Rhythm Science

by Paul D. Miller (aka Dj Spooky that Subliminal Kid)
The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2004
136 pp. Paper, $17.95, includes audio CD
ISBN: 0-262-63287-X.

Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher
Saginaw Valley State University

mosher@svsu.edu

Paul D. Miller is also known as. Dj Spooky That Subliminal Kid. Besides practicing as a DJ, Miller edits the online publication, www.21cmagazine.com, and has produced the CDs, Riddim Warfare and Optometry. He has masterminded a multimedia festival spectacle called Dj Spooky's "Rebirth of a Nation" for 2004 performances in New York, Paris, Vienna, and Spoleto. In the book, Rhythm Science, Miller has written an often rich, sometimes quirky, meditation on the art historical antecedents of the mixing that he performs in a club, house party, or rave as a DJ. He pays special attention to the African-American antecedents of these literary and artistic methods, as evident (though too often unacknowledged) as the resulting effects of African and Oceanic sculpture upon the European Cubists and Surrealists.

At its best, in the tradition of Mary Douglas' Mongrel Manhattan, in Rhythm Science Miller has synthesized divergent information on the interaction of white and black creativity and expressed it in a fresh way. The book is fragmentary, at times very insightful, sometimes autobiographical, but sometimes very sketchy, its impact uneven. One laments its lack of footnotes, for when Miller quotes Amiri Baraka, Adrian Piper, or Paul Kammerer, the reader hopes to hunt down the specific source to read more. Perhaps the author expects us to Google as necessary. Rhythm Science contains an accompanying CD that, besides proving that Miller/Spooky is an audio artist whose work embodies his theoretical stance, is a fine resource in its own right. Well-chosen musical beds give settings to readings by James Joyce, Tristan Tzara, Gertrude Stein, Brion Gysin, and that unmistakably wheatfield-flat voice of Midwesterner, William S. Burroughs.

Another Mediawork Pamphlet from The MIT Press, the design of the book is supposed to be a selling point. The hole in the center of each page serves a purpose as the back cover nears, for there a button secures the accompanying CD. The chocolate-brown ink for the text is slyly appropriate, for the author, after all, hails from "Chocolate City", as Washington D.C. was called by George Clinton (discussed in the book) to recognize its African-American majority. The Gatorade green ink of the illustrations makes a snappy visual counterpoint that includes geometric forms, magnified or repeated pull quotes, iconic silhouettes like the Playboy magazine logo, and inevitable spraycan graffiti allusions. Yet these illustrations are haphazard, sometimes dangerously so. Miller's standout chapter "Multiplex Consciousness" develops a thoughtful argument citing W.E.B. DuBois on black Americans' "double consciousness" contrasted with writings by jazzman Charlie Mingus and "Black Atlantic" theorist Paul Gilroy. It was particularly jarring to then turn the page to see a graphic of an ape drinking from a wine bottle. What's up with that??? Did book designers Coma, with offices in both Amsterdam and New York, actually read the book's texts before commencing design, or do they only speak Dutch? Brenda Laurel's Utopian Entrepreneur, in the same Mediawork Pamphlet series, was ill-served by intrusive design that actually threatened her text's legibility in places. Here, the choice of the nasty-feeling paper, Curious Touch Soft Milk (available at http://www.curiouscollection.com, for the perverse), puts this book in the company of that Situationist text bound in sandpaper in order to damage other books on the shelf. Like Meret Oppenheim's fur-lined teacup, the book thus becomes more a precious surrealist object to be talked about than enjoyed in a reader's hands, and erudite author Paul D. Miller sure doesn't deserve that. This reviewer would like to see Rhythm Science in plenty of art students' backpacks, read and reread, well-thumbed and discussed, and its CD often spun.