Pages

Total Pageviews

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Paul D. Miller aka "DJ Spooky"

Paul D. Miller aka 'DJ Spooky' performed and spoke today at the University of Michigan's State Street theatre on April, 7, 2011. DJ Spooky is a composer, a writer, and a prominent multi-media artist who uses various samples and creates remixes to compose innovative pieces of music and art. He stresses how 'sampling,' editing, and remixing, genres like 'hip-hop' have now become legitimate methods of writing and expression. Thanks to DJs and other composers like DJ Spooky, hip-hop can be used as a beneficial tool to learning academically by way of a beat.
Photo By Sydney Berger
DJ Spooky says that sampling, "is like a form of art that is inherited from a lot of issues from a collage." This combined with various elements of technology, allows us to capture every moment of expression. He uses these elements and incorporates them into a new kind of language--a language that plays with hip-hop and uses the idea of the 'cut-up' technique.' He went on to talk about this concept throughout his lecture--the notion of using stop motion photography and sampling and how each are used to create seamless sequences that tell parts of stories.

Essentially, what DJ Spooky does, and what he showed us today was how he re-edit's clips and creates an innovative sense of "word play." He uses sampling as a way to modernly navigate new terrain, by way of digital literacy, by recreating an original landscape into something that is novel and unique. This is evident in many aspects of new media; the way we listen and view music in our society is constantly evolving and DJ Spooky is bolstering this movement.

Photo By Richard Avedon
My favorite part of DJ Spooky's lecture was when he played an excerpt of his "Rebirth of a Nation." This was his first large-scale multimedia performance piece, which has already played all over the world (even for President Obama). He took clips from D.W. Griffith's, "The Birth of a Nation" and incorporated samples of music that he created himself from various sources, and ultimately came up with his masterpiece, "The Rebirth of a Nation." He reiterated the idea that "history is always about revisions and edits." And thanks to seeing his innovative work, we learn that this is definitely true (especially within many aspects of new media).

Posted by at

2 comments:

  1. Allie FosterApril 11, 2011 at 1:25 PM

    I really enjoyed reading your post on DJ Spooky. I was, unfortunately, unable to attend the lecture, but I felt that your post did a really good job keying in on the main points and highlighting what the lecture essentially represented. The introduction and summary of what DJ Spooky does was very informative. Additionally, I really enjoyed reading about your favorite part of the lecture. After all, you were the one who attended it. Overall, I thought that this was a well-written and really interesting post. And, I liked the images that you used, especially the one that you took yourself. Thanks for posting!

    ReplyDelete
  2. McKenna FarrarApril 12, 2011 at 12:29 PM

    My favorite part of his lecture was also when he showed part of "Rebirth of a Nation." In class, especially in high school, we've always learned about African-American culture, mostly through readings, so it was interesting to see a different interpretation of the same struggles and successes of a culture. I found DJ Spooky's piece about African-American culture over the past 100 years to be not only informative, but also inspiring and powerful. It showed how images that many of us have seen before (i.e. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks) can be taken to a whole other level when sound and music are incorporated.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)