Electronic Music Redefined

Conceptual artist and composer Paul D. Miller, also known as DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid, went to Antarctica last year to record the landscape. The result, "Terra Nova: The Antarctica Suite," is an upcoming multimedia project that aims to document not just the gush of melting ice, he says, but to create the sound of ice, and all the layers of information frozen in the continent.

It's a very literal illustration of "Sound Unbound," which is also the title of a new collection of essays on sampling and digital culture. The book includes writers and musicians, such as novelist Jonathan Lethem, composers and progenitors Steve Reich and Brian Eno, and many others, looking at the intersection of sampling and civilization. Sound Unbound makes the case that layering songs and sound into mash-ups and re-mixes is not a novelty of dance club music, but is the very sound of an era - a time when bits of information circle the globe in milliseconds, and the lines between music, art, film, literature and technology have blurred - making everything fair game for communicating ideas.

Conceptual artist, writer and musician Paul D. Miller, also known as DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid, joins Word of Mouth to talk about what "digital culture" means today. Also joining us is mash-up artist Greg Gillis, who performs under the name Girl Talk. His fourth LP "Feed the Animals" will be available for download this week. The album will take advantage of the so-called "Radiohead" model of making digital copies available as a download for whatever people choose to pay, and later releasing physical copies. He talks about the "hunter-gatherer" image of DJ culture, and sampling as a primal quest, and a route to reconnect us to our tribal roots.

UPDATE: You can download Girl Talk's new album Feed the Animals here.