Hello. Until I figure out Google Docs, my abstract will be here on my blog. Please see below.
Think Globally, Deejay Locally
Throughout the book, Sound Unbound, I kept running into environmental ideas. I noticed some first in Rhythm Science. For instance, on page 61, he stated that “Identity is about creating an environment where you can make the world act as your own reflection.” He also brings the sustainability saying “Think Globally, Act Locally” into deejaying. I interpreted the saying to extend beyond deejaying.
Dj Spooky is incorporating many of the ideas concerning sustainability on purpose. Specifically, in his paper within Sound Unbound entitled “In Through the Out Door: Sampling and the Creative Act”, he talks about how humans try to separate themselves from nature (7). Even with the act of recording sounds, we are trying to further separate ourselves from animals and other natural beings? We try to separate ourselves from animals by taking part in activities like living in houses and defying the sun and by creating other such truly odd objects. I will argue in this paper that DJ Spooky’s work implies the basis of sustainability to deejaying and to the world.
For instance, when he says “to look for anything to stay the same really is to be caught in a time warp of another era, another place when things stood still and didn’t change so much” (18), does he mean that things change and nothing can be done about it, much like what occurs in nature? His Terra Nova video on his website indicates that he is indeed interested in these ideas and that he may have included those references to sustainability on purpose. Also, everything in nature is connected to everything else just like how with deejaying and sampling, it is all related.
*For reviewers: I am open to any and all suggestions. Thank you!
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One task would be to set out this claim in DJ Spooky’s essay; another would be to assess it: does it work? What assumptions does he make? For example, the notion of a local environment in an ecological relation with a larger domain is possible because of material relations within environments – relations of flow between matter, where a part is related to a whole – but is this the case with the deejay? So, you could see what he gains and how he is limited by his use of the ecological metaphor. The quote you mention, from page 18, is an example. I think it’s true that the dynamic he describes is one of co-dependence and co-causality, but does this extend to music? You could examine this and several other such statements in his work and see how far they go.
ReplyDeleteOne of the reasons I'm working with DJ Spooky myself (in jextaposition to another DJ I interviewed) is that he makes a lot of interesting statements, but does very little to supply evidence which can back or support his claims. for myself, I was interested in trying to quaulify his statements somehow and see how far or how useful they really were. Do you find he provides supports or methods for sustainability in his essays in Rhythmn Science or Sound Unbound? Or is it, like a lot of the book, a kind of poetic freestyle which, perhaps, is brining in residual material from his non-music endeavors (such as environment concerns) to create clever musical/cultural metaphors?
ReplyDeleteThat may not be helpful at all Amelia. You ask questions in your abstract about what Spooky potentially meant by such environmental/sustainability comments. I'm wondering what your opinion is. Are these metaphors useful or faulty?