[Previous entry: "Beers I'd like to try"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Madlib"]
04/12/2004 Archived Entry: "Rhythm Science"
Paul Miller's Rhythm Science arrived today. I open it up and read on the first page:
Make the link between the names people make up, and the image resolves. The game face moves from version to version. Whether you're logging in under a new name, or you're a DJ trying out a new persona, the logic is an extension rather than a negation.
So far, this resonates with a lot of what I'm writing about when I speak of funkcomp or celebritacy. Alter egos/naming is a central part of digital rhetoric. Not just for taking on a new name (like in the MOO where gender switching by name is celebrated), but for using new personalities/alter egos to create new forms of discourse. Often, the name and the action juxtapose (Cut Chemist/Kool Moe Dee/Busta Rhymes). Funkcomp adopts the George Clinton model and asks writers to first create alter egos on their way to constructing What the... projects. But the possibilities extend further when we rethink the whole notion of identity and move away from (or at the least add to) gender, race, class. Instead, we integrate media into this mix.
