King mixer
IN THE MID-1990s, Paul D. Miller was just another recent Bowdoin philosophy graduate wondering how to combine his interest in postmodern theory and the spooky new sounds of ambient and techno music. Then he reinvented himself as "Dj Spooky that Subliminal Kid," started mixing samples of Debussy, Moroccan funk, and feedback, and soon became famous in dance-club and academic scenes around the world.
This summer, the 33-year-old conceptual artist's "Dj Spooky's `Rebirth of a Nation,"' a multimedia "remix" of D.W. Griffith's infamous film, will premiere at Lincoln Center. Ideas spoke with Miller shortly before he came to the Charles Hotel in Cambridge to read from his new book "Rhythm Science" (MIT) -- a densely allusive manifesto that is itself an objet d'art with a die-cut cover and a Dj Spooky sampler CD -- this past Thursday.
IDEAS: "Rhythm Science" criticizes American culture for being both alienating and conservative.
MILLER: Young people today have grown up in an era of multiplex consciousness, a media-saturated culture where meaning is no longer tethered to the ground of its origins. So why isn't there a broad artistic movement focused on coping with the information vertigo we experience daily? Except for a few turntablists and software-swapping geeks, Americans are trapped in what I call a micro-niche mentality. We lack any awareness of the big picture, we passively accept the status quo, we do nothing besides pressing PLAY.
IDEAS: What's the alternative?
MILLER: During much of the 20th century, American culture, high and low, was driven by attempts to make something new out of the old. But today most Americans are conditioned to be consumers -- we spend millions on the products of top-down corporate culture, we're hypnotized by reality television, we have no awareness of history. "Dj Spooky" is an art project intended to encourage people to understand the dynamics of the broadcast mentality, to play with the culture instead of just pressing PLAY. I'd like Americans to become "actionary" instead of reactionary, to collect and exchange samples of our culture and use them to create new forms, new styles, new ways of thinking.
IDEAS: How will doing that sort of thing help Americans become less alienated?
MILLER: From frontier tall tales to jazz and hip hop, the recombinant aesthetic has always been the American M.O. When I started DJ-ing, seeing what happened when this particular sound was applied to that context, I realized that taking elements of our own alienated culture and recombining them to create new narratives and meanings can make us psychologically healthier. When the Sugar Hill Gang rapped, "I don't mean to brag, I don't mean to boast, but I like hot butter on a breakfast toast," that made Americans really happy. We can all relate to enjoying buttered toast, but they'd found a way to make something unfamiliar and new out of the experience. Becoming unalienated is as simple and as difficult as that.
