The science of shadow play
DJ Spooky kicks off lecture series with a discussion of art and technology
DJ SPOOKY
Thursday, September 19
Stanford Perrott Lecture Theatre (ACAD)
Friday, September 20
The Warehouse
What distinguishes DJ Spooky from other turntablists is the way he constantly stretches the boundaries of electronic music. Spooky, a.k.a. Paul D. Miller, is a visionary who continually reinvents his medium with a multitude of ventures, including online publishing and music production. With these qualities and a new album under his belt, Spooky is fast becoming the poster boy for media convergence – earning him the title of the hardest-thinking man in digital show business.
Apparently, the programmers at Art Gallery of Calgary have noticed this, as Spooky will will be launching the gallery's latest lecture series with a talk at ACAD on Thursday, September 19 (followed by a set at The Warehouse the next evening). No longer content with cutting and scratching, Spooky has now taken it upon himself to deconstruct the already deconstructed world of left-field beatopia.
The proverbial next step is a new CD entitled Optometry, which, he says, explores "the science of vision." By combining the forces of live instrumentation and manipulated analogue sources, Spooky is setting out to change the way we hear music and the way music can be assembled, reassembled and then torn apart again, bringing conceptual "art" and his love for jazz to the fore. Optometry is much more than a means to an end for Spooky, and it's also more then an intellectual wank – it's his way to provide metaphors for our contemporary media landscape.
"This is a reflection," says Miller. "It's my way of trying to deal with the media in the digital age, to stay open to the potential and opportunity of art in an age where everyone can make something of their own with an MP3 player and an editing suite."
Optometry was inspired by his love for jazz narratives and their more improvisational elements as much as it is from the DJ scratch world of Q-bert and the like. But when played live before an audience, it has Spooky combining percussive beds – the constituents of the beat – which are then recombined with other elements and samples.
The result is that Spooky has the ability to blur the lines between "a sample" and sampled music – samples layered upon samples form a new collage nightly, and the lion's share of music in any given set is reconstructed. This reduces the potential for repetition, thereby giving the music its improvisational element – by eliminating the structure, no two montages will sound the same. Interestingly, the roots to this approach can be found in digital technology.
"People are exposed to pieces of another person's interpretation all the time on the Internet," says Miller. "It is about quick edits... about people reinterpreting sound and media differently. Every time you hit a page, that's someone's understanding or presentation of reality.
"For me, this Optometry, it is a natural step in the relationship between DJing and artistry – it's a reflection of that reality."
A quick visit to Spooky's own Web site, www.djspooky.com, reveals a complete esthetic – whether working with Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, developing visions convergent with Sun Ra's Arkestra or writing articles for many a media outlet, Spooky is a individual movement, dedicated to honing and developing ideas that have as much to do with art as they do with making a dancefloor move.
"I'm interested in enabling people to think about what they're moving to, in what they're listening to. And in this age of The Truman Show, we need that as much as ever – the ability to hear the other side of the story." |
