What Moves You? Raving at the Confluence of Musical Space, Headspace, Temporal Space, and Cultural Space

This study is an ethnographic investigation of rave and its culture, focusing on the motivational structures of individuals within the community. The aim of the study is to better understand the nature and form of raves as event, in terms of art-form/genre, and as a subculture (and as subcultural phenomenon) by a deeper understanding of what it means to and for the individuals who choose to participate and often make it a large component of their lives and identity. Relying heavily on primary observation and interview data, the study questions the interactivity of how ravers construct their experiences raving as desirable and significantly meaningful, how the processes of performance and reception/interpretation collaborate in creation of the artistic content of a rave, and how the prevalent interactions entangle emergent shifts in cognition, social formation, and behaviours within and extending beyond the primary rave environment.