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There's a small music venue in Commerce, Calif., that bills itself as "a place where the sole purpose was to listen to this kind of music."
That music? It's experimental music, which UCLA graduate student Dakota Higgins describes as "music that does not have lyrics or a set composition.
It can be improvisational, and he said this music consists only of sounds that would normally not be considered music at all."
Higgins is the co-founder of Departure from Music Venue, or the DMV, a monthly show that showcases "underrepresented experimental artists," reports the Los Angeles Times.
"More free versions of music create, at least for me, a more active and present listening space, specifically because there isn't a way to know what's about to happen," Higgins says.
"I think there's spiritual, intellectual and emotional value to being able to be in spaces where that is the condition of listening."
At the DMV, for example, a musician once performed a solo guitar set but didn't play the guitar at all, Higgins says.
Rather, Higgins says, the musician strapped bungee cords and contact microphones to his body and even used a saw at one point to make sounds.
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