Citizen DJ

Major shout out to Linus Fast of Million Vibes Sounds for the tip on Citizen DJ!

Citizen DJ is a project by Brian Foo as innovator-in-residence at the Library of Congress in Washington DC, USA. It was recently made accessible to the public for feedback. The link above essentially describes what it is. But! I would like to emphasize what is going on here. This isn’t only technology implemented in an unexpected place. Sure, it is fun and exciting to be crate diggin’ into a music archive for samples, and entertaining to play with the tool that has been crafted for this purpose. What’s interesting, in the context of DIY Cultural Diplomacy, is to observe hip-hop epistemology being utilized. Citizen DJ embeds public domain in hop-hop practice and gives it relevance. We are watching continuity being enabled through hip-hop. The meaning of continuity i explain here. In Brian’s words:

Since its beginnings in the 1970s, hip hop has become today’s dominant worldwide music genre and cultural movement. At the center of this movement is the DJ, whose role is to excavate, transform, and collage disparate and obscure sounds from current and past cultures to create wholly new, relevant, and infectious music.

Brian Foo

The link above takes you to the project website where you can test Citizen DJ and provide feedback and the video below explains how it works. The project runs until September 2020

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