Camp Chaos — our latest experiment at Songcamp — has one very clear purpose: to give birth to a headless band called Chaos.
In our previous essay, we dove into how we are using containers of Scope, Teams, and Time to give shape to this experiment in chaotic collection creation.
This idea of a “headless band” spans far beyond our creative approaches to this project. It deeply informs how we are thinking about, and executing, the flow of value amongst this network of 80 artists.
The design and implementation of the value flow system within Camp Chaos can be broken down into three plot lines:
Camp Chaos is an 8-week experiment at the edges of music + the new internet.
80 human beings from all over the world have converged on the Songcamp Discord and committed to 8 weeks of collective creation. Of these 80 individuals: there are 45 musicians, 9 visual artists, 6 engineers, 5 radio producers, 3 economists, 2 lore masters and 7 operatives gluing it all together.
The result: a headless band called Chaos, accompanied by a music nft project like you’ve never seen before.
Back in the 90’s British anthropologist Robin Dunbar unearthed a fascinating correlation between our brain sizes & average social group sizes. Now known as Dunbar's number the finding was that, based on the limitations of our neocortex, there’s a maximum size of group (circa 150 members) in which we maintain stable relationships.
Stability is the important distinction here. The primate groups being studied needed to spend 43% of their time on social grooming to maintain a group that size stably. Otherwise instability would reign supreme, and the group would disband.
For humans, stable relationship cohesion above & beyond the 150-member number has historically been hard to replicate unless under intense survival pressure: subsistence villages, nomadic tribes, or historical military groupings for instance. Only in these more extreme cases have groups, on average, achieved and maintained coherence.
More recent evidence (across gaming, business & technical communities) suggests this 150 number is a wild overestimation, especially with active engaged group members.
My first immersive theatre experience was in London.
A strange choice for a first date: dishevelled converted warehouse rooms transformed into horrific SAW like enclaves for historical ‘Jack the Ripper’ deep dives. Weirder still was the melange of characters that attended, all in fancy dress, blurring the lines between participant and actor - infusing the evening with mystique and intrigue. I like to think this setting, so frighteningly effective as it was, is entirely to blame for my companion that evening running for the hills! What remained with me however was the poignant impact of this multidimensional submergence, so profound that friends and I went on to put on a few of our own.
Fast forward to the present day and the post-pandemic possibilities of the digital world are being realised through new iterations on ways to connect with one another. What was once simply a figment of the imagination, in fantasy fiction novels like Snowcrash, is now fully possible across a profusion of metaverses. Yet music has always been immersive.
Akin to comedy, photography, and writing; music is a medium that collapses worlds, regales stories, and releases energy in a way like no other. Songs, instrumentals, beats - all carry with them sacred intangible qualities that communicate, both in real time and across time, signals about meaningful aspects of our culture. As we advance, a collusion and collision of art forms has enabled us to more clearly relay the complexity of the communities and connections that comprise our collective existence.
Camp Chaos is an 8-week experiment at the edges of music + the new internet, powered by Songcamp.
It is one-half songwriting camp, one-half web3 hackathon.
What we are building is a headless artist called Chaos — who will release their debut body of work as a collection of NFTs.
Wow.
I can’t quite believe it.
One whole year has come and gone, and our baby Songcamp has done her first full spin around the sun.
In some ways it feels like it's been insanely longer — like decades have happened in the span of months. I often feel like Songcamp was born in 1988. It’s of that era for real.
Chaos is here.
You may not feel it yet. You may not yet be fully immersed in her aura.
But let us assure you: she is here.
For the 80 of us in Camp Chaos, she has already arrived. She arrived 6 days ago, on March 8th 2022, when Camp Chaos first came alive.
Oh, hi! 👋
Welcome to Songcamp. We are so very happy you’ve dropped by.
Songcamp is a web3 laboratory experimenting at the edges of music and the new internet.
We run month-long cohort projects called camps. A camp looks a lot like the birth child of a songwriting camp + web3 hackathon.
At Songcamp, we run “Camps” — cohorted projects that test out different ideas around music making, collective creation and distribution.
So far, we've run 2 camps:
- Camp Genesis — a group of 13 musicians, visual artists and project operatives created 3 songs, cover artwork and an innovative NFT rollout.
- Camp Elektra — a group of 42 artists, devs and project operatives came together to create a pop-up production house + songwriting camp. Over two months, they built out the interactive story, art and world of Elektra -- a faraway planet where music is the ultimate source of energy. This resulted in a lore-based NFT crowdfund, an audio-visual telling of the Elektra story through multiple NFTs, and the release of 3 incredible songs that would help save the dying world of Elektra. Oh..and Elektra is now spinning out into its own DAO to continue building out the world.
All that to say, we've been busy. These projects take a lot of curation, container building and coordination. So recently we thought about how we could get a new stream going in Songcamp that could have a bit of a quicker, more inclusive flow.
Welcome to the Elektra Songs Auction!
Auction house → https://elektra.camp
Release Party → http://songcamp.band
100% of the proceeds from these auctions will go to the artists who created these songs and artwork, as well as those who have contributed to the wider Elektra project. See detailed splits below.
Collecting one of these 1/1 Catalog NFTs also includes:
We must save Elektra.
In the faraway world of Elektra, music is energy. And it is dying.
Luckily, a brave group of explorers — nay, warriors — grabbed Portal Tickets one month ago and jumped through the Portal to Elektra to help save her from extinction.
Since then, they have been journeying through the world of Elektra and learning about its history. They've also managed to collect 3 Energy Capsules along their way.
Update: A PartyBid has launched to bid on the Log 3 NFT! 🥳 Join the party here.
The first batch of songs out of Elektra drop on Monday August 16 at 4 PM ET in the Songcamp Discord → Add Event Reminder here
You continue on to the fallen city of Edin Prodo, after hearing from Cat & Alpha in the second Log. It sounds like Cat & Alpha have collected a second Capsule.
You also learnt of The Prophecy Of The Elektra from Godina, who said they had “a vision that brave warriors from a space unknown will appear out of a portal”. It sounds like that's referring to us...
Update: A PartyBid for Godina's Message has won the auction! If you participated, claim your tokens here.
You have just left the riverbed of Lum Tauli, in Elektra's northern region -- heading South toward the fallen city of Edin Prodo.
You curve around a hill of tumbled rock, and suddenly stop in your tracks...
You can't believe your eyes. A fallen warrior, a giant skeleton, lays before you. Covered in the same symbols you keep finding everywhere. Something horrible happened here, a very long time ago.
You have just landed on Elektra’s surface to find it in complete ruins.
Amidst the rubble, there are all sorts of technological devices unlike anything back on Earth. Most of them are clearly destroyed. But one of the devices you come upon seems to still function.
You turn it on. There is a message on it. A new one...
“Recording 17AV — logged 37 minutes ago.”
Update: We are absolutely blown away with the support on this project — thank you to all! The Crowdfund is now closed.
Songcamp Elektra is made up of 42 musicians, visual artists, developers and strategists. Together we are building “Elektra” — an interactive choose-your-own-adventure web3 game with music at its core.
To play the game, you need to secure a Portal Ticket NFT in the crowdfund below.
The funds raised through this crowdfund will go entirely towards bringing this project to life.
Once healthy and thriving, the world of Elektra has since turned desolate and barren.
On Elektra, music is energy. Music is the fuel, electricity, and light of the world.
Centuries ago, Elektra had a thriving civilization with a deep rooted sense of value towards art. But soon, motives around greed and self-interest took over, and the music that powered this world was lost.
Our mission is to travel to Elektra, and collectively create the music that will revive, restore and reignite this once beautiful world back to health.
Hey. It’s been a while.
Here’s what we’ve been up to the last few weeks, and how it’s helped shape our thinking around Songcamp 2 — which (btw) is imminently approaching.
Thanks for being here. :)
Written by Matthew Chaim, with personal testimonies from Songcamp’s Peace Node, Thys, Hvdson, Samsonite, Rowan Spencer, Kevin Paris, Gavin Slate and MAi.
———————
A week ago, 13 strangers made roughly $34,000 USD off the sale of 3 music NFTs.
This was the result of Songcamp Genesis — a group of 9 musicians, 2 visual artists, and 2 project operatives who came together to try something new on the Internet.
Welcome to the first ever Songcamp Music NFT Auction!
The following 3 one-of-one NFTs are now open for bidding below:
- “Static Twist” by The Lunar Veil
- “Hold On Hope” by Driftwood TX
- “Antid0t3” by Rainbow Punch
It’s going down.
On Monday May 3 2021, the first three songs ever created at Songcamp will be released to the public.
Two weeks ago, a group of 9 talented strangers came together and created 3 absolutely insane, fantastic, weird, eclectic, beautiful songs. At the same time, a group of visual artists and project operatives formed to support the visual art and rollout plan of said music.
This coming Monday, all of that collectively created art is coming your way.
Well, it's official. The very first Songcamp has been unlocked.
With 20 minutes left in the auction, Seed Club blew the bidding competition out of the water with a 1.25 ETH bid.
Now our friends at Seed Club — who are fittingly also experimenting at the far out edges of the new internet — own this absolutely stunning, wavy, electric NFT. A badge of honor permanently etched on-chain, eternally engraving their status as the very first supporters of Songcamp, and forging our bond as we lift off into the unknown stratosphere of all that web3 has to offer.
We couldn't ask for a better partner in crime.
UPDATE: A huge thank you to Seed Club for collecting "The Unlock" NFT and officially unlocking this first Songcamp for everyone!
TL;DR: The music industry is broken. Instead of trying to fix it, let’s just try something a whole lot different. It all starts with this NFT.
The current music industry models condition us to believe certain untruths: that we must amass millions upon millions of streams a month to earn a decent living, that we must be one thing and build one brand identity and not stray from that, that we must spend an exorbitant amount of time and money finding our audience by paying for data that is siloed off by opaque intermediaries — data that is rightfully ours.
All this and more adds up to the hamster wheel performance of the music business.