WHEN GOD IS IN THE ROOM: new talk @ Union Docs this Friday

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I CAN’T STOP TALKING! Come join me this Friday, November 7th, as a I present on soundsystems & audiences at Union Docs in Brooklyn. From my experiences dancing to jungle back in the day to thoughts on Koranic recitation & improv, robots who love shape-note singing, and maybe some Billy Joel. This forms part of a series on spectatorship curated by Mathilde Walker-Billaud.

Here’s the description for my talk, called When God Is In The Room:

What’s so special about experiencing sound in a packed club? Why does music sound better when God is in the room? How did supercomputers listening to geology improve pop music? Jace Clayton (aka DJ /rupture) will explore these questions and more. From personal stories of after-hours dancing in Boston and Jamaica to a discussion of Koranic recitation in Egypt. Listening audiences considered from the body, the earth below, and the heavens above. Jace Clayton will play music, show videos and images.

Union Docs is a great space with interesting programming — if you haven’t been then you should remedy that this week! Friday, Nov. 7th, 2014. 7:30p. $9. 322 Union Ave., Williamsburg
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COOPER UNION TALK

jace clayton - cooper union talk
On Tuesday October 28th I’m giving a free, open-to-the-public talk at Cooper Union. It’s part of their Interdisciplinary Seminar speaker series. Expect discussion of Sufi Plug Ins, Enkutatash እንቁጣጣሽ, and, if the clock allows, my thoughts on nonlinear time vis-à-vis databases, Aztec loop music, and Christopher Columbus’s faulty biodiesel clipper.

I was asked to assign brief readings for students in the course, and gave them this:

Jace Clayton, “The Voice of Huitzilopochtli” Frieze

Jace Clayton, “Something New: Cairo finds a voice in festival music” Fader

Lev Manovich, “Database as Symbolic Form”