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Sydney Flashrave
No, it’s not inside a club or at a festival. It’s the Town Hall steps on a Friday afternoon!
This morning I was getting emails from colleagues who were all hung up on the notion of a flashmob. Comments such as – “What is it?”, “Huh? I don’t geddit.”, and “Bizarre!” were just some of the email floating around today. People who would have no idea about websites such as inthemix were all buzzing with the notion of the flashmob.
I arrived at Town Hall steps at 5:40pm, taking up a prime position to be able to watch the event unfold. People started to arrive, but I couldn’t discern between what was a normal number of people congregating at this location, an iconic city meeting place, and what were numbers in excess of this.
Then it became quite evident. More and more people with headphones on began to arrive.
With a loudhailer in hand, Jay Hemsworth from inthemix announced to all that it was 6:11pm. It was time to dance. And for ten minutes, people did. There was hollering and whooping but still no music to be heard.
A few hundred people dancing to the sound of their own MP3 player. The phenomenon, a twist on the flashmob, this was the ‘flashrave’.
View the full photoset on Flickr. Further coverage on news.com.au – I’m up the back on the left in the green shirt (if you squint hard enough!).
6 Comments, Comment or Ping
GG
green shirt? Looks black to me….with the sunnies on??
Sep 29th, 2007
daveg
Yeah, sorry. That was the poorest execution of a flashmob I’ve ever seen. The one part of a flashmob that makes it so damn special is the apparent spontaneity, which with the “ready, set, go” was completely lost in this case. As I approached it (to pick Rozie up, not participate) all I saw was mainly a large group of people standing around and dancing, who knew what was going on and taking photos of themselves. Man, if I’ve ever seen a manifestation of the ITM forums in meatspace this was it.
A properly run flashrave would’ve just happened all of a sudden around whoever was waiting around at those steps (as opposed to people waiting around for the time to start) and then just as quickly dispersing into thin air, with the dispersion causing just as much confusion as the actual flashrave itself.
Yeah, yeah. You might say that it doesn’t have to be like a “proper” flashmob and that I’m an old crank. Its just like the old electro/NPE argument
Sep 29th, 2007
Stilgherrian
If it’s possible to organise a Flash Rave in a day, I reckon we could do a Flash Chant at the AFL Grand Final this afternoon. http://flashchant.com … pass it on!
Sep 29th, 2007
Benn
GG – In the photo on news.com.au. It’s hard for me to be in the photo above when I’m taking it.
Daveg – Couldn’t agree more. The fact that there were people waiting before hand, and that it went for so long lead to the downfall. It needed to be 5 minutes – let’s say one track and then finished. I think Facebook didn’t help with the time increments on their site being 10 minutes.
Sep 30th, 2007
Colleen
Now I’m finally feeling my age. Never heard of the Flashmob, and wouldn’t have realized there are so many rules around how to have a spontaneous event.
Oct 6th, 2007
Margie
The notorius NY club kid (later murderer) Michael Alig used to hold events like this in the early 90s. I went to one on a subway platform in the east Village. Of course there was loud music, way more drag queens and it was 3AM.
Oct 8th, 2007