Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky), Untitled Film Still from New York is Now, 2007 Chromomeric print, 18 x 24 in. Edition of 20 Image � the artist. Courtesy Irvine Contemporary, Washington, DC
Originally created for the Luanda Triennial in 2006, Paul D. Miller�s video and music composition, New York is Now, is a response to the conditions that art reflects in the 21st century�s fast paced and completely networked global culture. Miller has long been at home on the global scene of digital culture�as an artist, musician, and writer�and his work has focused on urban culture as the globally interconnected platform for the production processes of digital media. Using archival footage and early avant-garde cinema mixed with his own music, Miller composes New York is Now as an exploration of memory through the interplay of images and sounds, creating a digital multimedia opera about a city made of improvisations, disjunctions, overlapping histories, and multiple rhythms. The multiple visual sources of New York is Now appear as historical analogues for the uses of technology in today�s art practices. Films in Miller�s compositional mix include Man Ray�s Dadist �cinepoems,� Situationist architect Constant�s �Manifesto for a New Babylon,� Marcel Duchamp�s �Anemic Cinema,� M�li�s �L�homme orchestre,� Thomas Edison�s early film of the first use of electric lights on Coney Island, George Antheil�s �Ballet Mechanique,� and many other sources ranging from the first avant-garde cinema to found footage of New York history. The Coney Island electric light sequence from the Edison film provides a fascinating representation of technology and spectacle, which we now experience in all digital media. Appropriating the self-reflexive and lyrical expressions of the visual technology of early cinema, Miller rechannels past and present into a new work for today�s post-digital scene of video and music.
Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky)
New York, NY
New York
North America
