HOMENEWS
Arist-in-Residence
Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky
The renowned philosopher Hannah Arendt once wrote that the “ideal subject for totalitarian rule is… people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists…” Her words and the words of George Orwell are more resonant than ever in our age of computational propaganda, bots, AI, and algorithms that play with all aspects of how we create digital subjectivity in a data driven society. I was commissioned to work on an art installation based on George Orwell’s classic novel 1984 by the Deep Water Literary Festival in tandem with the Orwell Foundation. We are having renowned authors such as legendary science fiction author Samuel Delany and renowned actress Tilda Swinton read from the novel set to my music compositions and my artwork and graphics. The prints and editing process were done at The Church during my Residency, and at Yale University Center for Collaborative Arts and Media.
“Almost certainly we are moving into an age of totalitarian dictatorships – an age in which freedom of thought will be at first a deadly sin and later on a meaningless abstraction. The autonomous individual is going to be stamped out of existence.”
George Orwell, Inside the Whale
Our world is a kind of dark overture:
We live in a time where the stability of how we frame events, create meaning, and interact with information that surrounds us – is all under a never ending assault from everything that reflects the darkest impulses of the human mind. How we organize our thoughts and emotions, how we sense our navigation through the fog of information that digital media creates. These are things that linger over the modern context in late capitalism.
Deep Water Festival is a literary festival that has commissioned Paul D. Miller aka Dj Spooky to create a new composition “Parallax of Quantum” featuring several major literary figures reading from George Orwell’s classic novel 1984. The project will tour after its premier at the festival. The first iteration premiers at Deep Water Festival and will feature legendary science fiction novelist Samuel Delany and another aspect of the festival features renowned actress Tilda Swinton reading from Orwell’s essays. Miller also is premiering several limited edition prints “NewThink/OldThink” to support the festival. More details will be available shortly.
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