Silent Rave

A silent rave was organized in Union Square by a British exchange student at Packer Collegiate Institute.

I first heard of the term 'Slient Rave' on my podcast from NPR.ORG this week. I found the concept is quite interesting, so I dug into wiki and find the following:

The concept of a silent party, Silent Gig or silent disco involves party-goers dancing to music received directly into headphones. Most commonly, this will be music provided by a DJ who will broadcast via an FM transmitter with the signal being picked up by wireless headphone receivers worn by the silent party attendees. Another type of silent party involves the gathering of a group of people in an unconventional location to dance to music which they provide themselves via an MP3 player and conventional wired headphones.

The idea has been around since the 1990s espoused by eco-activists who found that the easiest way to get large numbers of people to certain areas, such as a forest that was being logged, was to put on a party. However, this could cause distress to animals living in the area, so a compromise solution was needed for particularly sensitive areas.

Since then the concept has evolved into the guerilla-type gatherings as seen at London's Victoria Station in 2005 and also into commercial ventures across the UK, Europe and worldwide.

The following is a translation of what Silent Rave is in Chinese.

Rave Party一般給人的印象都是吵吵鬧鬧，而且一定要選在晚上在偏僻的空曠地方舉辦，上個週末的紐約市就舉辦了一場完全不Rave的Rave Party，這場被稱為是無聲的Rave Party(Silent Rave)，儘管沒有播放任何音樂，卻吸引了超過一千名民眾參加，他們戴上自己的iPod(或其他MP3隨身聽)，舞動身軀，跳出自己的節拍，場景相當壯觀。這整個活動依循快閃族的啟動模式，由18歲的Jonnie Wesson在Facebook中發起，然後在網路上得到數以千計的回應，雖然最後真正參加的只是這數以千計的一小部分而已，卻也十分可觀。對於不熟悉快閃族活動的路人，經過時看到他們似無旁人瘋狂跳舞的景象，可能有點摸不著頭緒，但是參與的民眾仍然十分盡興的跳到天黑才結束。而這起活動除了再次證明網路的號召力之外，也顯示了一件事-紐約市民已經知道如何在不違反噪音管制條例的情況下，開場大家都開心的派對了。

I'm wondering when will local folks start picking up this trend here. Cos, I think it is gonna be great. Cos, people can dance and have fun. It won't bother other people with noise or music that you don't like. Also, it is supposed to be cheap. Without picking up what is raved in places like London and NYC, and claim itself an international metropolitan city in terms of culture? What a joke!