Guichu (鬼畜) represents a distinctive form of musicking on Bilibili (a popular Chinese video platform with 326 million monthly active users), where the technique of auto-tune remix is employed to recreate existing songs and gather materials from various audio and visual sources. Owing to its burgeoning popularity, guichu has captivated the attention of scholars from mainland China (Chen, 2019; Li, 2021; Yin, 2020; Zhang, 2018, etc.). The prevailing focus of these scholars revolves around the adverse effects associated with consuming guichu videos, often branding them and their audience as “vulgar” (disu 低俗) and “sick taste” (equwei 恶趣味). This perspective has prompted suggestions for legal regulations (Li, 2021; Yin, 2020) and the implementation of “professional guidance” (Chen, 2019) to refine this genre. Meanwhile, other scholars (Lei, 2020; Li, 2017) critique guichu for its transgressions against copyright and portraiture rights. In contrast with these viewpoints, this project undertakes a comprehensive examination. Initially, it unravels the historical trajectory of guichu, tracing its evolution from a mere musical genre to a thriving virtual community on Bilibili. Subsequently, this project delves into the multifaceted challenges that confront guichu as a subculture, exploring how this virtual community resists both the homogenizing forces of commercial culture and the overarching narrative of the state. It further investigates the ingenious strategies, including “budang” (补档, or “re-uploading”), that this community employs to evade censorship.

2020 ushered in an era of unprecedented virtual and mixed/augmented reality (VR/AR) technology consumption. 13 October marked the release of the Oculus Quest 2 headset (renamed Meta Quest 2 following the 2022 rebranding of Facebook, Inc. as Meta). An accessible base price of 299 USD saw Quest 2 sales vastly outperform other VR/AR systems, accounting for some 18 million units by the first fiscal quarter of 2023, thus spearheading a significant increase in the mainstream adoption of VR/AR technology. The VR/AR marketplace is ever-diversifying, however, with Meta and other brands—including some new to VR/AR (e.g., Apple)—continually unveiling new systems.

Games rooted in multifarious rhythmic and/or dance elements constitute a large segment of the VR/AR gaming market—catering to manifold musical tastes and motivations for gameplay (e.g., dance, physical fitness, socialization, and/or competition)—and are especially popular introductory apps for new VR/AR users. VR/AR developments are dramatically transforming boundaries between a player’s physical body and onscreen avatar, complicating notions of public vs. private performance, expanding machine evaluation/feedback capabilities, and enabling increasingly complex and immersive forms of virtual interaction between human players. Drawing on discourse surrounding social play in non-VR games, including rhythm/dance franchises such as Guitar Hero (2005–) and Dance Dance Revolution (1998–), this presentation examines VR/AR rhythm/dance titles Beat Saber (2019–), Synth Riders (2019–), and Ragnarock (2020–) as comparative case studies in an exploration of multiplayer modality in the rapidly developing “metaverse” and the dynamic (meta)cultural implications of this new frontier.

In this paper, two researchers present findings from an ongoing duoethnographic study into musical and spiritual/magical affordances of telematic music making and its potential for increasing access to music making. The presenters – a drummer and a guitarist/singer/bassist – have met for one to two hours most weeks for since early fall 2023 to play groove music such as pop, rock and blues using free, web-based software designed for low-latency audio and collaborative music making. To date, the success of most remote, telematic musical collaborations has relied on avoiding a firm, percussive pulse (Smith et al 2020) and required prohibitively expensive hardware LOLA that also requires Internet 2 and a team of technicians to operate it. Drawing on Boyce-Tilman’s (2011, 2020) writing about Spirituality – construed by Smith (2022) as magic – the presenters describe conscious connection across the four elements comprising spirituality: Materials, Construction, Values, and Expression. They demonstrate that, although qualitatively different from prior contexts and discussions of spirituality in music making (e.g., Randles, 2021), the experiences were comparable in terms of poiesis and transcendence (Pignato and Begany 2017), worth repeating and sharing. Construing the online environment as a real, alternative space, a de facto “third room” (Moir et al., 2019), the researchers found accommodating to jamming online akin to learning to play in any other new space. This type of software presages a new frontier in collaborative opportunities for musicians, with reduced financial entry point and substantially lower time commitment compared to commonplace practices of traveling and renting physical rehearsal spaces.

Online music communities are a vital method of genre formation in the 21st century. In a Web 2.0 (or 3.0) virtual space which transcends geographical boundaries, a multitude of artists, audiences, musicians, producers and performers come together to negotiate subcultural capital in a collective capacity. With new subcultural styles, rituals, practices, and cultural disseminations, how can we assess the activities of an online community and their role in the formation of a genre? Synthwave, a 21st century style of music which both privileges and reimagines 1980s musical and cultural aesthetics, formed online in the early 2000s. Through a 5-year and 6-month (2017-2023) ethnographic study, this online music community’s ecosystem was examined. With an emic viewpoint, the research made visible tacit knowledge of the synthwave creative process, as well as providing rich and experiential subcultural detail about the online community. The research concluded that the synthwave community is an active community of practice with a defined set of musical, stylistic, technological and subcultural rules. By examining the tensions observable within the outputs, interactions, and discourses of this community of practice, as well as through the author’s participation as a creator, the research addresses how online music communities (including creators and audiences) construct and negotiate parameters of an emergent musical style. The research is (to date) the first ethnographic account of the online synthwave community and provides a first-hand telling of its ecosystem as a community of practice.