HorizonZero & Rhythm Science
Montreal's stifling humidity has been in
steady decline since the forecast market rushed the season and reminded us what
it means for the temperature to drastically dip. I awakened to a towering grey
front outside. Last night dreams mixed with half-frozen reveries as my summer
fan blissfully zeroed ice across my shivering body.
But it's still "summer," so everyone is
taking it easy (playing Strongbad's Peasantry).
There's a huge
body of dead water off the Gulf of Mexico and
sharks are eating up bathing Texans. A high terror alert is on again.
Stormtroopers greet senators. BoingBoing is still fascinating.
The internet is a seasonal phenomenon, and blows in with the cooler weather
(unless you happen to be blogging the
DNC/RNC).++
I don't think I've posted this here yet--so here's a piece I wrote for the Banff Centre for the Art's
online journal,
HorizonZero. As part of issue 15,
"new movements in digital music," it's
called:Sound
Tracks and Data
FootprintsStalking
the footfalls and echoes of the wireless
invisible[english
version] [version
francais] [flash
version - not a direct
link]The latest issue,
16, is called "wear" and is on wearable technologies and computing.
++ While everyone trades the terrasse
for the heated sanctuary of strong malts, I'm engaged in a protracted reading of
Paul D. Miller a.k.a. Dj Spooky that Subliminal
Kid's Rhythm
Science (Cambridge: MIT Mediawork,
2004). It started out as a review for EBR, it will
probably be cut at its current length, and I'm not sure if this kind of energy
is worthwhile. Here's a few ruminations that shouldn't be taken as conclusions
or steadfast positions...Miller is all
about the pop-culture appeal and the hype (check the website link above).
Arguing against it is kind of self-defeating, and I take Miller's claims as a
conceptual artist seriously (at least, I respect them). But what I find unusual
about Rhythm
Science is just how evasive Miller has even
become with himself.Perhaps a quieter
approach would just be to accede to Peter Halley's interactive web remix,
Hypnotext. It's fun, and has this early '90s hypertext kitsch to it,
but with more style and design panache (click on a word like "dance," get a
quote or two from the book--hardly a remix, more like a basic index). Yet, like
Hypnotext's banality, Miller still pegs that deep, sinking feeling I've always
felt when reading his work, or hearing him speak: is it anything other than just
an addictive ride through jetsetting vertigo? What is there to remix culture
other than a carnivorous situation where, not only can "any sound be you," but
the basic law is one of Machiavellian combat, a dog-eat-dog world where, if any
Dj is only as good as his or her archive, then all that counts is getting one's
hands on the most stuff to play around with? That's a cynical view of the
sample: steal the best thing to make the most of your own brand/name. Get there
first before someone else does. Where is the place of skill here? How can one
review an art that precludes any basis for judgment? What is the difference
between sample culture and aggressive capitalism?
Obviously there's more to remix culture,
which is where the review is going: in trying to broaden that thought, get out
of that junkie habit of losing yourself in the loop & repetition. It's not
all flow, and a Dj is more than his or her archive: a Dj has to do with skill,
too. Critically, Miller is not a Dj. As he repeats over and over
in Rhythm
Science, he started djing as a conceptual art
project (Dj Spooky). Thus, skill is of little importance to him: what matters is
the image, not the sound.
Advertising and appearance.
posted. Thu - August 5, 2004 @ 01:37 PM
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..ziP:
./them.hallucinates./.
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...puplished 0n: Aug 18, 2004 01:34 PM
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