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Nov 04
1

DJ Spooky’s Heart of a Forest Tour

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PROJECT INFO HERE
EVENT INFO HERE

November 6, 4 p.m. – Enterprise, hosted by Fishtrap
November 9, 7 p.m. – Portland, hosted by World Forestry Center
Win tickets to the Portland event HERE
November 10, 7 p.m. – Newport, hosted by Newport Performing Arts Center
November 11, 6 p.m. – Bend, hosted by The High Desert Museum

DJ Spooky will mix live, recorded and electronic music with aerial video of Oregon forests, along with an on-stage conversation with a forest ecologist. The multimedia show is inspired by symphonic music Miller composed during four seasonal artist residencies at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest in the Oregon Cascades. The score, which was debuted and recorded with the Oregon State University Wind Ensemble earlier this year, metaphorically explores spring, summer, fall and winter through sound and imagery.

For the Heart of a Forest project, Miller wanted to understand “how to remix some of the ways we think about traditional forms of music versus digital interpretation of nature. Is the landscape a portrait? Is a composition a portrait? I think we need music to catalyze how we can rethink our relationship to nature.” Miller says that the piece is inspired by Thoreau and the collision of data, sound and new ways to think about the absence of origins.

Oct 25
1

The New Memory Palace

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By Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky

“Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine.”

– Alan Turing’s biopic, The Imitation Game, 2014

A lot of things have changed in the last 20 years. A lot of things haven’t. We’ve moved from the tyranny of physical media to the seemingly unlimited possibilities of total digital immersion. We’ve moved from a top down, mega corporate dominated media, to a hyper-fragmented multiverse where any kind of information is accessible within reason (and sometimes without!). The fundamental issue that “memory” and how it responds to the digital etherealization of all aspects of the information economy we inhabit conditions everything we do in this 21st-century culture of post-, post-, post-everything contemporary America. Whether it’s the legions of people who walk the streets with Bluetooth enabled earbuds that allow them to ignore the physical reality of the world around them, or the Pokémon Go hordes playing the world’s largest video game as it’s overlaid on stuff that happens “IRL” (In Real Life) that layer digital role playing over the world: diagnosis is pending. But the fundamental fact is clear: digital archives are more important than ever and how we engage and access the archival material of the past, shapes and molds the way we experience the present and future. Playing with the Archive is a kind of digital analytics of the subconscious impulse to collage. It’s also really fun.

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Oct 03
0

DJ Spooky announced as Artist in Residence at Stanford University

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Every year, Brown seek new ways to connect research with leading media innovators, and we are happy to announce that we named DJ Spooky, aka That Subliminal Kid, Paul D. Miller, as the Brown Distinguished Media Innovator for 2017. DJ Spooky’s work ranges from creating the first DJ app to producing an impactful DVD anthology about the “Pioneers of African American Cinema”. According to a New York Times review, “there has never been a more significant video release than Pioneers of African-American Cinema.”

The prolific innovator and artist also created 13 music albums and is about to release a fourteenth. Called “Phantom Dancehall”, it is an intense mix of hip hop, Jamaican ska and dancehall culture. Paul D. Miller will engage in Brown-related collaborations all year, and his residency will culminate in a week-long series of lectures, workshops and performances at Stanford University starting April 10, 2017.

DJ Spooky’s lectures are part of the new Brown Institute Lecture series at Stanford, which we launch with Internet pioneer and founder of archive.org Brewster Kahle on October 11, 2016.

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Sep 01
0

ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE: BAYREUTH ACADEMY OF ADVANCED STUDIES

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Richard Wagner’s (1813-1883) operas and conceptual writings remain some of the most influential works of the last two centuries. With their complexity, abstract harmonies and deeply elaborate use of leitmotifs, Wagner set the tone for how we think about composition and multiple interpretations of set design, architecture, and the complete use of music to create a virtual tableau for 21st century digital media. It’s been argued that he is essentially the first multimedia composer.

Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies, the innovative research structure at the University of Bayreuth, have invited Paul D. Miller to explore some of the deep structural relationships between Wagner’s concepts and the tensions between his work as a composer and theoretician and the long standing controversy surrounding his career.

Jul 10
25

PIONEERS OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN CINEMA

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Landmarks of early African-American film, remastered in HD from archive elements, digitally restored, loaded with bonus content. Created by Kino Lorber.

ORDER NOW

“This very special collection illuminates one of the most fascinating and unjustly neglected corners of American movie history.” Martin Scorsese on Pioneers of African American cinema.

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May 18
6

Heart of a Forest

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Artist Statement:

For Heart of a Forest I wanted to explore how to remix some of the ways we think about traditional forms of music versus digital interpretation of nature. Is a landscape a portrait? Is a composition a portrait? These are questions left lingering over the entire project. Thoreau once went to the forests of New England to write his seminal works. He wrote of the experience “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to confront only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” I think that we need music to catalyze how we can rethink our relationship to Nature, and I am inspired by Thoreau and the collision of data, sound, and new ways to think of the absence of “origins” – no one owns the forest and the sounds that it inspires. It’s all a mirror of what is possible in our hyper interconnected world. Like the roots of the trees underneath the forest. It is all connected, and we all contribute to the elements that make it evolve. All is connected.

Jun 08
0

THE VANUATU PACIFICA FOUNDATION and TANNA CENTER FOR THE ARTS

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[vc_row type=”in_container” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]Vanuatu is a four-hour flight from Sydney. For centuries, the Naihné People of Tanna have lived on this island in Vanuatu’s southern-most province, Tafea.

In late 2009, their leadership invited Paul D. Miller (aka DJ Spooky) to form an artists retreat within their remote eastern territory.

In early 2011, Vanuatu Pacifica Foundation will begin building Tanna Center for the Arts in this beautiful and isolated part of the island. The artists retreat will function as a carbon negative, culturally supportive demonstration model, incorporating a digital media lab and island-restorative education center to aid the goals expressed by the people of this tropical paradise.

VPF and TANNA [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]