Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky's blog

I recently interviewed Chinese artist and social activist Ai Weiwei, whose dissident art has made him a target of the Chinese government. We discussed the importance of free expression, China's history, and why China's current system is failing. (more)

When you face the idea that digital reproduction equals infinite abundance, the result is basically that you have so many options available, that the normal business model of scarcity simply no longer applies: and so music should be free. (more)

Dziga Vertov wanted to use cinematic realism to find freedom in a world where anything was possible. To me, DJ culture has inherited that same impulse -- "keeping it real" is a mantra one hears in Hip-Hop at every level. [Video] (more)

If any of you are around Washington, DC this weekend, we're having a large concert on the DC Mall with me and The Flaming Lips for Earth Day. (more)

In this interview with Elena Glasberg, I discusses my new multimedia performance work Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica, open-source media, music history, new relativism, the need for more paradox, and the sound of no government. (more)

I get asked what I think about sampling a lot. Think of this essay as a soundbite for the sonically perplexed. (more)

[Burning Briefs] • In this video, Paul D. Miler aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid brings us all the way back to when Burning Man was young and feral with only 4,000 attendees -- "the ancient mid-nineties." After a romantic break up, Paul leaves New York to relax and "deprogram." But his attempts are thwarted by Pippi Longstocking's playa-wide hunt to prevent him from playing "commercial music" at the festival. With the help of laser-frisbee wisemen, steaming mud baths, crystal-structured art cars, and an otherwordly sonic landscape, Paul is not only able to relax, but to hit "the reset button on the entire imagination of what [he] even can vaguely think of as America." [Video] (more)

Harry Smith was a walking remixologist. His idea was to apply DJ technique to film – he wanted to show that film collage could be edited in a way that speaks about myths and the way people can understand the rapidly changing world around themselves from the information they record. (more)

Digital Africa is here, and has been here for a while. The "Ghost World" mix is all about the multiple rhythms and languages of Africa, but it makes no attempt to give you everything – it's from my record collection. That's why the "story" of the mix is about: polyrhythm, multiplex reality. There's current material, like the Kuduru sounds of Luanda (who says Techno doesn't exist in Africa!?) and old school hip hop like Zimbabwe Legit from the early 90's of classic "conscious" school hip hop. Yes there's material from Akon, but he gets mixed with Nelson Mandela, or MC Solaar. Listen to it here! (more)

When I think of Kehinde Wiley's paintings, a couple of affiliated effects come to mind. In his work we look at history juxtaposed with a really unstable relationship to realism. But I don't want to start an essay with quotations from history – after all, that's what Kehinde Wiley's paintings are already doing. The essential issue at hand is to give some context to portraiture, hip hop visuality, sampling, collage, and quotation. I want to unpack some of the issues that Wiley engages in his work. (more)