There are your run-of-the-mill out-of-office e-mail replies. Then there’s the one from Paul D. Miller, a.k.a. DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid.
“Hello People! I’m on vacation. Sri Lanka, baby!”
The high that day on the island nation was 86 degrees. By contrast, the average low in Antarctica, where he shot his latest project last December and January, was 10 degrees.
Miller performs “Terra Nova: The Antarctic Suite,” his digital visual-aural collage, Sunday night at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House as part of “Dialog:City.”
Curated by Seth Goldenberg, “Dialog:City” is a vigorous nod to the fact that 21st-century digital-culture artists and performers — such as Miller and R. Luke DuBois, whose “Hindsight Is Always 2 0/20” will also be showing convention week at the Denver Center Arts Complex — not only can engage with pressing issues, but they intend to.
“Some of this is about ‘what is the right form at the right time?’ ” says Shari Frilot, a senior programmer at the Sundance Film Festival and its New Frontiers section, where DuBois’ video “Academy” showed in 2007.
“Not only are the artists engaged, there’s something about the interface that has gotten really interesting in the last four or five years.”
It’s interesting, she says, to see digital artists of this caliber involved in a show that’s being curated for the Democratic National Convention.
“It’s gone beyond an artistic engagement. It’s almost a new voice of the people, and the artists are at the vanguard of that.”
The peripatetic Miller found himself drawn to Antarctica’s emptiness.
“Maybe it’s a utopian thing, but I’m a huge fan of the idea that we humans have not messed (up) Antarctica as much as other places,” he says.
He called from California where he was talking with execs about his latest book, “Sound Unbound,” a collection of essays by such luminaries as sci-fi author Bruce Sterling, composer Steve Reich, Public Enemy’s Chuck D. and Brian Eno. The topics include sampling, technology, music and more. The nickname for his talks: “DJ as search engine.”
“I want people to feel they are immersed in this kind of ice landscape,” he says of the Antarctica project.
“Being a New Yorker and dealing with urban density as my wake-up call every morning, it was the most quiet and eerily dynamic place I’ve been. The wind makes its own sound as it moves over the ice, there’s this kind of whirling and keening. It’s this whole different, unstable landscape. Even putting one foot in front of the other makes its own sound.”
Such is the sonic terrain of “Terra Nova.”
“I went there because it’s a blank space,” says Miller. “So I wanted to think of it as cinematic imagery at the edge of the world.”
Miller grew up in Washington, D.C., the nation’s premier “chocolate city.” His multimedia piece “Rebirth of a Nation” is a “remix” of D.W. Griffith’s 1915 tour de force of racism, “The Birth of a Nation.”
“For me, this piece is sidestepping a whole notion of what black imagery is.” Although there are no people in “Terra Nova,” “There are layers of paradox and metaphorical interpretation of how people think of identity.”
DuBois, who found his inspiration at the American Presidency Project of the University of California-Santa Barbara, knew he wanted to do something for the election.
For his 2007 piece “Academy,” the artist used algorithmic rendering to compress an entire film into a single minute. The video delivers 75 years of Oscar winners in 75 minutes. (That’s 222 minutes of “Gone With the Wind” gone in 60 seconds.)
This year for “Hindsight,” he also tinkered with math equations. He toyed with the idea of making a Billboard magazine chart of presidential words, something along the lines of George Washington’s Top 25. But then he saw former President Bill Clinton’s campaign manager, James Carville, on CNN.
“He’s kind of a blowhard,” says DuBois, “but he also has this ‘vision’ thing,’ ” says DuBois.
And that led to his idea of playing with eye charts like the ones you read at the optometrist’s office.
“The most common words float to the top,” says DuBois. “So for George Washington, it’s ‘gentlemen.’ For George W. Bush it’s ‘terror.’ ”
Because his was the first televised State of the Union address, Lyndon Baines Johnson’s word was “tonight.” His second-most-used word was the one you might have expected to be his first: “Vietnam.”
Film critic Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com; also on blogs.denverpostcom/madmoviegoer
