DJ Spooky's latest spin? A visual poem to Chicago

By James B. Kelleher

CHICAGO (Reuters Life!) - When Paul Miller, the multimedia artist better known as DJ Spooky, looks at Chicago, the capital of the U.S. heartland, he sees the many things that make it unique.

But the New York-based writer and musician also sees the "constant movement, continuous uncertainty ... relentless change" that he says increasingly define the lives of urban dwellers today -- no matter where they live.

In "Link City Chicago," his latest multimedia work on view at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), Miller uses original and archival photographs to create what he calls a "visual poem" that shows the tension between those two strands in Chicago's identity.

The portrait that emerges is a powerful multimedia meditation on Chicago's enduring broken-nosed charm. Miller treats the city and its history as a kind of record -- the kind he used to spin in his former days as a turntablist.

Images dance on the installation's screens. Stories overlap in the video essay. The city's pulsating rhythms and unremitting energy echo in the original score that serves as the soundtrack for the exhibit.

Commissioned by SAIC and the Chicago History Museum, "Link City Chicago" seems a million miles away from Miller's avant-garde hip-hop roots.

But he sees the installation, inspired by the works of Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertov and American composer John Cage, as a logical extension of his earlier work.

"The city is a kind of record in its own right of all the people and cultures that have come through it," he said while standing in the middle of the gallery with the images that make up the exhibit swirling around him.

"It's revolving like a record player. Your eyes are the needle in the groove."

Miller said the multimedia work will be the first in a series of city studies that will look at the key role that business has played -- and continues to play -- in defining them.

"I'm going to look at the idea of commerce and trade," he said. "The whole issue of globalization is really bringing home how America functions as a clearinghouse for so many cultures."

But first Miller is headed south to Antarctica where he plans to shoot a film focusing on "the sound of ice."

"Link City Chicago" runs at Betty Rymer Gallery at SAIC through January 11, 2008.