(Note: Artists subject to change)
PAUL MILLER aka DJ SPOOKY
Topping the music bill is Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky – a Washington DC-born electronic and experimental hip hop musician whose work is often called “illbient” or “trip hop”. He is a turntablist, a producer, an author and postmodern intellectual. DJ Spooky is also a professor of music mediated art at the European Graduate School.
DJ Spooky will perform the world premiere of a piece on multiple universes created with author Brian Greene (The Elegant Universe).
DJ Spooky began writing science fiction and formed a collective called Soundlab with several other artists. In the mid-1990s, Spooky began recording a series of singles and EPs. His debut LP, Songs of a Dead Dreamer, is now widely regarded as a formative influence on illbient. Riddim Warfare was an underground hit that included collaborations with Kool Keith and other cult figures in indie rock like Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore who also appears on DJ Spooky’s 2009 album release The Secret Songm a manifesto about our overloaded digital culture. String arrangements for the album were done by film soundtrack composers Peter Stopinchsky and Graham Reynolds with the Golden Arm Ensemble from Austin, with whom he will also perform at SXSW Music 2010.
In 2002, Spooky released Modern Mantra. That same year saw the release of Optometry, a widely acclaimed collaboration with avant-jazz players such as Matthew Shipp and William Parker. He has worked on a number of projects with Ryuichi Sakamoto including pieces of spoken word from Pattie Smith, Laurie Anderson, and David Byrne. He has widely influenced by avant-garde music including artists such as Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, Can, as well as Ornette Coleman, Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage. Another major influence on his work has been Steve Reich. 2005 saw the release of Drums of Death, DJ Spooky’s CD based on sessions he recorded with Dave Lombardo of Slayer. Other guest artists include Chuck D. of Public Enemy and Vernon Reid of Living Colour. DJ Spooky joined the 9th annual Independent Music Awards judging panel to assist independent musicians’ careers.[ He was also a judge for the 3rd Independent Music Awards.
In 2004 DJ Spooky released a book, Rhythm Science published by MIT Press. The same year saw the launch of his film/music/multimedia performance piece "DJ Spooky's Rebirth of a Nation". A live audio/video re-mix of D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation which includes footage from choreographer Bill T. Jones and a score newly composed by DJ Spooky, "Rebirth of a Nation" was commissioned by the Lincoln Center Festival, The Festival d'Automne a Paris, The Spoleto Festival USA, and the Vienna Festival. DJ Spooky continues to tour the world performing this work. "Rebirth of a Nation" was released as a film in 2009.
Last year Spooky released a new book Sound Unbound, a collection of writing about sound art, digital media, and contemporary composition, edited by DJ Spooky.
DJ Spooky is also a professor of music mediated art at the European Graduate School.
In August 2009, DJ Spooky visited the Republic of Nauru in the Micronesian South Pacific to do research and gather material for a project in development, with a working title of The Nauru Elegies: A Portrait in Sound and Hypsographic Architecture.
DJ Spooky's multimedia performance piece Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctic was commissioned by BAM for the 2009 Next Wave Festival.
DJ Spooky has said that much of his work: "deals with the notion of the encoded gesture or the encrypted psychology of how music affects the whole framework of what the essence of 'humaness' [sic] is… To me at this point in the 21st century, the notion of the encoded sound is far more of a dynamic thing, especially when you have these kinds of infodispersion systems running, so I’m fascinated with the unconscious at this point.“
DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid will be interviewed by Plutopian Derek Woodgate during the SXSW panel, “Sound Unbound“:
They will discuss excerpts from DJ Spooky’s book, Sound Unbound, which deals with the role of sound and digital media in an information-based society, talking about the history of the sound system and the way networks transform creative processes. As part of the conversation, DJ Spooky will be playing video and audio clips and remixes and showing everything from iPhone apps to sound warfare. Wednesday, March 15th at 5:00 p.m before Plutopia.
BRUCE STERLING
Bruce s a world-renowned American science fiction author, best known for his novels and his work on the Mirrorshades anthology, which helped define the cyberpunk genre. He is, along with William Gibson, Rudy Rucker, John Shirley, Lewis Shiner, and Pat Cadigan, one of the founders of the cyberpunk movement in science fiction, as well as its chief ideological promulgator. Bruce is a close friend of Plutopia, having shared the stage with its founders on numerous occasions, as well as being the opening speaker for the past three years.
He won Hugo Awards for his novelettes Bicycle Repairman and Taklamakan. Recent works have included Shaping Things, The Zenith Angle, The Caryatids, Visionary in Residence. Beyond his SF novels, he wrote Tomorrow Now, with Bruce at his chatty, global-headed best. Here he writes about the future with skill and heartfelt exuberance. In addition, he has undertaken a number of projects, such as:
- The Dead Media Project – A collection of “research notes” on dead media technologies, from Incan quipus, through Victorian phenakistoscopes, to the departed video game and home computers of the 1980s.
- The Viridian Design Movement – his attempt to create a “green” design movement focused on high-tech, stylish, and ecologically sound design. The Viridian Design home page, including Sterling’s Viridian Manifesto and all of his Viridian Notes, is managed by Jon Lebkowsky athttp://www.viridiandesign.org. The Viridian Movement helped to spawn the popular “bright green” environmental weblog Worldchanging.
- Embrace the Decay – a web-only art piece commissioned by the LA Museum of Contemporary Art in 2003.
In 2003 he was appointed Professor at the European Graduate School where he is teaching Summer Intensive Courses on media and design. In 2005, he became “visionary in residence” at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. He is now living in Turin, after a spell in Belgrade.
BLACK PIG LIBERATION FRONT
Black Pig Liberation Front will present a ritualistic text/sound/body work conceived by Tariq Zayid and Maranda Pleasant called raga erotica, ripped from a longer work experimenting with frequencies and movements associated with shuddering erotic gestures called Orgasmic Oscillations. Our homage to the incomparable Donna Summer. Utilizing frequencies as specific magical sound pulses to help induce the body in a fertility of text, the delirium of a dancer’s movement, the touch of the person next to you, sound vision flowing between contact. Drone pulse. Monkey Chant. An attempt to achieve ‘sacred time’ – as Bataille would call the moment of annihilation, ultimate inner experience, metaphorical or actual exchange of fluid, compounds, electrical waves. The impossible — as knowing what is beyond the model-building activity and the model itself does not lie within the scope of representational thought. It may be that every one of us is set upon the earth to find a new method of divination, a syntax of the heart to locate the center of ourselves in the structure of process. Across sexual platforms, cognitive science, gender, word, scent, movement, and sound to develop a theoretical and philosophical approach responsive to our changing understanding of our selves and our world. Is it possible to craft a mode of philosophy, ethics, and interpretation that rejects the classic humanist divisions of self and other, mind and body, society and nature, human and animal, organic and technological? Can a new kind of humanities — a post-humanities — respond to the redefinition of humanity’s place in the world by both the technological and the biological or “green” continuum in which the “human” is but one life form among many? Note: If text/sound/body project works as proposed in prepared setting, becomes ritualistic event. There is the possibility of confirmation. When performed live, microphones will be strategically placed for addition of real time guttural vocal expressions from the participants (there is no audience here, only a communal experience).
See www.blackpigliberationfront.com for more information.
Pataphysica Sequencia
DJ Spooky Gifts BPLF
Pataphysica Sequencia
Shaman Trip
Lee Ranaldo mix Tariq Zayid
Shaman Trip
DAVID DEMARIS (DR. STRANGEVIBE)
David DeMaris (frequently performing as Dr. Strangevibe) travels the spaceways from his ATX home base. He’s known for work combining pattern recognition and semiconductor technology, theoretical neuroscience, and a wide range of arts action: a steel guitar and electronics duet, performance video, abstract films, installations, jazz piano, theatrical sound design and composer, and a 2009 workshop on adapting visual art as graphical scores for improvisers.
At Plutopia 2010 he will perform ambient sound and video works between headliner sets with a focus on sound, words and images by luminaries spanning the worlds of science and art.
XIAO HE
He Guoheng, known in the world of music as Xiao He, is one of the most creative and influential artists in the Beijing music scene. In fact, in May 2009, Xiao was voted one of the coolest rock stars in Beijing by Timeout Beijing Magazine. Though he takes the artiness to extreme lengths – Birds That Can Fly High Don’t Land on the Backs of Oxen That Can’t Run Fast is not his silliest album title – there’s incredible musicianship involved, and his voice has a soaring clarity. A sign of his brilliance is that he’s every bit as captivating when he’s just on his own with an acoustic guitar. Generally though in addition to voice and acoustic guitar, he is surrounded by pedals and computers. which he uses for self-sampling and experimentation. He also uses what is technically known as “this cool little box thing” on the base of his guitar which enables him to switch the sound produced by it. He first attracted serious attention in the late 90s with his experimental band, Glamorous Pharmacy, a fluid ensemble that mixed folk, jazz, 
experimentation, improvised performances and action art to create a strangely surreal sound that never seemed to settle anywhere before turning around and heading of in a different direction. In 2003, Modern Sky, China’s largest independent label, released his first CD, a live recording called “The Bird that Can Fly High Landed on the Cow that Can Run Fast”. Almost immediately this was received as one of the most important recordings in contemporary Chinese music. After his 2009 European tour, Xiao He released his second album, “Performance of Identity“, with Maybe Mars. Xiao He performed on November 5th in Brooklyn’s powerHouse Arena and has rocked New York’s Glasslands. According to fans participating the show: Xiao He was incredible, awesome and totally unique. Xiao He’s odd warping and looping of traditional folk forms evoke Animal Collective circa Sung Tongs). Now we get to see him for the first time in Austin TX.
WHITE
Chinese outfit White was formed by Shou Wang and Shen Jing in February 2005, and has quickly become one of the most acclaimed outfits in the Beijing new music scene. White’s sound is ever evolving, spiraling outwards from the core stars of noise and minimalism to take in everything from the phase patterns of Steve Reich, the atonal chords of Glenn Branca, Throbbing Gristle’s aggressive electronic shimmer, Neubauten’s rhythmic invention, and the gu zheng masters of Chinese classical music. Their pieces can range from highly organized aggolmerations of atonal chords that have an almost rock and roll ferociousness, to a completely anarchic attack of weirdly syncopated drum sounds derived from a chance encounter with old furniture or a dysfunctional machine.
