a creative meaning of aesthetics, which will not impinge upon the multiple becomings of the techno-shaman, and which does not exclude the divergent consistency of becoming-other in the rave is needed. As the Arts 5-16, A Curriculum Framework makes plain, describing pupils’ progress in the arts, is a controversial and difficult matter. The Gulbenkian report (1982), in particular criticised the practice of norm-referencing: i.e. that of comparing pupils’ attainments against each other in reaching relative grades; it argued for the assessment methods to be based on individual performance against agreed criteria for all pupils. The report of the Government’s Task Group on Assessment and Testing (DES 1987), came to similar conclusions for all subjects. The team of the curriculum framework report, believe that the criterion-referenced assessment schemes of the National Curriculum have created a positive climate for tackling assessment in the arts. They proposed a general framework for planning, which represents a methodology for the assessment of becoming-musical-education (the techno-shaman-rave).

Yet the assessment of the arts retains its elusiveness and multiplicity in the face of the diversity of pupil achievement (especially given the divergence of the rave), and the difficulty when trying to locate exactly what we mean when identifying ‘good arts work’. The team of the curriculum framework report, separate the areas of ‘models of progress’ and ‘styles of assessment’, as encapsulating their main problems for arts assessment. Models of progress is highlighted as a problem because it has been shown in case studies that pupils do not progress in a linear fashion in the arts, which would seem to make it extremely problematic to theorise any one model of progress over time (ti-tx). Styles of assessment are pinpointed as being difficult, because of the individual opinions of the teachers in the arts, which often lead to stating that the objectivity of arts assessment is ‘subjective’ or ‘creative’; therefore it would be impossible to come up with planned ways of assessing the productivity of musical education in advance and which do not allow for individual difference. These problematic areas return repeatedly in the exploration of musical assessment, as many of the methodologies proposed to deliver musical assessment, depend upon solutions to these difficulties. To state that musical assessment is conventional, is to suggest that it follows rules, such as those which the curriculum framework designers have carefully researched and put into action; to point to the opposite, is to side with the teacher’s championing of the individual artistic creativity of their pupil which is perhaps closer to understanding the becoming shaman of the rave. Yet this is not only a choice between universal laws, and the credibility of a particular child producing music and a rave; but it takes into account the question of aesthetic judgement and the educational purpose of the arts, (individuality or collectively), which as Malcolm Ross et al have written, has gathered pace and importance since James Callaghan opened up the ‘Great Education Debate’ in 1976. The arts in education have been seen to be under threat, both in terms of funding and continuity, due to governmental emphasis on science and technology subjects; so much so that perhaps some of the focus on arts methodologies, has been as a response by arts theorists to scientists transgressing on their field of expertise. Echoes of the dialogue between science and the arts, resonate all the way through the issues and processes of arts assessment. The scientist veers towards the conventional (rule governed), the artist towards the unconventional (individual). It is important not to divide the educational choice so definitely, but to consider it in all its complexity in the contemporary educational situation - especially given the learning mediation that computers are giving with regard to the curriculum, and the shamanic contagion that this opens up.

When arguing for a scheme of assessment in the arts, the criteria which shall be proposed, depend upon an analysis of aesthetic judgement; which underlies the way in which the production of the pupils’ is valued. For example, Peter Abbs, in his essay, Towards a Coherent Arts Aesthetic, constructs an analysis, which defines aesthetic judgement in terms of its modernist (progressive) paradigms. Relating aesthetic judgement to these paradigms, Abbs argues that, ‘good art’ is made out of a complex engagement and a simple play between self and technique, between impulse and medium, between feeling and tradition. However, he says that in the long run, the progressive educationalists provide a limiting notion of self-expression, which will only lead to the impoverishment of educational practice; the freedom of expression that the children experience, shall lead to ‘mimetic gestures’ and the degradation of artistic worth. Abbs positions himself in relation to tradition, modernism and progressivism, in that neither ‘in-itself’, delivers a coherent aesthetic, and therefore, does not possess the grounds for critical assessment. He attempts to put the term aesthetic back to work in our educational context, through a Kantian rendering of its sensuous perceptual nature. This nature can be most coherently presented through the construction, as Abbs terms it, of an ‘aesthetic field’. This field in turn possesses the four phases of making, presenting, responding and evaluating, which imply an intricate web, where the parts are seen in relation, and in a state of reciprocal flow between tradition and innovation, between form and impulse, between society and the individual. The arts teacher must discern the whole complex interaction of this field, and use that knowledge in the organising and planning of work. The evaluating phase in the aesthetic field (though not artificially separable from the other phases according to Abbs), is the phase most closely connected to tradition and an awareness of convention. Abbs suggests that evaluation makes intelligible and communicable the aesthetic response, in the sense that it deepens understanding of the sensuous through a combination of intellect and aesthetics. Aesthetic judgements do respond to a schema of reference, which contains: an awareness of conventions and techniques, awareness of the historic developments of the art tradition including an understanding of historic background, and an awareness of some of the best critical and interpretative literature ([becoming shaman-raving-technologically mediated aesthetic packs] as research). Abbs sees this type of assessment as part of a cyclic process in the aesthetic field, a self-perpetuating process. Assessment is not separate from the creation of art, or the presentation and response to art. Conventionality is tied to the notion of aesthetic judgement, which underpins this form of assessment; yet it is a conventionality of knowledge about the arts (in this case the work of the shaman and the technique of the rave), rather than a conventionality about regulation of the rules for arts assessment in education.

Malcolm Ross and his co-authors agree as to the importance of aesthetics in their assessment of arts achievement. They describe reflective encounters between pupils and teachers, in which interpretative and evaluative processes are initiated. Aesthetic meaning emerges from the perception of the material presence of the work, as an imaginative construct. The assessment conversation begins and ends with the work; it is conducted on the ‘inside’ in imagination and in feeling. The teacher’s task is to try to help the pupil to ‘see’ the reality of the art work. Finally, the teacher and the pupil emerge from this close identification with the work, to verify and validate its significance, by realising the pupil’s expressive purpose. The pupil should be able to substantiate his/her aesthetic judgements, and be able to test them against what they know or desire - this is a methodology which could be used in the assessment of the rave, but in a collective and nonconventional sense rather than the limited individual relationship between teacher and pupil.

The APU Working party on Aesthetic Development (1983), tried to disentangle aesthetic development from artistic development, and came down on the side of artistic development as being the only one capable of being assessed. Yet, as Paul Cartwright explores in his essay, Assessment and Examination in Arts Education: Teachers Talking, this assessment is only possible with the co-operation and understanding of teachers. The teachers expressed differing opinions as to when, why and how pupils should be assessed in arts subjects, though a large corpus of agreement emerged as to the importance of self-evaluation, child-centred approaches, and the involvement of other pupils in the assessment process. This emphasis has been accelerated by the switch from the old, ‘O’ Level examinations, to the introduction of the GCSE. As Cartwright terms it, this has enhanced the formative and diagnostic approach, that supplies a regular supply of positive and constructive feedback to pupils about their progress, rather than the summative style of examinations (progess being assessed through the artistic artefacts produced by the pupils). Such a formative approach, makes the arts departments involved with assessment, open to new methodologies, and able to gear the activity of the children around that which they are able to do. The recommendations of the TGAT, (Task Group on Assessment and Testing), have also directed the models of assessment away from norm-referenced, summative approaches; and into the developmental, individual realms of the self-assessed; these should be extended into collective, aesthetic packs in terms of assessment about the quality, efficacy and direction of the rave.

The Gulbenkian Foundation report, The Arts in Schools: Principles, practice and provision, endorsed arts assessment in terms of accountability. Assessment provides information about pupils’ abilities and levels of attainment, which fulfils the important role in keeping parents, staff and pupils, alert to current levels of work. Assessment and evaluation are, as the report terms it, a basis for informed and intelligent judgement; they are two related processes within the everyday activity of education. To be useful, evaluation should be illuminative and responsive; while assessment should be pervasive and informative. Yet evaluation and assessment both involve personal judgements by teachers and examiners, and have much to do with values, feelings and intuition. The report recommends that assessment takes account of differences in value. This problem is especially acute in the area of examinations, which are prone to dominate the requirements of feeling and intuition with their imperative to produce exacting results. Public examinations often take over the whole educational curriculum, the child being focused on the objective of a good examination result from the start of learning in the arts, which hinders the development of artistic powers. This can have damaging effects on the necessarily supple and flexible assessment schemes which the report recommends for the arts. The experience of failure, would dissuade the pupil from participating in an elaborate and close working relationship with the teacher, who is engaged with attempting to tease out artistic ability (and produce the plane of pack becoming where the rave work takes place).

Arguments for public examinations in the arts, include the vocational requirements of pupils receiving qualifications, the motivational edge which exams provide, and the political expediency for the school in running successful, examined subjects. It is argued that schools should offer a broadly based educational experience, which will serve companies with imaginative, resourceful and flexible individuals; while employers provide specialist training and vocational skills. The report states that only a minority of pupils will be motivated by examinations in the arts, and it is the duty of the teachers to see that pupils stretch themselves with or without exams. It is said that political argument for arts examinations, will be overturned when political forces recognise that the integral running of the school is more important than the examination results achieved, and that the arts contribute crucially to a school’s ethos, whilst not necessarily bringing exam success (the rave, for example, defines an especially pertinent ethos and combinatory factor for contemporary learners). Under pressure from such counter-arguments, the report explores various alternative forms of assessment in the arts. Profile reporting, Records of Pupil Achievement and Records of Pupil Experience; are all likely alternatives, harbouring their own problems and advantages. Graded, informal tests, also offer useful approaches for educators, yet it is emphasised that they should be used as criterion-referenced tests, rather than as norm-referenced. In general, the assessment recommended, is that of continual, informative schemes, encapsulating the support and understanding of both child and teacher. Development and research is needed for this ‘arts regulation’ to be implemented and worked out in its entirety to include the shamanic becomings of the contemporary rave.

David Aspin, has puts forward a model for the suspension of the dualism between the arts and science, to give some account of the objectivity of aesthetic judgement, and to show how children’s increasing ability and confidence in the arts, can be monitored and evaluated. He argued that the ability to make aesthetic judgements comes directly from the tendency to enter into the language-games in which approaches to the questions of value in our assessments of works of art are conceived, articulated and understood. Meaning in language, as philosophy has proved, can be problematic, and works of art are often complex and structured so as not to give away their value at the first attempt. Therefore, the pupil will only raise his or her aesthetic opinion after contemplative and sometimes arduous deliberation. Aspin speaks about "hitherto unknown or unexpected insights into ourselves and the human condition, to get us to see old things in a new and illuminating way". This does not, however, help to make assessment in the arts simpler. Aspin suggests the development of pupils’ understanding of language-games, communication and valuing procedures, insight and responsiveness, articulation and meaning seeking (all relevant exercises with regard to learning in and through the shamanic rave).

The NCC arts in schools project, The Arts 5-16, Practice and Innovation, set out some clear proposals for arts assessment. The roles of assessment are divided into the facilitating functions of progress, attainment, curriculum continuity, improving co-ordination between disciplines, and meeting the needs of accountability. Assessment in the arts is to be approached in a ‘negotiated manner’, the teachers integrating assessment into the working discussions around pupils’ output in their lessons. Self-assessment is encouraged, profiling and Records of achievement are put forward. Principles of assessment in the previously noted, Curriculum Framework, are divided under the headings of: coherence, differentiation, compatibility and objectivity. Coherent practice is necessary to encourage pupil confidence in the system of assessment, yet differentiation between arts disciplines is necessary to allow for the multi-faceted nature of arts development (the development of the shamanic rave is an extremely multi-disciplinary arts subject). Compatibility in the assessment of the arts, is the attempt to reconcile the end-product (the grade, the percentage), with the complex experience, or emotional set from which the work of art has arisen (here the distinction folds in the time of the shamanic rave). Objectivity in assessment in the arts, is the provision of the grounds from which the judgement has derived, making the assessment open to criticism, examination and discussion. Assessment needs evidence of attainment, which will effect future assessment in feedback between the assessed and the assessors. Criteria will be entirely arts based, and detailed to suit the individual disciplines with their particular needs and attainment specifications. The four main areas of assessment are: creative, technical, critical and contextual, which have related learning objectives, and should be combined to enhance the development of pupils’ arts achievement (the intensity of the shamanic communication and the voracity of the rave) .

Conventional arts assessment would entail the following of a set of prescribed rules, perhaps similar to the ones suggested by the Curriculum Framework report. The problem with their complete implementation in the educational field, are the individual arts units and packs, which exist between pupils and teachers in schools. These post-modern (digital) packs encapsulate the learning and assessment processes in the educational cohorts - and they are at the heart of the dynamic which is animating the becoming shaman of the rave and the music of techno-tribalism. They are producing and re-evaluating their own aesthetic rules, assessment schemes and evaluation strategies, following many of the educational schemes that have been listed, yet they are more malleable and open to cultural divergence and mediation by the new media; and therefore possible to place on the contemporary mediated digital plane of learning (the behaviour of the shamanic rave), as micro-becomings in groups and in an educational context. This is an activity which encourages individual divergence, collective expression, and personal performance; yet without the need for internal aesthetic judgement or conventional and restrictive social rules. As the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation report remarked, the job situation in which pupils increasingly finding themselves, does not always present stable vocational choices for life. Training in specific careers is sometimes highly dubious, as that career might well not be there once the pupil has emerged from their training. The becoming of musical education, with the development of shamanic skills through the intensity and divergence of the rave, and the encouragement of subtle and imaginative thinking in the mediated digital arena, aids the pupil and the teacher alike. This process works through the invention and reinvention of lifestyle, career, leisure, and the comprehension of personal complexity in terms of contact with shamanic contagion and the rave. The assessment of this behaviour and cultural production, depends upon the post-modern units of becoming shaman, which are locatable in our computerised education system, and are producing a mediated plane of consistency on which this social change is happening. They are determining the way in which musical divergence emerges (being consumers and producers of the music), and these groups are figuring the social rules for its emergence. These groups in the educational system are packs of raving shamanic communication.

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