ABSTRACT
Braindance is consistent with the old house trope, borrowed from the cyberpunk of William Gibson, of “jacking in” to cyberspace. Braindance establishes, through multiple rhythms, tones, and timbres, electronic continuity between neural circuits and circuits of digital information. Braindance music unravels, neuron by neuron, silcon chip by silicon chip, the audio unconscious of the drive towards complete interactivity within a human–machine system. The braindance of the “windowlicker”, a term in colloquial English that denotes someone mentally handicapped or psychically disturbed, is conveyed through the amusical arrhythmia of the machined beats. The phenomenon of the hikikomori, first coined by psychologist Tamaki Saiko was given novelistic expression by Tatsuhiko Takimoto, a self-confessed hikikomori who hoped to exploit his condition by jumping “on the tide of the times” and making “a ton of money”. The goal is to produce hikikomori on a mass scale, the ideal consumers of Japanese popular culture, through the seductions of manga, anime, and hentai.
