DJ Spooky To Speak at URI December 7

DJ Spooky To Speak at URI December 7

URI will host one of hip-hop's most experimental artists this month, in a presentation open both free and open to the public.

Paul D. Miller, better known as DJ Spooky, will speak at URI on Tuesday, December 7, at 7pm. The experimental and electronic hip-hop musician, conceptual artist, writer and educator, will present “Sound Unbound,” which will conclude URI’s fall Honors Colloquium, RACE.

Race and popular culture

“Miller's productions illuminate how race has been constructed by re-presenting the raw materials of popular culture in remixed forms," said Ian Reyes, assistant professor of Communication Studies and a colloquium coordinator. "We will see this during his colloquium performance and presentation of his audio/visual mash-up titled Rebirth of a Nation. His work is simultaneously a challenge to cultural power and an exhibition of how to use art and philosophy to open new domains of cultural practice where the powers that be are contested.”

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Eclectic background

Miller earned degrees in French literature and philosophy from Bowdoin College. He began experimenting with disparate sounds at the college’s radio station, mixing James Brown and Public Enemy tracks. Fifteen years later, he

launched a music revolution and is regarded by many as the founder of the “illbient” sound, fuse dubbing of hip-hop, jazz, and drum and bass. He also became known as one of popular music’s hardest-working mixologists.

Miller is a professor at the European Graduate School where he teaches music-mediated art. His latest book, Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture, is comprised of various short essays touching upon the issues related to the new wave of technology, digital remixing and culture.

Paul D. Miller/DJ Spooky, Tues Dec 7, 7pm. Edwards Auditorium, 64 Upper College Rd, Kingston. For a complete, up-to-date schedule of the colloquium, visit www.uri.edu/hc.