Under the Hood: Foo & Wilson

Rhythms, Algorithms, and the Data-Driven DJ

Hip hop has established a tradition of sampling from the source materials of time. The modern DJ mixes found sounds and spoken word across genres and cultures to create music often with political and social commentary. Modern computing and the Internet gives today’s DJ access to a new set of tools and source material: big data, algorithms, and a nearly infinite wealth of digital objects. As the Data-Driven DJ, Brian Foo explores the process, ethics, and aesthetics around making music from public datasets such as those related to income inequality, climate change, or mass migration.

Brian Foo is a data visualization artist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. His work as the Data-Driven DJ, where he combines data, algorithms, and sampled sounds, has been featured on NPR, PRI, and Information is Beautiful.

I did the digital dash: The Hip Hip Archive as Design Issue and the Case of the Curriculum Project

The presentation presents the building of a digital hip hop archive as a design issue by focusing on four affordances for considering the interactivity, content production and management, and accessibility of its artifacts. Doing so, the research focuses on the Four Four Beat Labs, a digital pedagogies incubator for the HipHop2020 Curriculum Project and how it advances the approach that is referred to as digital hip hop as pedagogy (DHHP). It will story the development of the HipHop2020 application - including the acquisition, curation, software decisions, (meta)data visualization and learning design processes. The presentation introduces the OUTKAST Imagination (OI) as a hermeneutic and design framework for integrating justice-oriented, Digital Hip Hop Pedagogy (DHHP) in innovative, localized humanities instruction for undergraduate youth influencers in STEM-related fields. Attendees will participate in discussion of themes, and brainstorm the pedagogical affordances of integrating the OI in their instruction. The presentation will also demo a walkthrough of the virtual environment and conclude with a discussion of space when experiencing a digital archive. This approach allows for exploration of digitization challenges associated with building the application's virtual infrastructure when archiving contemporary black media and cultural production to story Atlanta’s social justice and civil rights history.

Joycelyn Wilson is an Assistant Professor of Black Media Studies and Educational Anthropologist in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication in the Ivan Allen College at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She also is the founder and director of the Four Four Beat Labs, a digital pedagogies incubator for the HipHop2020 Curriculum Project. Her justice-oriented courses on African American music, performance, education and their various intersections with STEM, the humanities, and pop culture have been featured throughout local, national, and international media outlets including NPR. She has given a TEDx Talk called “The Outkast Imagination” and currently contributes to The Bitter Southerner, and has had her BS commentary referenced by the New York Times.

Friday, May 11, 2018 at 10:00am to 11:30am

John T. Richardson Library, 207

Recent Activity

© 2001-2017 DePaul University | Contact Us | Emergency Plan | Consumer Info | IBHE | Privacy Statement | Terms of Use |