Blogger = DJ?

In this entry, William Abraham Blaze comments on a meme that is bubbling around the net. The idea is that the blogger is like a DJ in that they combine and recontextualize other original sources of media and present them to an audience. Certainly many fascinating parallels can be drawn, but what's left out is that many bloggers are creating more from scratch than most DJs. I say this as a former DJ and someone who appreciates DJing and turntablism as an art. Depending on which ends of the spectrum of bloggers and DJs that you compare, you may end up with more differences than similarities.

There are bloggers that don't do much more than present links ad nauseum, which while the mere act of associating them together is perhaps creative, maybe it isn't quite as impressive as say the Invisibl Skratch Piklz. On the other end there are bloggers that rarely link to any outside material and largely write about their own personal experiences. DJs don't create from scratch (no pun intended) like that unless they really become musicians or producers.

Turntablists and DJs like Richie Hawtin straddle the line because they break existing recorded music down to its molecular parts (beats and measures) and sometimes add atomic flavorings in the form of original synth lines or drum beats. Still they may have more in common with cut-up artists like Burroughs, who created work by taking existing texts and cutting it down to individual words and throwing them back together.

Another way of looking at it: if you take away a DJ's turntables and hand them an acoustic guitar, most of them would be completely lost (myself included despite a brief attempt at learning to play when I was a kid). If you take a blogger's net connection away and hand them a pen, more of them can still write something worth reading.

All of this is not to say that I don't enjoy thinking about the comparison. As much as I like to create from nothing, I find that my best work in any media is based on existing material. I'm not incapable of starting with a blank page or tape but I like my raw materials to give me hints.

Comments

[phil jones]

Interesting idea. I'm trying to explore the Blogger==DJ analogy from the other side. Seeing how it would be if we blogged music :

http://www.synaesmedia.com/beatblog/main.cgi/About