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DJ Spooky

About this Artist

PAUL D. MILLER (DJ SPOOKY THAT SUBLIMINAL KID) is a conceptual artist, writer, and musician working in New York. His written work has appeared in The Village Voice, The Source, Artforum, Raygun, Rap Pages, Paper Magazine, and a host of other periodicals. Miller's first collection of essays, Rhythm Science, was published by MIT Press in April 2004, and was included in several year-end lists of the best books of 2004, including the Guardian (UK) and Publishers Weekly. In 2006, Sound Unbound, an anthology of writings on sound art and multi-media by contemporary cultural theorists will follow Rhythm Science.

Miller's work as a media artist has appeared in a wide variety of contexts such as the Whitney Biennial; The Venice Biennial for Architecture (year 2000); the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany; Kunsthalle, Vienna; The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and many other museums and galleries. His 2004 solo show at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York, Path Is Prologue, echoed his live music/theater/film performance, "DJ Spooky's Rebirth of A Nation, which ran simultaneously at the Lincoln Center Festival after premieres in Vienna and at Spoleto USA in Charleston, SC and continues to tour globally.

But even with all this, Miller is most well known under the moniker of his "constructed persona" as "DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid". Miller has recorded a huge volume of music and has collaborated a wide variety of musicians and composers such as Iannis Xenakis, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Butch Morris, Kool Keith a.k.a. Doctor Octagon, Pierre Boulez, Killa Priest from Wu-Tang Clan, Steve Reich, Yoko Ono and Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth among many others. He also composed and recorded the music score for the Cannes and Sundance Award winning film Slam, starring critically acclaimed poet Saul Williams.

In 2006, Miller was given access to the vaults of the classic reggae label Trojan Records, resulting in his landmark compilation release In Fine Style, DJ Spooky Presents 50,0000 Volts of Trojan Records!!! on Sanctuary Records. Prior to that CD, Miller's most recently released Drums of Death, featuring Dave Lombardo of Slayer, Chuck D. of Public Enemy, Vernon Reid of Living Color, and Jack Dangers of Meat Beat Manifesto. Other notable recent albums include Optometry (2002), a jazz project featuring Matthew Shipp, William Parker, Joe Mcphee, Carl Hancock Rux, Daniel Bernard Roumain, and High Priest from Anti-Pop Consortium; Dubtometry (2003), a dub remix of the same, featuring Lee "Scratch" Perry and Mad Professor; and Riddim Clash (2004), a collaboration with Twilight Dub Sound System.

In addition to his numerous records and articles released under the DJ Spooky name, another important project was a collaboration with Bernard Tschumi, Dean of Columbia University's architecture department, and author of Praxis: Event Cities. This piece debuted at the Venice Bienniale of Architecture 2000. In the magazine world, Miller is co-publisher along with legendary African American downtown poet Steve Cannon of the magazine, A Gathering of Tribes - a periodical dedicated to new works by writers from a multicultural context and he was the first Editor-at-large of the cutting edge digital media magazine, Artbyte: The Magazine of Digital Culture.

As DJ Spooky, Miller continues his globe-trotting appearances. In 2004 and 2005 he played at festivals from France to Mexico City, performed a DJ concerto in Oakland and at Yale, gave numerous talks at prominent universities and conferences like the Digital Independence Summit in San Francisco, and participated in the Microsoft's International DJ Summit as well as the UN's "World Summit for Information Society" in Tunis.

03/07