I am using Paul D. Miller’s book “Rhythm Science” as subject and Peter Halley’s “WebTake” of the same as source material for this remixed response.
I found the book to be interesting, due in part to the frequent mentions the author made to his obvious depth of knowledge about the subject of cultural rhythms, but also due to the recycling and repeating of similar ideas throughout the book (an element also noted by Peter Halley). Rather than share my superfluous opinions about what might have appeared in the text, I am more interested in making my own mix of the subject through some sort of arbitrary process.
I have selected material to recast here by choosing a number or series of numbers that correspond with the number of clicks I made on each topic heading in Peter Halley’s WebTake. The first bit of text that appears here represents the 5th click of my mouse on the topic “Entropy”, the second paragraph represents the 9th mouse click and the third paragraph represents the 13th time I clicked my mouse on the topic heading. I have repeated a similar process for each of the first five topics listed in the WebTake. The numbers are not random, nor the number of times I’ve selected to make a selection from the text, but are, as I’ve mentioned, arbitrary. This is my mix of a cultural effect as I see it manifest in this book: arbitrary connections.
Entropy: 5, 9, 13
In epidemiology, vectors spread infectious agents, like viruses or parasites. But in the case of sound, memories are the infectious spores, viral modes that pop up in tracks, sifting mechanisms that filter and file memory as sounds move between populations.
Writing may be a little retro, but that’s cool, too. That’s why people still wear bellbottom jeans. You can always squeeze something out of the past and make it become new.
All the issues involved with aliases, multiple narrative threading, social engineering environments, and identity as a social cipher are tropes brought to the forefront of immigrant culture in America.
When the slave experience of cultural erasure encountered the immigrant phenomenon of identity reconstruction in the city, the culture as a whole moved away from the melting pot model to become a frequency centrifuge: cultures in conflict, messages etched and pasted on every street corner, images raining down, thoughts like rain, the city fragments and coalesces.
Code: 5
As for the philosophical or theoretical component in my music, I do know that average kids from the street are probably not aware of the connections between Derrida’s deconstructions and turntablism’s mixes, but it’s there if they ever come looking, and my own writings are a place to start.
Freestyle: 8, 12
Each and every Dj is a walking radio station transmitting his own style. You just have to be open to different frequencies.
African-American culture in D.C. was and remains highly segregated. Class and social hierarchies are etched on the whole zone, the city grid and the monuments themselves. Seeing African-American kids playing plastic buckets in front of the White House defines the District for me. D.C. was mix culture as dynamic palimpsest – the electromagnetic canvas of a generation raised on and in electricity. That multiplicity really prepared me for the present moment when even the basic software modules for America On-Line come with seven of eight pre-fabricated personae to use at will to construct on-line identity.
Technology: 4, 6
The rhythm scientist proves there’s more at work, more in the process, than the computerized musical automation.
The Web is the dominant metaphor for the way we think, it is a living network made up of the “threads” of all the information moving through the world at any given moment. This emphasis on mobility creates a continuity between the techno-hype for the internet and everything from the 19th Century’s obsession with railroads to the Beatnik’s mythological automobiles on the road.
Surface: 3, 9
Hip-hop made from the “streets” of the frequencies that are coming to mean more than the physical world they inhabit and describe.
In any case, the ‘90s were different from the ‘60s, the notion of “avant garde” was becoming obsolete. People simply wanted to get paid, figure out different ways to create a forum for their zone to flow, and then leave it at that.
So I have recast elements from Miller’s book using Halley’s WebTake and my own arbitrary selection process. I’ll leave it at that.
