Response to "Rhythm Science"

“Once you get into the flow of things, 

you're always haunted by the way that things could have turned out. 

This outcome, that conclusion. You get my drift. 

The uncertainty is what holds the story together, 

and that's what I'm going to talk about.”

        Coming back to this quote again and again throughout the book, it helped keep me focused through the rambling-type writing style.  In this book, DJ Spooky delivers a manifesto for rhythm science--the creation of art from the flow of patterns in sound and culture, “the changing same.”  Spooky explains how there are only so many things you can do with a DJ mix, and how it is up to the artist to make it authentic, how to make it their own.  According to Spooky, it is about how you arrange the mix of cultural ideas and products that inundate our everyday lives, how you use technology and art to create something new and expressive and endlessly variable.  Technology has become the medium, bringing together the artist’s consciousness and the outside world.  

        Spooky’s writing style is collage-like, randomly pasting in those ideas of technology, culture and the ever-changing shifts of DJ music.  At times, this becomes a challenge to take in and digest.  He goes back and forth from theory to autobiography to history, leaving the reader drifting in a collection of words.  Consequently, the pages are often dense and uneasy to follow.  The threads that are meant to tie each sentence together are usually not readily apparent; a style which forced me to re-read page again and again.  

Spooky puts it this way: “DJ-ing is writing, writing is DJ-ing.  Writing is music, I cannot explain this any other way.  Take Nietzsche, for instance, whose brilliant texts are almost musical.  Obviously, you feel the rhythm inside a great poet’s stanzas, but it’s there within the great philosophers’ paragraphs as well.  So many media and cultural techniques of interpretation coexist - reading, watching, listening, surfing, dancing - that this textual/sonic synashesia demands a great deal from us.”  

        Overall, Rhythm Science demands a great deal from the reader.  This type of writing style summons complete focus and a willingness to thoughtfully put the pieces of the story together on your own.  Nevertheless, the book does a tremendous job at describing the ideas of DJ culture and the issues that surround art in the digital age.