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DJ Spooky

DJ Spooky Quotes

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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.

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All Knows Kind People Sound Thinking Way Ifs Ideas Landscape Records

Famous DJ Spooky Quotes

“And when I say permanent afternoon, you know, I’m talking like crystal clear, crispy blue sky. All the sudden you didn’t need to sleep as much because it just was difficult. And how that translated into my creative process I still am not quite sure, but it made my relationship to sleep a kind of abstract you know bizarre…”

Knows Needs Kind Made Stills Process Difficult Sleep Talking Creative Clear Sky Blue Permanent Abstract Afternoon Creative Process Bizarre Crystals Blue Sky

Author:DJ Spooky

“Sleep is crucial and I tend to find when the sun is shining I find it much more difficult to get that sense of sleep.”

Difficult Sleep Sun Shining Crucial

Author:DJ Spooky

“What I'm going for with the string arrangements for my Antarctic symphony is a pun here.”

Strings Arrangements Symphony Pun

Author:DJ Spooky

“On one hand you have a string quartet, which is not a symphony. On the other hand is you have me sampling them and making it sound like there is many more people playing, so the whole notion of, kind of, sampling applied to classical music is very intriguing to me because composers throughout history have borrowed motifs and quotes from one another.”

People Kind Whole Hands Sound Music Is Notion Strings Composer Symphony Classical Music Borrowed Intriguing Quartets Motifs Sampling String Quartets

Author:DJ Spooky

“So Bach, Beethoven, Duke Ellington, Thelonius Monk, these are all people who would sort of rearrange or take riffs from people. Same thing with rock, if you look at the Rolling Stones doing a cover of Otis Redding or you know if you look at literature James Joyce is pulling fragments of text from other people.”

People Ifs Knows Looks Literature Rocks Stones Rolling Pulling Fragments Monk Dukes Rolling Stones Joyce

Author:DJ Spooky

“Antarctic symphony has a geometric relationship to the landscape. It's saying that this landscape and the minimal kind of, you know I'm talking like seeing ice, is visually kind of eerily minimal.”

Knows Kind Talking Seeing Ice Landscape Symphony Geometric

Author:DJ Spooky

“There is a complexity and layering that goes on with this kind of thing, so the music is slightly repetitive and when I say repetitive it's in the same tradition as people like Steve Reich or Erik Satie or even WC.”

People Kind Goes On Music Is Tradition Complexity Repetitive

Author:DJ Spooky

“I wanted to do is kind of invoke that and then dive into that kind of repetition as a DJ thing because DJing you hear beats, like "boom, boom, boom, bap, bap." You know hip hop, house, techno. So how do you translate between those electronic motifs and the motifs of the landscape itself? That is what I wanted to go for.”

Knows Kind Wanted House Beats Hip Hop Hips Landscape Hops Translate Repetition Djs Invoke Techno Motifs

Author:DJ Spooky

“Antarctica is one of the most remote and beautiful places on earth. I don't think that everyone should go there. I also think that we need to respect it as a kind of a national park for the planet. It should be you know put in parentheses.”

Thinking Knows Needs Should Kind Earth Beautiful Planets Parks Be You National Parks Beautiful Places Antarctica Parentheses

Author:DJ Spooky

“You know, in the sentence of humanity this place needs to be a parentheses. And when I say parentheses I mean I'm talking like you go around it. Leave it alone. Let it exist. And what I want people to see with this film is not only a respect for this place from the bottom of my heart.”

People Knows Want Needs Heart Mean Film Humanity Talking Like You My Heart Bottom Sentences Parentheses

Author:DJ Spooky

“I'm talking like just the beauty, but at the same time to get people to realize that we should treasure it. Maybe visualize it, but leave it alone. A”

People Should Realizing Talking Treasure

Author:DJ Spooky

“I'd say most of my work is just trying to make sense of the disorienting and overloaded world that we inhabit. We're bombarded with sound at every level.”

World Trying Sound Levels Make Sense Bombarded Overloaded

Author:DJ Spooky

“Sound... if you look at bats you know that navigate with sonar, they're like you know they're very precise. They can even see a bat head towards a building and swerve away, but you'll see a bird that doesn't... you know smash right into a glass window. It's very funny.”

Ifs Knows Looks Sound Building Like You Bird Window Glasses Bats Precise Navigate Swerve

Author:DJ Spooky

“Whales, for example, also navigate with sound, but they're now beginning to be beached because the ocean is getting too noisy. Weird things like that. I mean this is very real. Like, if you look at the satellites in the sky at night you know it's an eerie sense of we're.”

Ifs Knows Looks Mean Real Night Sound Sky Example Ocean Whales Noisy Navigate Satellites Weird Things Eerie

Author:DJ Spooky

“You know we're in a planet surrounded by certain kinds of frequencies and noise. The earth's magnetic sphere makes weird sounds. The sun you know the heart of our solar system makes noise. Even interstellar phenomena like black holes. You know people have studied them and a black hole can emit sound in like the range of 20,000 octaves below B flat.”

People Knows Heart Kind Earth Certain Sound Black Sun Planets Holes Noise Range Flats Spheres Frequency Solar System Magnetic Black Hole Interstellar

Author:DJ Spooky

“So yeah, how do I think of my environment and what happens with sound art? I love to play with the idea of elusive and intangible things. That could be psychological. It could be perceptual. It could be just the way your ears help you just navigate around.”

Thinking Way Art Ideas Play Helping Happens Sound Environment Ears Yeah Psychological Elusive Navigate Intangible

Author:DJ Spooky

“Try this experiment, closing your eyes and navigating with your ears. It's eerie because walls, you can actually hear your footstep maybe bounce off of or you can feel the vibration of your voice and help that... use that to navigate.”

Feels Trying Helping Use Eye Voice Wall Ears Experiments Closing Vibrations Footsteps Bounce Navigate Eerie Closing Your Eyes

Author:DJ Spooky

“So sound art I'm always intrigued with how little we use of other senses and we just prioritize the eye and you just want to see everything and navigate. You know the art world is similar. Like I wish people would use their ears a lot more.”

People Knows World Want Littles Art Use Eye Wish Sound Ears Senses Intrigued Navigate Art World Prioritize

Author:DJ Spooky

“Music, art, and literature are inseparable for me. How does "composition" evolve in a music and art context? It's a question we can never answer: it only asks for more information and generates more questions.”

Doe Art Asks Literature Answers Information Evolve Composition Inseparable

Author:DJ Spooky

“I'm passionate about the fact that this world that we live on is a stunningly beautiful place we have despoiled at every level.”

World Facts Beautiful Levels This World Passionate Beautiful Places

Author:DJ Spooky

“My work is all about creating new paths for thinking about the possibilities inherent in all art; another world is possible!”

Thinking World Art Path Possibility Creating Inherent Another World New Paths

Author:DJ Spooky

“Our contemporary life is based on information that can change at any time.”

Life Is Information Contemporary Contemporary Life

Author:DJ Spooky

“DJ culture is all about collage - sampling, splicing, dicing - everything is part of the mix, and there are no boundaries between sound sources. When you apply the same logic to the environment, there's a lot of room for mapping sampling techniques to the environment itself.”

Culture Sound Rooms Environment Source Logic Technique Boundaries Djs No Boundaries Collages Sampling Mapping

Author:DJ Spooky

“The world is a very, very, very big record. We just have to learn how to play it.”

World Play Bigs Records

Author:DJ Spooky

“To me, the imagination is the ultimate renewable resource.”

Imagination Resources Ultimate Renewable Resources

Author:DJ Spooky

“The planet isn't improvising, it's creating dynamic tensions between complex living systems in a planetary choreography, a balancing act between physical, chemical, biological, environmental, and human components.”

Humans Planets Creating Complexes Environmental Tension Chemicals Components Choreography Improvising Balancing Act

Author:DJ Spooky

“Randomness has an incredibly powerful place in our culture. If you think about it, you can see it driving the algorithms that run our information economy, patterns that make up the traffic of our cities, and on over to the way the stars and galaxies formed.”

Ifs Thinking Way Running Culture Stars Powerful Cities Economy Information Patterns Driving Traffic Galaxy Algorithms Randomness

Author:DJ Spooky

“Reality itself is [made up of] chance processes linked to sets of rules - this is what drives the world, the universe, and just about anything a human being can imagine.”

World Humans Made Reality Universe Process Chance Human Beings Imagine Linked

Author:DJ Spooky

“Whenever you play a song, you're basically playing with a lot of zeros and ones. These are Western compositional models that other cultures have explored in so many ways.”

Way Play Song Culture Models Western Other Cultures

Author:DJ Spooky

“Sampling is a new way of doing something that’s been with us for a long time […] The mix breaks free from the old associations. New contexts form from old. The script gets flipped. The languages evolve and learn to speak in new forms, new thoughts. The sound of thought becomes legible again at the edge of the new meanings.”

Way Long Form Speak Language Sound Break Long Time Scripts Edges Evolve Association New Ways New Thought Flipped Sampling

Author:DJ Spooky

“You're only as good as your record collection.”

Records Collections Spooky

Author:DJ Spooky

“All the major social movements of the 20th century had great soundtracks - We need that. The left needs better propaganda, because we don’t have the Koch brothers. It takes a different kind of capital to fight that stuff.”

Needs Kind Different Fighting Left Social Stuff Century Movement Brother Majors Propaganda Different Kinds 20th Century Soundtracks Social Movements

Author:DJ Spooky

About the Author

Born: 1970
Known for: Author
Quotes: 82

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