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Noel Douglas
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Name: DIY Records Design: Digit1 http://www.digit1.com/diy/ London, June - July 1998 |
Coming to life in the highly-charged atmosphere of the UK's early '90s free party/club culture, with its attendant criminalisation by the notorious Criminal Justice Act, DIY made their mark on the scene via a number of events and festivals, including involvement in the notorious Avon Free Festival at Castlemoreton Common, Gloucestershire in 1992, where 40,000 revellers clashed with the police, making front-page news and in the process becoming a landmark in the UK's anti-establishment rave history. Designers Digit1's website for DIY takes this history on board and represents it for the Web audience, and just like its real-life counterpart, this is all done to a constant soundtrack of 'repetitive beats' ensuring that if this website were a party, it would certainly be under arrest! Yes, this website has been designed to engage viewers with DIY's music as they browse the site. The interface, a dirty metallic console that sits in the bottom third of the fixed-size browser window, has two selectors that can be dragged left and right. These can play tunes either from current releases on DIY's label or tracks from the back catalogue. The music interface stays constant during the browsing of the site, and essentially provides a mini-hi-fi of DIY tunes. If using a good connection, it works smoothly and with a reasonable audio quality, one that isn't interrupted by the surfing going on in the rest of the browser window's upper frame. Users are given a number of sections to browse, all of which are accessed from a scrolling menu that shares the bottom frame with the music selector. Double-clicking your selection can take you to standard sorts of website information: contacts, help, links, etc., while other sections take a more in-depth look at DIY, its artists, personalities and history. Bearing in mind how the collective came into being, it is perhaps unsurprising that the most interesting and comprehensive parts are the 'History' and 'Against the Grain' sections. In 'History', the text is by default both a history of DIY and a mini-history of the rave scene, giving a good idea of how the scene built up and then diversified into a number of different strands. 'Against the grain' contains a number of interesting sections, including a tour history of the DIY sound system that takes in several diverse locations across the world. A series of short essays about the politics of the free party movement and a selection of shockwave movie 'quotes' from various luminaries such as David Toop and John Cage dynamically build, fade and come together on the screen in front of you. Digit1 say that the 'look and feel of DIY was very much inspired by regenerating and recycling objects; giving them new life and purpose within new media'. Of course, some media can be regenerated more easily than others. In the case of collectives such as DIY, who already take a principled stand on utilising the democratic potential of electronic ways of making music, much can be gained as Net access becomes more widespread. The principled creativity of collectives such asDIY can make use of network technology to extend existing connections and find new areas to spread the word, while simultaneously circumventing and confronting the structures of the music industry and society alike online music being already one of the most hotly contested areas in the independent versus corporate battles for the future of the Web. And with this site soon to accommodate live webcasts and transactions, it could provide a vital key to the growth and strength of such an oppositional culture do-it-yourself indeed. This review is an excerpt from the book Website Graphics Now, an international source book on the best in Global site design. Website Graphics Now was edited by Mediamatic and published in July 1999 by BIS Publishers in co-operation with Thames and Hudson. For more information on Website Graphics Now read the introduction, or see the complete selection.
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