Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture

by Paul D. Miller (Editor)

Overview

The role of sound and digital media in an information-based society: artists—from Steve Reich and Pierre Boulez to Chuck D and Moby—describe their work.

If Rhythm Science was about the flow of things, Sound Unbound is about the remix—how music, art, and literature have blurred the lines between what an artist can do and what a composer can create. In Sound Unbound, Rhythm Science author Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid asks artists to describe their work and compositional strategies in their own words. These are reports from the front lines on the role of sound and digital media in an information-based society. The topics are as diverse as the contributors: composer Steve Reich offers a memoir of his life with technology, from tape loops to video opera; Miller himself considers sampling and civilization; novelist Jonathan Lethem writes about appropriation and plagiarism; science fiction writer Bruce Sterling looks at dead media; Ron Eglash examines racial signifiers in electrical engineering; media activist Naeem Mohaiemen explores the influence of Islam on hip hop; rapper Chuck D contributes “Three Pieces”; musician Brian Eno explores the sound and history of bells; Hans Ulrich Obrist and Philippe Parreno interview composer-conductor Pierre Boulez; and much more. “Press 'play,'” Miller writes, “and this anthology says 'here goes.'”

The groundbreaking music that accompanies the book features Nam Jun Paik, the Dada Movement, John Cage, Sonic Youth, and many other examples of avant-garde music. Most of this content comes from the archives of Sub Rosa, a legendary record label that has been the benchmark for archival sounds since the beginnings of electronic music. To receive these free music files, readers may send an email to the address listed in the book.

Contributors
David Allenby, Pierre Boulez, Catherine Corman, Chuck D, Erik Davis, Scott De Lahunta, Manuel DeLanda, Cory Doctorow, Eveline Domnitch, Frances Dyson, Ron Eglash, Brian Eno, Dmitry Gelfand, Dick Hebdige, Lee Hirsch, Vijay Iyer, Ken Jordan, Douglas Kahn, Daphne Keller, Beryl Korot, Jaron Lanier, Joseph Lanza, Jonathan Lethem, Carlo McCormick, Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid, Moby, Naeem Mohaiemen, Alondra Nelson, Keith and Mendi Obadike, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Pauline Oliveros, Philippe Parreno, Ibrahim Quaraishi, Steve Reich, Simon Reynolds, Scanner aka Robin Rimbaud, Nadine Robinson, Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR), Alex Steinweiss, Bruce Sterling, Lucy Walker, Saul Williams, Jeff E. Winner

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262266468
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	03/14/2008
Series:	The MIT Press
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	432
File size:	6 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid, is a composer, multimedia artist, and writer. He is the author of Rhythm Science and Sound Unbound, both published by the MIT Press.

Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid, is a composer, multimedia artist, and writer. He is the author of Rhythm Science and Sound Unbound, both published by the MIT Press.

Erik Davis is an American journalist, critic, podcaster, counter-public intellectual whose writings have run the gamut from rock criticism to cultural analysis to creative explorations of esoteric mysticism. He is the author of Techgnosis: Myth, Magic and Mysticism in the Age of Information, The Visionary State: A Journey through California's Spiritual Landscape, and Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica.

Hugo Award-winning science fiction author and futurist Bruce Sterling has been called by Time "perhaps the sharpest observer of our media-choked culture working today in any genre." Three of his novels have been New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and he has been a contributing writer for Wired since its conception. In 2005 he is "Visionary-in-Residence" at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena. Bruce Sterling's blog Beyond the Beyond has been active since 2003.

Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid, is a composer, multimedia artist, and writer. He is the author of Rhythm Science and Sound Unbound, both published by the MIT Press.

Daphne Koller is Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University.

Frances Dyson is Emeritus Professor of Cinema and Technocultural Studies at the University of California, Davis, and Visiting Professorial Fellow at the National Institute for Experimental Arts, University of New South Wales.

Douglas Kahn is Professor at the National Institute for Experimental Arts at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He is the author of Noise Water Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts (MIT Press) and Earth Sound Earth Signal: Energies and Earth Magnitude in the Arts and coeditor of Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio, and the Avant-Garde (MIT Press).

B. Coleman is Assistant Professor of Writing and New Media in MIT's Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies and Comparative Media Studies. She is Faculty Director of the C3 Game Culture and Mobile Media initiative.

What People are Saying About This

Robert Wilson

Everything must be about one thing first, then it can be about many things. Paul Miller's collection of texts is about one thing: the use of scanning in music and more generally the world around us. He gives us a single structure to put very different experiences and theoretical constructs into an overarching context. The result is always interesting and often illuminating. These essays by thinkers and practitioners range widely and produce their own static and interferences, but they fall into one perceptible rhythm. A good staging of an opera uses what you see on stage to make you hear better. Similarly, these reflections make it easier to tune in to the sometimes confusing soundscape of our dislocated, interrelated, networked times.

David Byrne

It's a lovely eclectic collection that is a nice antidote to the usual way music and the history of music is often categorized into high/low, pop/classical, or black/white. I like Sterling's analogy between our beloved high tech media and inscrutable indecipherable archaic media like Incanquipus. From Raymond Scott to the hidden racism in digital circuitry to ahistory of easy listening there is enough inspiring weirdness here to fuel some musical fires for a good while.

Branford Marsalis

Paul Miller has grabbed disparate philosophies and references from the past five hundred years and tied them into a neat and interesting narrative on music, sound, and current thought in our time. Sound Unbound is an excellent reference on art in the popular context in the twenty-first century.

Lev Manovich

Paul Miller is one of the best cultural radars in the world today. He always picks out the most relevant people working today and reveals previously unseen connections. If you want situational awareness about the world of sound, music, performance, computers, and ideas, read this book.

Jeff Chang

For the maverick rhythm scientist Paul D. Miller, sound is liquid; it spills over and slips under categories, firewalls, case law, and legal codes to find us and move us. In the same way, his important collection of sound thinkers and sound ideas calls us to remove the fake 'security' imposed on us by capital and state, and, more crucially, to reimagine freedom and reclaim our creativity.

Endorsement

Paul Miller is one of the best cultural radars in the world today. He always picks out the most relevant people working today and reveals previously unseen connections. If you want situational awareness about the world of sound, music, performance, computers, and ideas, read this book.

—Lev Manovich, Visual Arts Department, University of California, San Diego

From the Publisher

What a marvelous collection! This provocative and wide ranging book is packed with a vast number of facts and theories: the sound of creation in the Vedas, the Muslim influence on early hip hop, mathematical permutations of bell patterns (Eno), the term 'Emptyv' (Chuck D). The essays criss cross over many aspects of sound—cosmic, chemical, political, economic. It sparks questions (Can sound be translated into light?) and presents bits of information like the name for Jamaican sound systems ('Houses of Joy'). Plus you get to meet fascinating characters like Alex Steinweiss (album cover artist), Motown's Berry Gordon and synthesizer pioneer Raymond Scott. And you get to consider how Bach's style might have been influenced by his job copying Vivaldi scores. Reading Sound Unbound also invites you to reconsider techno hype, as when Bruce Sterling describes laptops as 'colorful, buzzing cuddly things with the lifespan of hamsters.' I love this book!

—Laurie Anderson

For the maverick rhythm scientist Paul D. Miller, sound is liquid; it spills over and slips under categories, firewalls, case law, and legal codes to find us and move us. In the same way, his important collection of sound thinkers and sound ideas calls us to remove the fake 'security' imposed on us by capital and state, and, more crucially, to reimagine freedom and reclaim our creativity.

—Jeff Chang, author of Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation

Everything must be about one thing first, then it can be about many things. Paul Miller's collection of texts is about one thing: the use of scanning in music and more generally the world around us. He gives us a single structure to put very different experiences and theoretical constructs into an overarching context. The result is always interesting and often illuminating. These essays by thinkers and practitioners range widely and produce their own static and interferences, but they fall into one perceptible rhythm. A good staging of an opera uses what you see on stage to make you hear better. Similarly, these reflections make it easier to tune in to the sometimes confusing soundscape of our dislocated, interrelated, networked times.

—Robert Wilson

It's a lovely eclectic collection that is a nice antidote to the usual way music and the history of music is often categorized into high/low, pop/classical, or black/white. I like Sterling's analogy between our beloved high tech media and inscrutable indecipherable archaic media like Incanquipus. From Raymond Scott to the hidden racism in digital circuitry to ahistory of easy listening there is enough inspiring weirdness here to fuel some musical fires for a good while.

—David Byrne

Paul Miller has grabbed disparate philosophies and references from the past five hundred years and tied them into a neat and interesting narrative on music, sound, and current thought in our time. Sound Unbound is an excellent reference on art in the popular context in the twenty-first century.

—Branford Marsalis

Paul Miller is one of the best cultural radars in the world today. He always picks out the most relevant people working today and reveals previously unseen connections. If you want situational awareness about the world of sound, music, performance, computers, and ideas, read this book.

—Lev Manovich, Visual Arts Department, University of California, San Diego

Laurie Anderson

What a marvelous collection! This provocative and wide ranging book is packed with a vast number of facts and theories: the sound of creation in the Vedas, the Muslim influence on early hip hop, mathematical permutations of bell patterns (Eno), the term 'Emptyv' (Chuck D). The essays criss cross over many aspects of sound—cosmic, chemical, political, economic. It sparks questions (Can sound be translated into light?) and presents bits of information like the name for Jamaican sound systems ('Houses of Joy'). Plus you get to meet fascinating characters like Alex Steinweiss (album cover artist), Motown's Berry Gordon and synthesizer pioneer Raymond Scott. And you get to consider how Bach's style might have been influenced by his job copying Vivaldi scores. Reading Sound Unbound also invites you to reconsider techno hype, as when Bruce Sterling describes laptops as 'colorful, buzzing cuddly things with the lifespan of hamsters.' I love this book!

Editorial Reviews

Inviting a group of authors, performers and intellectuals to participate in an anthology on music and popular culture in the era of electronic sampling is the literary equivalent of playing Russian roulette: spin the chamber and pull the trigger, and a thoughtful collection of essays may burst forth—or you may get a barrage of academic one-upmanship and John Cage references that makes you want to put a loaded weapon to your temple. With 36 contributions by everyone from Dick Hebdige to Chuck D, Sound Unbound has plenty of offerings that fall into both categories. But there's ample insight to be found if you engage in a little sampling of your own
—The New York Times

Dave Itzkoff

This sprawling and varied work features 36 essays on digital sampling, music, sound, and culture. The range of topics is vast, covering the invention of the synthesizer, an interview with Moby, the history of bells, and Muzak. The international cast of contributors-composers Steve Reich and John Cage, rapper Chuck D, sf novelist Bruce Sterling, and Dick Hebdige (Subculture: The Meaning of Style), among many others-is equally so. The collection bears the stamp of its editor, the multitalented Miller (Rhythm Science). Miller is best known for his experimental and hip-hop recordings in the "illbient" (a cross between ill, as in cool, and ambient) and trip genres and his numerous collaborations, and his characteristic eclecticism and ability to draw together disparate influences are much in evidence throughout. The pieces are generally brief, but the sheer breadth of topics is boggling, perhaps to a fault. The foreword, introduction, and Miller's opening piece do little to shed light on the unifying idea behind the collection. Still, this is a provocative and intriguing text, of interest to anyone working in or studying contemporary experimental music. Recommended for music libraries.
—Dave Valencia

Library Journal

...this is a provocative and intriguing text, of interest to anyone working in or studying contemporary experimental music.—Dave Valencia, Library Journal—

From the Publisher

...this is a provocative and intriguing text, of interest to anyone working in or studying contemporary experimental music.

—Dave Valencia, Library Journal

Reviews

...this is a provocative and intriguing text, of interest to anyone working in or studying contemporary experimental music.

Dave Valencia