Courier-Post
by Jason Nark
April 13, 2007

D.W. Griffith took a critical era in American history, cut it up, mixed it back together, and presented it to the public as something different in 1915.

The result was The Birth of a Nation, a controversial and influential film that depicted, some would say in a racist manner, freed slaves and carpetbaggers wreaking havoc on Southern, white culture in the Reconstruction era and a virtuous Ku Klux Klan rising up to protect it.

Now almost a century later, Paul Miller, aka DJ Spooky, is doing a little cutting and mixing of his own. Miller will be on stage at Rutgers-Camden's Walter K. Gordon Theater tonight for a multimedia performance of Rebirth of a Nation, which he likens to a "digital exorcism" of Griffith's epic but explicitly racist film.

"I basically apply the DJ technique to film. It's kind of a different show every night," said Miller from his home in New York recently.

Miller has made a career coloring outside the lines of the stereotypical club DJ. He's really a conceptual artist whose inspirations include W.E.B. DuBois, Grandmaster Flash and James Joyce. He's worked with Yoko Ono and the drummer for the metal group Slayer, and recently authored Rhythm Science, a book that delves into the relationship between DJ culture and contemporary art...