French DJ Agoria on the Internet, Biology, and Moving Into the Metaverse
Multidisciplinary artist Agoria makes his debut in the Metaverse, abolishing borders to liberate his imagination.
Agoria, born Sébastien Devaud, is a French electronic record producer, composer, and DJ. Early in his career, Devaud organized his own parties with friends, who titled their gatherings “Agora”—“meeting place” in ancient Greek— leading to his artist moniker. Agoria began producing and releasing his own tracks in 1999 and quickly gained international recognition. He has since released seven albums, a film soundtrack, and numerous singles and EPs. Here, the artist and musician shares some of his history with electronic music, his fascination with biological generative art, and his excitement about working in the mixed reality of the Metaverse, merging gaming with music, fine art, fashion, and science.
L’OFFICIEL: What was your relationship with the Internet, in its beginnings?
AGORIA: Historically, electronic music has always been ahead of trends, and set the tone of what was going to happen over the next five to 10 years. If I make electronic music, it’s because I’m also a bit of a geek; the genre was not always popular. I was almost ashamed to tell my girlfriends at the time that I was a DJ!
When the first online music sites launched, everyone said it wouldn’t work, that no one would buy music online. Novelty arouses fear and is rejected, since the ecosystem has no control over it. It’s the same with Web3, which is the beginning of an era that will not be short-lived. I often draw parallels to the first raves. The writer Hakim Bey has explained it very well in his book TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone. According to him, raves were the last space of freedom that society has known.
I try to act as a pedagogue; it is not a question of suppressing life in the physical world, but just to propose other alternatives, other possibilities for creativity, entertainment, and encounters. I am not naïve either; there will inevitably be centralization in Web3. Total decentralization, as political history has shown, is impossible. But right now, everything is still possible in Web3, and the user has complete control over their own data. The algorithms of Web2 constantly engage you, to slow you down or make you spend, to put you in a mold.
L’O: When did you discover the Metaverse?
A: Like everyone else, I believe in the opportunity of a second life. I don’t really like the term “Metaverse;” I prefer to speak of a mixed universe with augmented intelligence. It seems to correspond better to reality to me. Reading a book and going to the cinema are both forms of Metaverse. You stay in the same body, but you settle into another state of consciousness.
L’O: Is it the ideal platform for your projects?
A: I have always been curious about everything and I have never confined myself to music. I had a hard time with the idea that a DJ is only a DJ. Web3 and NFTs allow me to present my work without filters. Collectors, whether or not they buy my work, are my best communicators. They will write, for example, to SuperRare to suggest that the crypto art marketplace do a collection with me. There is a lot of energy and kindness.
L’O: Who do you work with on your biological generative art?
A: This is a field that fascinates me. I have created many works with scientists, such as the biophysicist Nicolas Desprat, or recently on SuperRare with the biologist Alice Meunier, head of research at The French National Centre for Scientific Research. Her work focuses on the brain, which is perfectly fine since I’m a control freak. She studies when the brain makes a decision, and, more specifically, on the moment before the decision-making. In the brain, there are cilia, which secrete a liquid with protein, and when a protein matches with another protein, you start to make a decision. What we show is that before the birth of these cilia, there are centrioles which make them grow. We managed to film this precise moment, and I wrote music to accompany it.
What is wonderful about NFTs is that they offer the opportunity to present scientific publications outside of the scientific community. In a sense, for me, NFTs are a bit of a wind-up time machine: they are authenticated on the blockchain; they are notarized and visible, and, over time, we will be able to find them and see that they marked the beginning of an experiment. Music and research have many points in common, in particular the necessity of time spent and the inevitability of errors, but they both lead to the correct answers.
L’O: How will your work as a musician find its extension in the Metaverse?
A: I started to release songs on the app Foundation that accompanied certain works, like the ones made with Nicolas Desprat. But I have to say that at the moment, there is not yet a musical NFT platform that has convinced me 100 percent. I think that it’ll take the advent of a new, more complete sound file with all the song’s metadata. That’s what will lead to incredible possibilities. We usually work with something fixed in its form, but why not imagine a work that would evolve over time? I work a lot with living things; there is immanence in nature that is omnipresent, and this is my preferred field of reflection. If art could be closer to that, that would be extraordinary.
L’O: You are also launching a collection of wearables called One Life, Two Bodies.
A: This idea joins together my presence in different worlds. I wanted to create this brand because we have one body, but different ways to show it. I wanted a physical brand with an impact in the virtual world, which to me is still the real world, hence why I say “one life.” This brand is inspired by what I do in biological generative art, which will be represented in each part. The wearables will be on The Sandbox starting in June, and we will create more each season.
