Home / Authors / DJ Spooky

DJ Spooky

DJ Spooky Quotes

Author

DJ Spooky, also known as Paul D. Miller, is a versatile artist renowned for his innovative work in music, visual arts, and digital media. Born in 1970, he is a multidisciplinary artist who merges music, literature, philosophy, and technology to create unique works.

Filter quotes by topic

All Knows Kind People Sound Thinking Way Ifs Ideas Landscape Records

Famous DJ Spooky Quotes

“We live in a world so utterly infused with digitality that it makes even the slightest action ripple across the collection of data bases we call the web.”

World Action Bases Data Collections Ripple

Author:DJ Spooky

“When I was a kid, I looked at art as a way of blending everything. One of my favorite composers is Wagner - who coined the term "gesamtkunstwerk," or "total art work." That's what was going on in the 19th century, and the 20th century just kept it going.”

Way Art Kids Term Century My Favorite Composer 20th Century 19th Century Wagner

Author:DJ Spooky

“I think that electronic music mirrors the complexity of "information landscapes." You carry the terrain in your mind.”

Thinking Mind Information Mirrors Landscape Complexity Terrain Electronic Music

Author:DJ Spooky

“Geography is crucial for my work. I went to Antarctica and took a studio to several of the main ice fields to make field recordings of ice to create a symphony - acoustic portraits of ice.”

Fields Studios Ice Crucial Portraits Symphony Geography Acoustics Antarctica

Author:DJ Spooky

“Watching 40 mile chunks of ice break off of Antarctica will change your life forever, but realizing that driving a car, or flying a plane, or having a nice steak, or drinking from a plastic bottle all contributed to the destruction of the environment - it's a bit complex, but music needs to pave the way for getting people to think about this kind of complexity. I'm just doing my share.”

“With multimedia, everything blurs. Software takes the concept of the imagination and makes it something you can edit, tweak, and transform with digital techniques. Everything becomes an edited file.”

Imagination Concepts Technique Digital Software Files Edits Blur Edited Tweak Multimedia

Author:DJ Spooky

“It's strange to think that culture is simply a matter of millions of files flying around, but we now think in terms of networks for everything.”

Thinking Matter Culture Term Millions Strange Flying Files

Author:DJ Spooky

“For me, DJ culture - with its obsession with collecting records and archiving everything - predated the "cloud" concept with primitive material like the mixtape. Now we would call it "collaborative filtering" or something technical, but the impulse is the same - gather fragments, make something new. That is how you will bypass the climate-change skeptics: render them totally obsolete.”

Culture Records Materials Concepts Climate Climate Change Clouds Obsession Impulse Something New Primitive Fragments Collecting Skeptic Obsolete Djs Bypass Mixtapes

Author:DJ Spooky

“Freud is usually viewed as the person who linked psychoanalysis to some issues in the environment, usually man-made. So I thought it would be fun to throw that in the mix.”

Men Persons Made Would Be Fun Issues Environment Linked Psychoanalysis

Author:DJ Spooky

“I have to deal with some dumb folks. It's a real drag.”

Real Deals Folks Dumb Drag

Author:DJ Spooky

“The most scarce resource we have these days is the idea.”

Ideas Resources These Days Scarce Scarce Resources

Author:DJ Spooky

“I was never planning on being a musician. It's basically a hobby that sprawled out of control.”

Musician Planning Hobbies

Author:DJ Spooky

“If you don't understand the past, the future won't make much sense either.”

Author:DJ Spooky

“I think that the audience intuitively understands the idea of sampling and remixing stories. That's why electronic music is global.”

Thinking Ideas Stories Audience Music Is Electronic Music Sampling

Author:DJ Spooky

“The easiest thing I can say is simple, but paradoxical in this era of total sampling: Be original.”

I Can Simple Originals Eras Paradoxical Sampling

Author:DJ Spooky

“The name [Spooky] comes from well back in university I was doing a series of essays and writing about Sigmund Freud's idea of the uncanny and I was really intrigued by this idea of "The Unheimlich".”

Writing Wells Ideas Names Series University Essays Intrigued Spooky Uncanny

Author:DJ Spooky

“It's an essay that Sigmund Freud wrote about E.T.A. Hoffman's short story called "The Sandman" where someone mistakes an inanimate object for a living, breathing human being. And one of the things that Sigmund Freud really felt was that in modern life people assign qualities to objects around them that may not exist there whatsoever.”

People Humans May Stories Felt Human Beings Mistake Quality Modern Objects Breathing Short Story Essays Modern Life Sandman Inanimate Objects One Mistake

Author:DJ Spooky

“So he [Sigmund Freud] called this "the uncanny" and he also referred to cities as well, like the idea of walking through the city and the way the urban landscape could lead you to a sense of disorientation and to a kind of, you know, sense of repetition. And the way a city can unfold as you walk.”

Knows Way Wells Kind Ideas Walks Cities Walking Landscape Urban Repetition Uncanny Disorientation Urban Landscape

Author:DJ Spooky

“First and foremost one, I was never planning on doing this as a long term, so Spooky, I was in college... It was a fun name. I thought it was you know just a fun thing”

Knows Firsts Long Names Fun Term College Planning Long Term Spooky Fun Things

Author:DJ Spooky

“When you say what is the difference between me and my stage name the idea is that as a musician you always think of yourself as inhabiting a certain cultural space in the kind of a cultural landscape, so when I say cultural space what I mean to imply there is that you exist within certain parameters of how people think of culture.”

People Thinking Kind Mean Ideas Certain Culture Names Differences Space Stage Musician Landscape Think Of You Parameters

Author:DJ Spooky

“Downtown New York, I'm within certain styles of music and I'm also within certain cultural, you know, and literary context. So DJ Spooky was meant to be a kind of ironic take on that. It was always meant to be kind of a criticism and critique of how downtown culture would separate genres and styles because it was ambiguous. You couldn't fit it into anything and that was the point.”

Knows Certain Style New York Downtown

Author:DJ Spooky

“DJ Spooky was meant to be a kind of ironic take on that. It was always meant to be kind of a criticism and critique of how downtown culture would separate genres and styles because it was ambiguous.”

Kind Culture Style Criticism Genre Meant To Be Be Kind Ironic Critique Ambiguous Djs Downtown Spooky Were Meant To Be

Author:DJ Spooky

“It's like the iPod playlist has killed the way we think of the normal album, so let's think of this as just saying you go into your record store and all those categories and all those different ways of segregating music have been thrown out the window, so the difference between myself in real life in that is that I'm the opposite.”

Thinking Way Has Beens Different Real Differences Records Normal Window Opposites Albums Stores Real Life Different Ways Thrown Categories Ipods Just Saying Record Stores Playlists

Author:DJ Spooky

“I usually am very specific about how I engage information, how I engage people, what context I'm engaging and, above all, the research that goes into each of those.”

People Information Research Engaging

Author:DJ Spooky

“So, one, that DJ Spooky is a lot you know this sort of wilder persona and then Paul Miller is more of a nuts and bolts kind of person, meaning just making sure all these things work.”

Knows Kind Persons Nuts Persona Bolts Djs Spooky Wilder Nuts And Bolts

Author:DJ Spooky

“In my book "Sound Unbound" we traced the guy who actually came up with the main concept for the graphic design of the record cover sleeve. His name is Alex Steinweiss. And one of the things in my book that we really tried to figure out was the revolution in graphic design that occurred when people put images on album covers.”

People Book Guy Names Sound Records Figures Design Revolution Concepts Albums Graphic Alex Sleeves Graphic Design Unbound Album Covers

Author:DJ Spooky

“Now if you think about the 20th century and the idea of visual vocabulary the album occupies a really important space in the cultural landscape and, above all.”

Ifs Thinking Important Ideas Space Century Albums Landscape Visuals 20th Century Vocabulary

Author:DJ Spooky

“Try this experiment: one day go in a record store and just try and guess what the music sounds like by looking at the album cover.”

Trying Sound Records One Day Albums Stores Experiments Record Stores Album Covers

Author:DJ Spooky

“You'll get this kind of psychological relationship to the imagery of the music, but that idea is translated to iPhone apps. It's translated to the small, you know, kind of icons on your computer. You name it.”

Knows Kind Ideas Names Computer Psychological Imagery Icons Iphone Apps Apps For Iphone

Author:DJ Spooky

“The idea of a visual icon that gives you a sense of information very quickly and that you can easily just say "That's what the style is."”

Giving Ideas Style Information Visuals Icons

Author:DJ Spooky

“I think record cover sleeves really led towards, but at the same time the album as we know it didn't come into being until mainly after the Second World War because record labels realized they'd be able to make a lot more money putting all the singles of an artist onto one album and selling the whole album as a kind of a concept.”

Thinking Knows World Kind War Whole Able Artist Records Concepts Albums Selling Labels War Of The Worlds More Money Sleeves Second World War Singles Record Labels

Author:DJ Spooky

“So by the time the 60s rolled in that became a huge art form in its own right with bands like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Hendrix doing total concept albums, same thing with Pink Floyd.”

Art Form Huge Band Concepts Stones Albums Rolling Rolling Stones Hendrix

Author:DJ Spooky

“One of the main things that differentiates them [artists of 70s] from artists before is that they made albums based on the fact that they didn't care about the band as a thing in its own right. They cared about manipulating the recording and that became the album.”

Made Facts Care Artist Band Albums Differentiate

Author:DJ Spooky

“Usually bands would make a song to record for an album, but what happens with the deejays you say "Well the album is everything we need. Thanks band. You can go away now."”

Needs Wells Happens Song Records Band Albums Thanks Going Away Deejays

Author:DJ Spooky

“You know you don't really need the band or the singer/songwriter in the same way, so you look at everything as part of your palette.”

Knows Way Needs Looks Band Singers Songwriters Singer Songwriters Palette

Author:DJ Spooky

“When you think about a composer you know like Wagner or Pier Boulez or something like that most of the issues a composer is working with are about discreet, notated music that someone else will play.”

Thinking Knows Play Issues Composer Wagner Discreet Piers

Author:DJ Spooky

“If I take that person and play them as a record I'm becoming not only a conductor and composer of collage, but at the same time I'm looking at a whole layer of what goes into copyright law, who owns those memories, who owns the way that that sound gets remixed and transformed and above all how much fun it is to actually just mess with other people's stuff.”

People Ifs Way Persons Play Whole Law Fun Stuff Sound Memories Records Becoming Mess Composer Transformed Layers Conductor Copyright Collages Copyright Law

Author:DJ Spooky

“I like the idea of it as a trickster motif. You know like you're kind of just messing around with people's memories of songs.”

People Knows Kind Ideas Song Memories Like You Motifs Tricksters

Author:DJ Spooky

“I've tended to find that myths of the near future give people the ability to really kind of explore the present, so say for example if look at William Gibson and his book Neuromancer or if you look at J.G. Ballard or Samuel Delaney those are probably three of my favorite writers in that genre.”

People Ifs Giving Looks Kind Book Three Ability Example My Favorite Myth Genre

Author:DJ Spooky

“I think science fiction and sound is a really interesting thing. You might as well think of it as sonic fiction.”

Thinking Wells Might Sound Interesting Fiction Science Fiction Interesting Things Really Interesting

Author:DJ Spooky

“When you're coming up with different ways of getting old memories to transform - you're scratching, you're doing all this kind of sampling - what ends up happening is that you're becoming a kind of writer with sound.”

Way Kind Different Ends Sound Memories Becoming Happenings Different Ways Getting Old Sampling Old Memories

Author:DJ Spooky

“In fact, if you look at the root word of phonograph it just means phonetics of graphology, phono-graph, writing with sound, so graphology. You know graffiti, same root word.”

Ifs Knows Writing Looks Mean Facts Sound Roots Graffiti Graphs Phonograph Phonetics

Author:DJ Spooky

“Phonetics, you know speech, all this kind of stuff, phonograph, simple, but when you unpack the meaning it actually kind of expands out and that is what I was going for in my book "Sound Unbound" was to try and get people to figure out how do we unpack some of the meanings that go into these kinds of sonically coded landscapes.”

People Knows Trying Kind Book Stuff Sound Simple Figures Speech Landscape Unbound Phonograph Phonetics

Author:DJ Spooky

“What I wanted to try and figure out was, okay, in contemporary 21st century life the alienation between the self and the land around you or the self and even the urban landscape. You name it.”

Trying Self Wanted Names Land Century Figures Okay Contemporary Landscape Urban 21st Century Alienation Urban Landscape

Author:DJ Spooky

“Most people walk around with headphones on. They're barely encountering or dealing with their fellow person, or if they're in a car they're in this kind of cocoon, stuck in suburban rush hour traffic or something.”

People Ifs Kind Persons Hours Walks Car Fellows Stuck Traffic Cocoons Headphones Rush Hour

Author:DJ Spooky

“I wanted to do with Antarctica was say let's hit the reset button on that and see what happens to your creative process. Let's go to the most remote place that you can imagine, set up a studio and see what music comes out of it.”

Happens Wanted Process Creative Imagine Studios Creative Process Buttons Reset Antarctica Reset Button Remote Places

Author:DJ Spooky

“Antarctica, one of the things that was so remarkable about it was that the ice itself is a kind of pure geometry, so say, for example, if I was facing someone wearing I don't know, a Joy Division t-shirt with the mountains on it or something like that.”

Ifs Knows Kind Joy Example Pure Mountain Ice Shirts Remarkable Division T Shirt Geometry Antarctica Joy Division

Author:DJ Spooky

“So the physicality of that and the just the sheer lack of urban noise and machinery - just the wind, the water and your breath, you know that kind of thing - it was pure poetry and you know I treasure that.”

Knows Kind Water Wind Pure Breaths Treasure Noise Sheer Urban Machinery Physicality

Author:DJ Spooky

“I can only wonder what astronauts must feel like or something like that when you're really in the space of silence and you are feeling and breathing in a way that you're really aware of your muscle and bone and the breath and the body and the movement and all of those things that just you take for granted in the urban landscape.”

Way Feels I Can Feelings Body Space Silence Wonder Movement Breaths Bones Granted Landscape Breathing Muscles Urban Astronaut Urban Landscape

Author:DJ Spooky

“I felt like on one hand the clarity of thought was amazing, but on the other we went during Antarctic summer, so the sun didn't set the whole time we were there.”

Whole Hands Felt Sun Summer Clarity Clarity Of Thought

Author:DJ Spooky

About the Author

Born: 1970
Known for: Author
Quotes: 82

Related Topics

Knows Kind People Sound Thinking Way Ifs Ideas Landscape Records

Popular Topics

People Ifs Thinking Knows Men World Way Want Love Life Inspirational Needs Giving Feels Should Writing Trying Years Mind Firsts

Books & Sources

Similar Authors

MobyBrowse related quotes
Chuck KlostermanBrowse related quotes
Brian EnoBrowse related quotes
Robert GreeneBrowse related quotes
Yoko OnoBrowse related quotes
Kristen StewartBrowse related quotes
Taylor SwiftBrowse related quotes
George SaundersBrowse related quotes
Robert BarryBrowse related quotes
Marilyn MansonBrowse related quotes