New and Improved?: From Analog Vinyl records to DVS Technology

MA Thesis

New Media and Digital Culture – Graduate School of Humanities – University of Amsterdam Table of Contents Introduction ...... 2 1. Theoretical Framework ...... 4 1.1 Marshall McLuhan: Media as the extensions of man ...... 4 1.2 Friedrich Kittler: New materialism and German media archaeology ...... 8 1.3 Media Archaeology ...... 13 1.4 Cultural techniques ...... 17 1.5 Cultural and Subcultural Studies ...... 20 2. Rewriting hip hop’s history ...... 24 3. Methodological Framework ...... 27 3.1 The Emergence of Digital Vinyl Systems and Mixvibes ‘Cross’ ...... 28 3.2 Software and Platform Analysis ...... 32 3.3 Autoethnography ...... 33 3.4 Semi-structured Interviews ...... 34 3.5 Approaching and Interviewing Hip Hop DJs ...... 36 4. Findings ...... 37 4.1 A Note to Remediation ...... 37 4.2 Getting into the Groove: The hardware components of ‘Cross’...... 38 4.3 The ‘Cross’ User Interface ...... 42 4.4 Interviews and Autoethnography ...... 45 5. Conclusion ...... 49 Bibliography ...... 52 Mediagraphy ...... 57

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Introduction

From its genesis, during the 1970s in the South Bronx, hip hop has not been only about music. In addition to its oral (MCing or Rapping) and aural (DJing/Turnatablism) incarnations, this heterogeneous artistic form is also defined by its physical (B-Boying or Breakdancing) and visual (Graffiti) manifestations. Despite the multiplicity in the elements that constitute hip hop culture, this thesis will focus on the influence the turntable has on it. Although the analog era of hip hop has been thoroughly analyzed, the effects of digital technologies have not yet been examined enough. Thus, the relevance of this thesis stems from the still unexamined influence digital technologies have on the art of hip hop DJing. The advent of digital technologies has been considered a controversial issue within the circles of hip hop DJs. On the one hand, many claim that DJ software is a convenient tool that renders hip hop DJing a more easy and accurate practice. On the other hand, people who started DJing in the analog era of hip hop have a more critical view on software considering it as a cheat, because beginners rely on it in order to bypass the fundamentals in the process of becoming a DJ. Hence, the research question of this thesis is the following: How have the turntable and its attendant cultural techniques historically shaped the aesthetic and cultural values of hip hop, and to what extent does the introduction of digital DJ technologies remediate and transform hip hop’s cultural heritage? By answering the research question, this thesis will contribute to the New Media field by demonstrating the impact software has on hip hop culture in general and DJing in particular. The innovative aspect of this thesis lies in the analysis of digital vinyl system technology, which has not yet been explored by scholars from both software and hip hop studies. In order to substantiate my argument, this procedure must be followed: The first chapter discusses the literature and theories relevant to the study of the turntable with the intention to examine the influence media have on the shaping of culture. Marshall McLuhan’s insights concerning the agency of a medium when it comes to create new environments, and bring changes into the ways in which we understand the world will be used to introduce the general theoretical framework of this thesis. In order to pay more attention to technological media and by extension the turntable, I will continue with the

2 theories and methodology developed by Friedrich Kittler, who is also considered as one of the originators of media archaeology. The purpose of using media archaeology is to explain how the past and the present can be encapsulated in a medium, and thus how software remediates its analog precedent. The theories and concepts mentioned above are characterized by technological determinism, and therefore deny any human agency in the shaping of cultures. In order to address this issue I will then introduce the concept of cultural techniques which attributes agency to the practices and process that enable and constitute cultures. Finally, the connection between the hip hop values and the turntable will be established through subcultural studies. In the second chapter I will briefly introduce the analog era of hip hop with the intention to provide an account about the birth and evolution of hip hop. As mentioned above this thesis will mainly focus on the digital era of hip hop. Thus, the third chapter introduces the methodical framework employed in this research. It will be consisted of my case study, and the three different methods employed to examine it; namely software/platform analysis, autoethnography, and semi-structured interviews. Software/platform analysis will be made on the level of the ‘interface’ which according to Bogost and Montfort (2009b) is situated “between the core of the program and the user” (146). While software analysis provides this thesis with objective data, autoethnography and interviews offer the subjective perspective of the users. The combination of autoethnography and interviews will also highlight the commonalities and differentiations between my self-experience and the participants. The findings of the empirical analysis will be discussed in the fourth chapter, and then I will conclude in the fifth.

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1. Theoretical Framework

In this chapter, my aim is to discuss the literature and theories relevant to the study of the turntable, for the purpose of understanding and analyzing the material technologies and techniques that shaped the aesthetic and cultural values of hip hop as a subculture. Here, I intend to offer a thorough explanation of the different theoretical concepts and debates that are essential to this study and that fit hip hop’s unique characteristics. This includes an outline of medium theory and its related concepts of media materialism and medium specificity based on the writings of Marshall McLuhan and Friedrich Kittler; an account of the the growing field of media archaeology; and an outline of the concept of cultural techniques. Finally this section contains an overview of cultural and subcultural theory. Taken together, this theoretical framework provides a fertile conceptual ground for – and a set of alternative perspectives on – the study of hip hop’s historical evolution, given that they enable a focus on its material techniques and technologies, as well as their remediation into new digital formats.

1.1 Marshall McLuhan: Media as the extensions of man

Drawing inspiration from the work of his intellectual teacher and colleague at the University of Toronto, Harold Innis, and more precisely his explorations on the role of media in shaping the culture and development of civilizations, McLuhan formulated his communication theory, which can be summarized as ‘the training of perception’.1 This rather broad explanation, though, captures neither his significance in the field of media studies, nor his relevance to this thesis. What McLuhan is perhaps best-known for is his famous dictum ‘the medium is the message’ elaborated on in his book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, first published in 1964. As far as the “message” is concerned, McLuhan argues that it is “the change of scale or pace or pattern” that any medium or new technology “introduces into human affairs” (1994, 8). Here it is

1 See http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/biography/

4 important to note that for McLuhan it is not the content or the way a medium is used, but rather its form and the environments that create as well as the change it brings into our human affairs. Let us look briefly at the example of phonography – which I discuss in more detail later as well - in order to better understand the message of its invention and “the change of scale” this ‘new’ technology introduced into our musical habits. Mark Katz in his book Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music (2010, 10) cites Karl Marx and his observation about the consumption of music, which prior the advent of phonography was limited to live performances:

The service a singer performs for me satisfies my aesthetic need, but what I consume exists only in an action inseparable from the singer, and as soon as the singing is over, so too is my consumption.

So what message does the technology of phonography carry? An obvious interpretation would suggest that its message is the music stored into the grooves of a phonograph record, namely the latter’s content. McLuhan, considers the content as “the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind” (1994, 18). This implies that the message of phonography could have a substantial impact on our listening practices and the ways in which music can be experienced and consumed; from social listening contexts, like concerts and festivals with live musical performances, to solitary home (and later mobile) listening of recorded music. As Ruth Herbert (2012) argues more than a century after the invention of phonography:

Technologically mediated solitary listening now constitutes the prevalent mode of musical engagement in the Industrialized West.

Indeed, what matters for McLuhan is the medium over the content, because the latter is being expressed, represented, and perceived in certain ways influenced by the medium’s form. In line with this, Creeber and Cubitt (2009, 20), argue that in McLuhan’s world “how something is presented is actually more important than what is being presented”. But if the medium is the message, then what is the medium for Mcluhan? As he suggests a medium is “any extension of ourselves” (1994, 7). Importantly, such an extension calls for a broader understanding of the medium as a prosthesis of our bodies,

5 and expansion of our central nervous system. Given this, in the Mcluhanesque sense the notion of the medium can include anything that enables us to do more than we could do on our own. Accordingly, a hammer is an extension of our arms, a wheel an extension of our feet, and language can be seen as an extension of our thoughts. As McLuhan himself at his bestseller The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (McLuhan and Fiore, 1967), “[a]ll media are extensions of some human faculty – psychic or physical” (26). Here, the notion of massage is employed to underline how the specificity of a medium pertains to the ways in which it influences our senses, and makes us understand the world in certain ways. The usefulness of McLuhan’s viewpoint lies in the ways in which the turntable and the vinyl record, the tools of hip hop’s aural manifestation so to speak, are understood as the extensions of the hip hop DJ, his/her hands and thoughts. Here it is important to note that contrary to a strictly techno-determinist point of view, though, I do not regard media as the driving force of culture and hip hop subculture in particular, as far as the turntable and the vinyl record are concerned. I perceive them as the material technologies which have agency in to shape as much as that store and transmit culture. Moreover, as the section on ‘cultural techniques’ will show, there are both human and non-human agents in the mix, as well as a particular importance associated with the ways in which media technologies are used for, or even prior, the constitution of cultures. Before proceeding to Friedrich Kittler, I have to elucidate the second contribution of McLuhan to this study, namely his intuition of remediation. I will present how this idea has been taken up by media archaeology, as well as the most recent field of software and platform studies. But what is remediation for McLuhan, and what does it bring about? Even from the very beginning of Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1994, 8) the author suggests that:

…the content of any medium is always another medium. The content of writing is speech, just as the written word is the content of print, and print is the content of the telegraph.

Still this is a rather tricky explanation of the term. In order to understand better McLuhan’s insight, we should not forget that different media can create different modes

6 of information’s expression and representation. Bolter and Grusin, applying McLuhan’s insights in their book Remediation: Understanding New Media (2000), suggest that their progenitor conceives such a notion as “a more complex kind of borrowing in which one medium is itself incorporated or represented in another medium” (45). In other words, remediation implies a change in the material base of media technologies, whilst maintaining their specificity. Let us in brief review the example of the turntable again, but this time through the looking glass of remediation, in order to understand the incorporation or representation of one medium in another and how old media possess the forms and structures of their new material constellations. The analog turntable and the vinyl record which were the standard tool for (not only hip hop but) any DJ until the late 1990s has been incorporated in Pioneer’s digital CDJ-1000 in 2001, a CD player that emulates vinyl records and enables hands-on manipulation (i.e. scratch) of music recorded in CDs through a platter (Sirois 2011, 51). In line with this, today’s MIDI controllers, using similar control platters, emulate the CDJ technology, but instead of CDs they function with MP3s and other digital audio formats. This ‘hybridizing or compounding’ (McLuhan 1994, 49) represents the takeover of an old medium by a new one, in as much as the irreversible hegemony of the analog over the digital, because the latter cannot exist without the former. As Michael Stephen Daubs, commenting on McLuhan, has noted in his PhD thesis Immediacy and Aesthetic Remediation in Television and Digital Media (2011), “newly developed media always refashion and reform the structures and content of older media” (22-23). In other words, remediation can be summarized as the blending of new and old media, or the interplay between software and hardware processes and platforms. Importantly, the theme of remediation has also guided the case study of this research which I discuss later, having my focus on the writings of Bolter and Grusin, and Lev Manovich, all three of them influenced – among others - by McLuhan’s intuition. This section has reviewed some basic yet relevant to this study insights of Marshall McLuhan in light of the materiality of communication and the specificity of media, as well as remediation. More precisely, through the example of phonography, we saw how the advent of new technologies can influence our interpersonal relationships, and the ways in which music can be experienced and consumed. Thereafter, following

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McLuhan’s idea of the media as the extensions of our bodies and senses, we saw how the turntable and the vinyl record can considered as the extensions of the hip hop DJ, with which she executes her art. Lastly, by paying attention to the form of the medium over its content, I recalled the example of the turntable in order to outline the theme of remediation, or the ways in which older media incorporate or represent themselves in new ones. Having established this base, the following part continues the theme of the materiality and specificity of media by highlighting, through the ‘hardware media theory’ of Friedrich Kittler, the agency media technologies have in shaping cultures and humans.

1.2 Friedrich Kittler: New materialism and German media archaeology

The previous subsection ended with a call for a further understanding of the materiality of specific technologies. German media theory, also often called materialist media theory or hardware theory (Parikka 2012, 63) has been traditionally interested in this kind of research, and this the reason why I follow its paradigm in my attempt to examine the turntable and how it has influenced the aesthetic and cultural values of hip hop. As it has been already argued, the idea of ‘hardware media theory’ has been mainly credited to Friedrich Kittler thanks to his media-technological oriented methodology towards an understanding of art, materiality, science and media history (Parikka 2012, 66). Given this, I will look more carefully at Friedrich Kittler’s theoretical trajectory and his work in the media and literature landscape, as well as his media-archaeological investigations, by paying more attention to his books Discourse Networks 1800/1900 (1990) and Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (1999). In parallel to this, I will give a more detailed account of the influence both Foucault and McLuhan had on the German media theorist, as well as his angle of departure from their theories. Although he is known as the ‘Derrida of the digital age’ (Jeffries 2011), Kittler devoted relatively little of his time to study the technological changes associated with the digital era. He was mainly concerned with and best known for his engagement with the past, and more precisely its analog media machines. And, it is exactly within this context of the past and its technological media that Kittler becomes relevant to this research.

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However, Kittler did not start his career as a media theorist. The pre-technological first period of his work, which lasted from the mid-1970s until the early 1980s, was concerned with literature. Moreover, his theoretical trajectory was mainly influenced by the poststructuralist Michel Foucault, whose books the young Kittler anticipated as eagerly “as new Rock LPs or the approaching steps [of a lover]” (Kittler qtd. in Winthrop Young 2011, 15). Like Foucault, Kittler was initially interested in discourse analysis, or the archaeology of primarily literary texts. Still, the permanent scar of Foucauldian post- structuralism on Kittler was the notion of the ‘so-called Man’ (Kittler 1999, xxxix), his emergence and vanishing, as well as the theorization of human subjectivity. More precisely, Foucault has argued that humans do not produce discourse, but rather they are produced through it. In Winthrop Young’s and Wutz’s words: “we do not speak language, but language speaks us” (qtd. in Parikka 2012, 70). However, what distinguishes Kittler’s post-hermeneutic methodology from the existing Foucauldian one is his emphasis on the materiality of media technologies and practices. Kittler’s debt to Foucault and his point of departure become apparent in his book Discourse Networks 1800/1900 (1990,) first published in 1985 under the title Aufschreibsysteme 1800/1900.2 In it, the German theorist emphasizes the importance of literature as a system of connections between technologies, writing, and humans. More precisely, according to Winthrop Young and Wutz (1999: xxiii) Kittler used it in order to link “physical, technological, discursive, and social systems”. The term discourse network refers to the “technologies and institutions that allow a given culture to select, store and produce relevant data” (Kittler 1990, 369) through inscription. Given the absence of other (technical) media, the written word monopolized the storage and transmission of information in the systems of inscription of 1800. In other words, literature was not about mere texts in that or any period. Rather, its capacities to store and process information enabled its reconfiguration as a technology, which subsequently produced and affected our literacy and understanding. This situation, though, changed radically a century later with the advent and spread of the typewriter, and the invention of presentational and storing technologies like

2 Because of the discrepancy in translation, instead of ‘discourse networks’ I will use ‘systems of inscription’.

9 the gramophone and film, which could play back images and sounds, in the late 19th century. Subsequently, the discourse networks of 1800 became the “technologically embedded discourse networks” of 1900 (Partington 2006, 56). Writing became technologized, and sound as well as moving images could be stored and reproduced. Accordingly, literature lost its monopoly because a new kind of mechanically trained literacy was emerging. In other words, the storing and transmitting properties of such technologies gave birth to alternative forms of textual and informational materiality and opacity, and thus to our knowledge and (cultural) subjectivity. Importantly, Kittler’s emphasis on the ‘new’ technologies of the late 19th century implies both his departure from the Foucauldian discourse analysis which is confined to the written word and content as well as and the walls of institutions, which heralded the beginning of the second stage of his work starting in the early 1980s and lasting for two decades (Winthrop Young 2011, 3). As Kittler has put it, “all books [or libraries] are discourse networks, but not all discourse networks are books” (1990, 298). Commenting on Kittler’s media-archaeological work Huhtamo and Parikka (2011, 9) have argued that “discourse analysis ignores the fact that the factual condition is no simple methodological example but is in each case a techno-historical event”. In other words, emphasizing the impact institutions and texts have on the understanding of culture, and looking at the conditions of possibility in which notions like truth, knowledge, and (cultural) subjectivity could emerge and consolidate, the Foucauldian historiography and its ‘Ernst Cassirer’s neo-Kantian formula’ (Siegert 2007, 27) aimed to write the critique of reason as the critique of culture. On the other hand, Kittler, with his medium-oriented methodology confronted this idea and tried to (re)write the history of culture as a history of media. And this is exactly the key aspect of Kittler’s work for this thesis as well. As I have already argued, the objective of this study is to understand the ways in which the materiality of certain technologies and techniques shape the norms and values of the hip hop scene in particular moments in history. In other words, my aim is to rewrite the history of hip hop subculture by examining the history of the turntable and the ways in which it has been used through the years. In line with this, in what follows both Kittler and I both turn our focus to media technologies and their material properties, as well as the ways in which such technologies have been historically used.

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Geoffrey Winthrop Young (2011, 4) has characterized Kittler’s work as a ‘widening spiral’, due to his tendency to return to similar issues and questions but every time with a more expansive point of view – or a recurring cyclical perspective I would say. This can justify the content of his most influential - for the readers - book Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Kittler 1999) originally published in Germany one year after Discourse Networks 1800/1900 (Kittler 1990). “Media determine our situation, which - in spite or because of it - deserves a description” (1999: xxxix) are the words that set the medium-specific tone for Kittler’s Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, while simultaneously echoing his Foucauldian post-humanist past. Besides Foucault, though, and other European scholars, Kittler drew inspiration from North America, and more precisely from Marshal McLuhan and Claude Shannon. For the needs of this thesis, though, I focus on McLuhan, whose theory is more relevant here and already discussed. From him Kittler derived the idea that culture is determined by the specificity of media technologies – in other words, Kittler initially appraised and followed McLuhan’s dictum “the medium is the message”. Influenced by the Foucauldian post-humanism, though, Kittler developed a more radical thesis. McLuhan’s concept of media as the extensions of man is a first point of departure for the German theorist, who saw an autonomy in technology, rather than a human prosthesis and characterized such an assumption as ‘methodologically tricky’ (Kittler 2010, 30). In his own words:

Media are not pseudopods for extending the human body. They follow the logic of escalation that leaves us and written history behind it.3

The second part of this quote is obviously related to Kittler’s post-humanist perspective, but what does he mean when he refers to the ‘logic of escalation’? In his book Optical Media (2010) he explicitly connects technical innovations in culture with military hardware escalations, “which [are] progresses completely independent of individual or even collective bodies of people” (30). Twelve pages later (42) Kittler uses the examples of the radar and night vision as image technologies (broadly used in World War II) to address the developments in film and television. Unsurprisingly, the issue of war is a focal point throughout Kittler’s work, and according to Parikka (2012, 77) it forms “a key

3 See http://www.egs.edu/faculty/friedrich-kittler/biography/

11 methodological guideline [for media archaeology] to understand contemporary media technological culture”. But let us see another discontinuity between Kittler and McLuhan. Whereas the Canadian theorist aimed to understand the effects media have on our human perceptiom, Kittler was concerned with the historical emergence of them, as well as their material properties, or what Parikka (70) calls the ‘agency of the machine’, which come prior to any question of meaning. From the very beginning of Gramophone, Film, Typewriter Kittler (1999, xl), in opposition to McLuhan’s thesis, has emphasized that “understanding media - despite McLuhan's title - remains an impossibility precisely because the dominant information technologies of the day control all understanding and its illusions”. The notion of ‘control’, here, refers to media technologies as autonomous systems. Kittler, in order to elucidate such affects, mapped the functionality of the gramophone, film, and typewriter into the Lacanian psychic triad of the real, the imaginary, and the symbolic, respectively. Passing by the imaginary and symbolic, here I let us briefly look at the real as it is connected to the object under investigation in this thesis; the gramophone – which is the predecessor of the modern turntable. Invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison and his colleague John Kruesi, for Kittler the gramophone is a technological apparatus which - besides musical patterns and discourse – is able to record the ‘noise’ of the human body, all the unwanted information like sighs, coughs, and stuttering so to speak. Unlike the symbolic which is a feature attributed the linguistic realm, where the subject becomes inseparably committed to language and texts, the real can be recorded and manipulated through the gramophone and its records. In a post- hermeneutic mode, though, Kittler was more interested in how the theory of Lacan could be “historicized in terms of technological changes” (Parikka 2012, 72), rather than continuing towards psychoanalytic explanations. And this is the objective of media archaeology as well which I discuss in more depth in the following section; to draw from different pasts, histories, theories, and analyses and map them into the realm of media in order to understand our current cultural condition. Kittler’s archaeology is mainly concerned with the inscription on the human body by media (73). .

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1.3 Media Archaeology

“You have to know where hip hop’s been in order to know where it’s going” – Grand Wizzard Theodore4

This research is concerned with the ways in which DJ software remediates hip hop’s subcultural history and heritage, and more broadly how the materiality of certain technologies and techniques shape the norms and values of the hip hop scene in particular moments in history. To provide an answer to these questions, and guided by Grand Wizzard Theodore’s recommendation, I have to inquire into hip hop’s past in terms of the analog technologies that shaped it (such as the turntable and the vinyl record), before I am able to analyze the digital, or ‘softwarized’ (Manovich 2013) technologies of hip hop today. In this section, therefore, I introduce the field of media archaeology by mapping the theoretical and methodological complex behind its emergence in the 1980s, and discussing its interest in the material history of media objects. But what is this relatively new field of inquiry called media archaeology about, exactly? And what does it offer to this study? According to Jussi Parikka, the Finnish new media theorist whose work guides this section, media archaeology focuses on 19th century objects and apparatuses. Additionally it looks into the recording and reproduction of technical media, and “has been interested in excavating the past in order to understand the present and the future” (2012, 2). Moreover, the media-archaeological method has been interested in ‘going under the hood’5 to look the material properties of media objects and their agency to store and transmit cultures. As per Parikka, media archaeology is a “multimodal-based method which stems from multiple academic, artistic, and socio-historical backgrounds. At the

4 In Doug Pray’s documentary, Scratch (2001). DJ Grand Wizzard Theodore is a pioneering figure in hip hop and widely credited as the inventor of scratching.

5 A phrase frequently used by Parikka in What is Media Archaeology? (2012) referring to the possible methodological ramifications of the concept.

13 same time aims to understand how to think “media pasts intertwined with contemporary media cultures” (16) by reusing, remixing, and reshuffling older theories and methods (ibid). It is this multiplicity at both its base and the ways in which it has been practiced that makes media archaeology hard to define. Besides the theoretical articulations of Michel Foucault’s archaeology of power and knowledge, Friedrich Kittler’s hardware media theory, and Marshall McLuhan’s understanding of media and the notion of remediation, which are discussed in the following subsections, Parikka identifies modernity, cinema, histories of the present, and alternative histories as four important predecessors of media archaeology (7). For the needs of this research here I focus on the two last areas. The media-archaeological ‘histories of the present’ are related to the Foucauldian idea that “archaeology is always implicitly or explicitly, about the present: what is our present moment in its objects, discourses and practices, and how did it come to be perceived as reality?” (ibid). In other words they pose questions about the ‘newness’ of the technologies of each period and perceive old media as once new as well. The ‘histories of the present’ subordinate the so-called ‘linear’ progress of traditional media historiography and its related stories such as “from the abacus to quantum computing” (Ifrah et al. 2000). Media archaeologists like the Finnish scholar Erkki Huhtamo and the German academic Siegfried Zielinski, as Parikka (2012, 11) identifies, consider newness as a “very relative term” and have suggested a more cyclical nature of (media) history, as well as a convergence between the new and the old. More precisely, Huhtamo, (1997, 222) using the notion of ‘topoi’6 (or recurring cultural phenomena, and circulating discourses), proposes media archaeology

as a way of studying such recurring cyclical phenomena which (re)appear and disappear and reappear over and over again in media history and somehow seem to transcend specific historical contexts. In a way, the aim of media archaeology is to explain the sense of déjà vu when looking back from the present reactions into the ways in which people have experienced technology in earlier periods.

6 A term borrowed from Ernst Robert Curtius (1886-1956) who used it in his study European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (1948) to explain the internal life of literary traditions (Huhtamo 1997: 222)

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Referring to the déjà vu feeling media archaeology aims to explain, Huhtamo talks about the tendency of history to repeat itself. Of course, this idea of recurrence can be found not only in media history but generally in trends – whether in fashion, movies, video clips, music etc. – which tend to appear, disappear, and reappear in new forms. In light of the above hip hop music, it can be argued, is a cyclical phenomenon or at least based on circulating (musical) patterns and discourses. Through sampling, a well-known and widely-used technique in music production, hip hop DJs/producers select and ‘cut’ a specific musical – either instrumental or lyrical – part of previously existing, often obscure sound recordings and recontextualize it within a new sound-piece, in which the new and the old coexist. Q-Tip, member of the hip hop group A Tribe Called Quest (1991), in his opening verse of the track ‘Excursions’ seems to be well-aware of such a cyclical nature of music history:

Back in the days when I was a teenager / before I had status and before I had a pager / you could find the abstract by listenin’ to hip hop / My pops used to say it reminded him of bebop7 / I said well Daddy don’t you know that things go in cycles.

Connecting the compulsory newness to what he calls the ‘psychopathia medialis’ of our current capitalist condition, Zielinski - like Huhtamo - has also critiqued the hegemony of the new (Parikka 2012, 11-12) and the linearity of time. The German theorist has developed his media-archaeological research by investigating the deep time of media – “modes of hearing, seeing, and sensing in general” - and has demanded a more paleontological media temporality, independent of ‘a divine plan’ (12). Zielinski does not consider the route from the abacus to the as linear. He insists that “the history of media is not the product of predictable and necessary advance from primitive to the complex apparatus” (Zielinski 2006, 7). Importantly, Huhtamo’s ‘topoi’ and Zielinski’s ‘psychopathia medialis’ seem to echo McLuhan’s notion of remediation. It is important to outline the fourth area on which media archaeology draws, namely the ‘alternative histories’ and how this is relevant to the present study.

7 A style in jazz music, based on improvisation.

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As Parikka contends, media archaeology is concerned with the writing of present histories, while simultaneously looking for “alternative presents and pasts – and futures” (2012, 13). Drawing inspiration from Foucault’s genealogical method of understanding cultural changes and the “historical contingency of the foundational notions underpinning western culture” (Partington 2006, 55), ‘alternative histories’ shift their focus towards non-mainstream media objects and subjects. Highlighting the heterogeneity of history in terms of multiple histories, Foucault has suggested an alternative way to trace a society’s genealogy, rather than a limited investigation simply to things like simple origins:

Identify[ing] the accidents, the minute deviations – or conversely, the complete reversals – the errors, the false appraisals, and the faulty calculations that gave birth to those things which continue to exist or have value for us; it is to discover that truth or being lies not at the root of what we know and what we are but the exteriority of accidents (Foucault 1998, 374).

Talking about accidents, deviations, errors etc. it is important to look at the invention of the scratch technique by Grand Wizzard Theodore in his room back in the 1970s. Contrary to the common belief my thesis argues that scratch does not originate from hip hop music. Nevertheless, I have to assume it in order to follow both the ‘histories of the present’ and ‘alternative histories’ approaches and thus provide a more detailed account for the hip hop techniques and technologies. Scratch originates in the compositions of avant garde artists in the 1920s and 1930s who experimented in the same way by moving vinyl records back and forth under the needle of the turntable. This was something unknown in New York City of the 1970s as both hip hop scholars (Katz 2010; Rose 1994) and practitioners underscore. Scratching is another recurring cyclical phenomenon. But before closing this section, let us see from Grand Wizzard Theodore’s own words how accidents gave rise to scratching in hip hop:

I used to come home from school every day and play records. This one particular day, my mother banged on the door yelling at me because the music was too loud. When she walked in, I still had my hand on the record that was playing and I kind of moved it back and forth. When she left, I was like “Yo! That sounded kind of cool. I better experiment with that” (JohnG, 2010).

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Media archaeology fits the needs of this research particularly well for two main reasons. First, it is remediation itself that calls for a cyclical way of thinking in order to identify media technological developments. Second, hip hop is an art-form based on the convergence between the old and the new in terms of the sample-based nature of its music. Moreover as we will see later, thinking cyclically and interfering in the so-called ‘linearity’ of (musical) time has been a basic performance technique developed by hip hop DJs – or should I call them media archaeologists as well? What should have become clear by now is that media archaeology is a multimodal-based methodology which stems from multiple academic and artistic backgrounds. It has been employed by researchers in their efforts to understand our current cultural condition and think of the future by looking into the past of media technologies and apparatuses with a cyclical point of view. Erkki Huhtamo’s and Siegfried Zielinski’s works in the field are two good examples of such a cyclical thinking of time and history. Fascinated with 19th century’s analog devices and drawing from a well-established material-oriented theoretical base, media archaeology has been influenced by the writings of Marshal McLuhan, Friedrich Kittler, and Michel Foucault, among others. But is a media-archaeological hardware-obsessed approach solid enough to analyze the diversity of hip hop subculture? As I have argued, I do not regard culture as driven by strictly material forces and the human subject absent of culturing processes. I believe we can bring humans into the mix now by turning towards the concept of cultural techniques, another theme that has emerged from the once anti-humanist German media theory

1.4 Cultural techniques

“I started DJing before there was even a name called ‘hip hop’ in the year of 1970. We started to call this ‘hip hop culture’ in the year of 1973” - Afrika Bambaataa (2009)8

8 Cited in Mediagraphy, under Cornell University (the creator of the video).

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The previous section focused on the concept of media archaeology, and the themes of medium specificity and materiality. However, apart from the machines there are also human actors involved in the formation of culture. And since we are talking about hip hop culture, besides the turntable and the vinyl there have also been the DJs and their techniques that gave rise to the movement. This involvement of humans is analyzed here through the concept of cultural or culturing techniques, which has been developed within the German media theory and is related to the writings of Bernhard Siegert, Geoffrey Winthrop-Young, Thomas Macho, Sybille Kramer, and Horst Bredekamp, among others.

While it is still a new field of academic inquiry, the concept of cultural techniques constitutes a particularly important field for this thesis as it provides an alternative approach to the media-centric and technologically determinist perspective of Kittler. The concept of cultural techniques emerged in the late 19th century in Germany and was originally related to agricultural engineering. The usual definition of the concept comes from a now canonical piece by cultural historian Thomas Macho (qtd. in Siegert 2007, 29):

Cultural techniques - such as writing, reading, painting, counting, making music - are always older than the concepts that are generated from them. People wrote long before they conceptualized writing or alphabets; millennia passed before pictures and statues gave rise to the concept of the image; and still today, people sing or make music without knowing anything about tones or musical notation systems. Counting, too, is older than the notion of numbers. To be sure, most cultures counted or performed certain mathematical operations, but they did not necessarily derive from this a concept of number.

So does this mean that techniques associated with hip hop existed prior its inception? The answer is yes. If we look again at the quote above by Afrika Bambaataa, known as the godfather of hip hop, this statement becomes even clearer. DJing as a technique of performance based on recorded music is older than DJing as a concept. DJing started in 1909 from radio broadcasts. Broadly, a DJ is a person who plays music recordings for an audience. According to Katz (2012, 4) the term appeared in the early 1940s to describe “radio personalities who played phonograph records on the air”, which until then was occupied by live broadcasts of performers. As Katz further argues the term ‘DJ’ appeared for the first time in Time magazine article in 1942; “some stations merely hired ‘disk-

18 jockeys’ to ride herd on swing records” (ibid). Four years later, in 1946, the same magazine came up with another definition:

[A DJ is] a pitchman who knows how to change records. He exists because 1) radio prefers hot air to dead air; 2) some listeners like to hear their favorite musicians often, and an announcer and record library are much cheaper than the high-priced orchestras and entertainers (ibid).

Taken together, Afrika Bambaataa’s declaration and Katz’s (Time’s) definitions illustrate that cultural techniques precede the concepts media generate. According to the Kittlerian technological ‘a priori’, analog technological media - such as the gramophone, film, and typewriter – have particular properties that are responsible for the organization, distribution and transformations of diverse cultures. On the other hand, ‘elementary cultural techniques’ (Winthrop Young 2013, 6) - such as writing, reading, painting, counting, making music - first and foremost underline the basic operations by which media and subsequently culture are constituted. In Bernhard Siegert’s (2007, 29) words:

Once we reconstruct those operative sequences that configure or constitute media, the latter can be explained as cultural techniques.

From this perspective, the rewriting of the history of culture as a history of media, which dominated German media theory until the mid-1980s, shifts from the notion of the ‘alpha medium’ (27) - i.e. book, letter, computer etc. - and their attendant cultures towards the processes, practices, and signs that enable and constitute them. And as I have already argued, my aim is to rewrite the history of hip hop subculture by examining the history of the turntable and, importantly, the ways - or practices - in which it has been used through the years. In this way, the concept of cultural techniques can be also employed to reconcile the methodological orientations of McLuhan’s ‘anthropocentricism’ and Kittler’s ‘technophilia’ as Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan (2013, 66) puts it. And this is because, as he further argues, (even) the German media theory is “finally allowed to talk about people”. Importantly, it is not my intention to diminish the agency of media (non- human actors) in culture here.What I attempted to do in this section was to highlight the role and position of humans (or subjects) as well in culturing processes. Both McLuhan

19 and Kittler were techno-determinists, and as we saw on both occasions the subject was undermined by the material force of the medium. And it is the concept of cultural techniques that creates a contemporary discourse network, in which humans and machines interact, through media operations, and give rise to cultures. In this study such operations refer to DJing in general and, as we will see later, to specific techniques of hip hop DJing/turntablism and their archaeology. Having outlined the concept of cultural techniques, I believe we can now turn to the subcultural aspect of hip hop and the ways in which specific technologies and techniques shape its cultural and subcultural norms, values and style.

1.5 Cultural and Subcultural Studies

The previous section was concerned with the concept of cultural techniques and its central claim that basic practices - such as reading, writing, and making music – are always older than the concepts that are generated from them. In this section I turn my focus to cultural and subcultural studies, in order to put the hip hop movement in its context. Drawing from multiple cultural and subcultural theories, my aim is to understand the ways in which the turntable and hip hop DJing are related to notions of style and authenticity within hip hop. First, let us see what a subculture is. Ken Gelder and Sarah Thornton (1997, 4) have argued that “social groups investigated in the name of subcultures are subordinate, subaltern or subterranean”. According to Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson (2003) youth subcultures like hip hop have been characterized as ‘symbolic or ‘ritualistic attempts’ in order to resist the hegemony and power by adopting behavior considered as deviant by dominant culture and its norms. While some subcultures are antagonistic and adversarial, there are many others which are not. Nonetheless, subcultures occur as “meaning systems, modes of expression of lifestyles developed by groups in subordinate structural positions in response to dominant meaning systems” (Brake 1985, 8). Regarding hip hop, while it has grown as an act born out the characterized - by white ethnographers and sociologists - African American and Latino ‘dysfunctional underclass’ of the ghetto (Kelley 1997, 3), it also started as a youth culture. Forerunners of the movement like the DJs Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash,

20 and Kool Herc, who Jeff Chang (2007) calls “hip hop’s Holy Trinity”, were teenagers when hip hop began. Of course, other early practitioners such as Grandmixer D.ST, Jam Master Jay, Grand Wizard Theodore, and DJ Hollywood to name only a few were equally influential (and young) in the development of hip hop and DJing techniques in particular. In order to be considered a subculture, a collection of people or ideas must at least “exhibit a distinctive enough shape and structure to make them identifiably different from their ‘parent culture’” (Gelder and Thornton 1997, 100). In order to understand this idea better, in the following chapter I discuss the musical styles that influenced hip hop and how it differentiates from them. Dick Hebdige, in his influential book Subculture: The Meaning of Style (2002, 17), portrays subcultures as confounded groups whose attempt to dispute dominant culture’s predominance is indirect, circuitous and executed “obliquely, in style” in order to “erase and subvert their original straight meanings” (104). In his study, primarily of Britain’s punk subculture, the author relies on the semiotic reading of style as a dispute of the hegemonic system and contends that style occurs in four levels: intentional communication, bricolage, homology, and signifying practice. First, regarding intentional communication, style is the calculated use of symbols and signs to unsettle a meaning system, or what Hebdige considers as the “semiotic guerrilla warfare” (ibid.: 101). Second, subcultural style relies upon the ratification of everyday objects (bricolage) in order to corrupt their “straight world” meanings and resist hegemony. Third, homology implies unity and similarity in subcultural style and depicts ideas about such values. Fourth, subcultural style is an indicative procedure that includes polysemy as the continuous changing of meaning. In Hebdige’s (102) own words:

By repositioning and recontextualizing commodities, by subverting their conventional uses and inventing new ones, the subcultural stylist gives the lie to what Althusser has called the ‘false obviousness of everyday practice’ (Althusser and Balibar, 1968), and opens up the world of objects to new and covertly oppositional readings.

This reposition and recontextualiztion of commodities has been a key characteristic of hip hop as well. Hip hop DJs are known for the transformation of the turntable from a playback device into a musical instrument. But for now, let us continue with style and its meaning for hip hop in particular. From its inception, during the 1970s in the South

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Bronx, hip hop has not been only about music. In addition to its oral (MCing or Rapping) and aural (DJing/Turnatablism) incarnations, this heterogeneous artistic form is also defined by its physical (B-Boying or Breakdancing) and visual (Graffiti) manifestations. Moreover, beat-boxing and street fashion are also considered as hip hop elements (Sirois 2011, 25).9 As an assemblage of heterogeneous components, therefore, hip hop at least ‘back in the day’10 developed to give a creative response to the economic and political marginality, racism and poverty, social inequity, and gang violence that were severely affecting mainly the African American and Latino communities of the borough (Rose 1994; Kelley 1997). In line with this and according to its many defenders, of whom some clearly elaborate on Raymond William’s (1981) observation that culture comprises “the whole way of life”, hip hop encompasses all aspects of daily activity. Take for example the hip hop living legend and one of the most consistent MCs11 of the movement, Krs- One, and his track “Hip Hop VS. Rap” (KRS One 1993); as Krs-One explains “Rap is something you do / Hip Hop is something you live”. Drawing from this, one’s involvement in hip hop culture pertains not only to one’s dressing style, or consumption preferences, but first and foremost the demonstration of “deeply invested affinities or attitudinal allegiances” (Forman 2002, 90) that frame one’s ways of expression which subsequently have to be materialized through cultural techniques by using/shaping media technologies, while simultaneously shaping her (cultural) identity. The multiplicity in the forms of expression and representation of identity within hip hop culture - whether one chooses to follow the Afrocentric style taken up by artists like the Dark Sun Riders, and Boogie Down Productions (BDP), the violent gangsta profiles of Niggaz With Attitudes (N.W.A.) and Goodie Mob which are being adopted by many

9 Beat-boxing refers to the technique which uses the mouth to produce musical patterns, and street fashion is employed to describe the hip hop related dressing style.

10 This idiom has appeared as a common expression within hip hop. Most frequently is used to symbolize the idealized past and to trace the evolution of the culture. Lacking ‘historical accuracy and precision’ (Bartlett 2004: 402), though, it usually evokes feelings of nostalgia and fondness for hip hop’s important milestones such as the Bronx block parties in 1970s, Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five’s release of ‘The Message’ in 1982, the emergence of the group N.W.A. in 1988 widely considered as one of the originators of west coast gangsta rap, and the boom bap production style which lasted from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s.

11 The abbreviated form of the term ‘microphone controller’, or ‘master of ceremony’. In other words, a rapper.

22 rappers today, or the delightful images of De La Soul, Brand Nubian, and the Fresh Prince – is associated with the articulation of a ‘stylized self-promotion’ (Smith 1997, 345), as well as highly inflected with values of authenticity, or better in the hip hop dialect, the notions of ‘blackness’, ‘realness’, and ‘dopeness’. Explaining such a socio- cultural qualification process and its characteristics, Michael Eric Dyson (1996: xii) has argued:

Many of the divisions in black life - especially those based on gender, class, sexuality, authenticity, and generation - come together in debates about the virtues and vices of hip hop culture. Hip hop artists furiously debate the politics of authenticity; many artists have as a motto to ‘keep it real’.

A question then arises here: how are the turntable, the vinyl record, and DJing involved in the formation of one’s hip hop identity and authenticity? In order to answer this question, I employ Sarah Thornton’s (1996) notion of ‘subcultural capital’, developed in her ethnography of club cultures and borrowed from Pierre Bourdieu’s (1984) ‘cultural capital, by which aesthetic inclinations display, organize and constitute one’s status and rank in the social hierarchy. Thornton conceives subcultural capital as a method in which subcultures differentiate themselves from the mainstream media (for example underground music) in the development of subcultural hierarchy. Subcultural capital can be accumulated in two forms; as knowledge (for music) or in objects (here, vinyl record collections). With both forms the members of a subculture show their ‘realness’ or authenticity, or their status and rank. Referring to DJs, she says (2005, 187) that they are “sometimes positioned as the masters of the scene”. By amassing cultural capital in the form of objects (vinyl records and turntables) and the know-how to manipulate them, people are able to differentiate themselves from others. Albeit this differentiation is not solely based on economic capital, the gain of cultural capital is most commonly linked to practice and education in leisure time - something that Bourdieu relates to class.

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2. Rewriting hip hop’s history

In order to understand better the contemporary cultural situation of hip hop and the technology that serves it, this chapter discusses the technological and cultural origins of the movement as it relates to early technologies and practices in order to put the research in context. Drawing from hip hop and DJing based academic and artistic sources, the objective of this chapter is to provide an account of the earlier musical art forms and cultures - such as the avant-garde experimentations in the early 1930s, and the Jamaican sound-system mobility - that influenced the techniques and aesthetics of the early hip hop DJs, and the ways in which they used the turntable. But first, let us see what a hip hop DJ/turntablist is and what she does. The definition of the term comes from the hip hop scholar Andre Sirois (2011, 9):

The hip hop DJ uses two turntables and a mixer to manipulate music (a break) on 12” or 7” discs. The hip hop DJ does not just play rap music, but takes music from all genres and makes it hip hop by manipulating it and adding their own style to it. The hip hop DJ must be able to take a small drum break of a song and using two copies of it, manipulate it ontime to produce new music. The hip hop DJ is interested in collecting and archiving music, as well as sharing these collections with an audience.

In this sense a hip hop DJ is not someone who plays strictly hip hop music, but rather one who can manipulate different kinds of music, and more concretely a break,12 by staying attached to the hip hop aesthetic of producing new music from older recordings. This is exactly the philosophy behind hip hop music; the appropriation and recycling of existing musical and lyrical patterns and their reconfiguration into a new musical whole. Moreover, this technique implies the transformation of the turntable from a playback device into a new musical instrument. The term ‘turntablism’ originates in 1995 and it was first used by DJ Babu (Katz 2012; Sirois 2011) to differentiate those who treat the turntable as a musical instrument from those who just play records. Of course, the cultural technique of creating music with a turntable is older than hip hop. In what

12 “The raw drum section of a song, which was also considered the most danceable part of the song or the ‘get down’ part” (Sirois 2011, 28).

24 follows, therefore, I trace (in a media-archaeological spirit) the origins of turntablism which is related to earlier techniques of sampling, scratching, and mixing records. According to Caleb Kelly (2006) the first form of records manipulation occurred during the first decades of 20th century “from a simple inquisitive act of slowing the record down, playing it backwards, then playing it backwards-and-forwards” (71). It was Raymond Lyon in the early 1930s that envisioned the extension of the phonograph’s nature. After employing a set of different control mechanisms - including the adjustment of the plate’s rotation, the complete relaxation of the driving spring, and the combination of multiple recordings - the phonograph would be able to evolve from a playback machine into a unique musical instrument for future compositions with its own operating principles. Another early example of treating the turntable as a musical instrument can be found in John Cage’s work ‘Imaginary Landscape No. 1’ in 1939. As Katz (2010, 53) argues, Cage used “two variable-speed turntables” along with a piano and a cymbal. The manipulation of the turntables required “two musicians to ‘play’ the machines by altering the speed of the discs and by rhythmically raising and lowering the styluses”. According to Sirois (2011), however, “hip hop’s deep roots can be traced in the Jamaican ‘sound system’ and ‘toasting’ traditions, which were later employed and adapted in the South Bronx by DJ Kool Herc, largely noted as the ‘father’ of hip hop” (20). Sound systems were mobile discotheques owned by DJs themselves (ibid). Toasting refers to the verbal improvisation over the playback of records; a technique also employed by early hip hop DJs. Let us see now why DJ Kool Herc is dubbed the ‘father’ of hip hop. The story actually begins at a party hosted by his sister (Katz 2012, 17) in 1973, in which Herc demonstrated for the first time his unique technique that later turned out to be the cornerstone of hip hop culture. According to Sirois (2011, 28), “after noticing people’s reaction to the break section […] Herc would just cue up and plays these short rhythmic sections repetitiously - a technique he coined the ‘merry-go-round’ - isolating and prolonging the break”. However, DJ Kool Herc was not the only hip hop DJ in New York at the time. According to Katz (2012, 20), Afrika Bambaataa also “played only what he thought were the best parts of the record, but his playlists were even more diverse”.

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As the decades passed the form of the vinyl record remained the same. On the other hand, a considerable amount of technical advances on the turntable and DJ mixer was made. The biggest change in hip hop DJing, though, came with the advent of DJ software technologies in the early 2000s. The concern of how DJ software has influenced hip hop DJing will be addressed in the next chapter.

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3. Methodological Framework

Thus far, this study has discussed the subcultural values of hip hop as they have been shaped by analog DJ technology (the turntable and vinyl record) and its related cultural techniques such as scratching and beat-juggling. The previous chapters have traced hip hop’s analog history, and by doing so they have provided an answer only to the first part of the research question: how have the turntable and its attendant cultural techniques historically shaped the aesthetic and cultural values of hip hop? What still needs to be addressed are the ways in which the introduction of digital DJ technologies remediate hip hop’s cultural heritage. Importantly, the term ‘digital DJ technologies’ encompasses technical innovations like CD players, CD turntables and MIDI controllers as well. However, this thesis focuses intentionally on the turntable and the vinyl record because they have been “hip hop’s original and, therefore, most authentic mediums” (Harrison 2006, 287). The goal of this chapter is to introduce my methodological approach to the study of the softwarized phase of hip hop, and thus formulate an answer to the second part of the research question: to what extent does the introduction of digital DJ technologies remediate and transform hip hop’s cultural heritage? Another question arises here: how can the turntable and the vinyl record survive in the software era of DJing, in which digital audio formats like the MP3 dominate? To answer these questions I will look into the case study of ‘Cross’, a revolutionary – as it claims – digital vinyl system (DVS) that enables to mix and scratch digital audio files with timecoded vinyl records, a conventional DJ set (two turntables and a mixer), and of course a computer. The first important consideration for studying the contemporary software technologies that serve hip hop DJs and their practices is to understand how “computer systems [...] support creative work” (Bogost and Montfort 2009a) and the ways in which they connect to culture. For Manovich, who perceives computer science as part of culture, this connection calls for an investigation of “the role of software in contemporary culture, and the cultural and social forces that are shaping the development of software itself” (2013, 10). This statement describes generally the attempts of software studies to

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“shed light on an object long overlooked within media and cultural studies” (Bucher 2012, 26). This is primarily reflected by Manovich (2013, 15) and his argument that:

All disciplines which deal with contemporary society and culture - architecture, design, art criticism, sociology, political science, art history, media studies, science and technology studies, and all others - need to account for the role of software and its effects in whatever subjects they investigate.

In what follows, therefore, I present the specific methods employed in this thesis to investigate how DJ software affects hip hop culture in general and the practices of contemporary hip hop DJs in particular. But in order to proceed, it is important to introduce the DVS technology and the ‘Cross’.

3.1 The Emergence of Digital Vinyl Systems and Mixvibes ‘Cross’

For its first 25 years, the hip hop DJ scene relied solely on analog media. Even in the mid-1990s when the DJ CD technology was emerging in the market, hip hop DJs did not abandon the 12” and 7” vinyl records, and remained “resolutely analog in a digital age” (Katz 2010, 130). According to Sirois (2011, 51) this happened because the first DJ CD players – contrary to turntables - did not allow hands-on manipulation of recorded music. In 2001, though, Pioneer Electronics released the CDJ-1000, a CD player which emulated vinyl records though a platter and allowed techniques like scratching to be executed with CDs. However, as figure1 below illustrates the comparatively small size of the platter (less than 6”) did not manage to satisfy the expectations of hip hop DJs and Pioneer’s CDJ product-line soon became the standard for electronic music DJs who do not specialize in hip hop DJing techniques like scratching and beat-juggling.

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Figure 1: The Pioneer CDJ-1000. Original Image Source: http://goo.gl/UtUAhH

At the same time when electronic music DJs were shifting from turntables and vinyl records towards CDJs and CD media, MP3 was becoming the main audio format for digital audio storage, playback, and transfer (Sterne 2006, 825). Given the denial of CDJs and their small platters by the hip hop scene, leading hip hop DJs like Grandmaster Flash in collaboration with software developers (Sirois 2011, 227) aimed to create a new technology that would enable the manipulation of MP3s utilizing conventional turntables and vinyl records. Thus, in 2002 the first commercial digital vinyl system (DVS) or vinyl emulation software, ‘FinalScratch’, was released by the Dutch software company N2IT and the American hardware corporation Stanton Magnetics (52). The philosophy behind DVS is to put a special audio signal (timecode), instead of music, on 12” vinyl control records. This signal sends information, through an external soundcard that connects to a computer, based upon the position of the needle on the record. The software ‘listens’ to the signal and identifies the position of the song that was selected from the computer, the speed (pitch) of the playback and which direction (forward and backwards). This information is simultaneously replicated on the screen of the computer through the virtual decks of the software.

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One year after the release of the first DVS by N2IT and Stanton Magnetics, the latter bought the intellectual properties for the software from the Dutch company, and started to distribute ‘FinalScratch’ as a complete digital DJ package consisting of software, an external soundcard, and two timecoded vinyl records (52-3). However, due to its initial price at 3000 euros and unstable functionality associated with latency13 issues, ‘FinalScratch’ did not gain enough credibility with the hip hop DJ scene. Shortly thereafter Stanton invested in another partnership, this time with the German software/hardware company Native Instruments and the DVS technology begun its upturn in 2003 with the new ‘Traktor FinalScratch’ (Kirn 2008). After three successful years14 the two companies ended their collaboration in 2006 and Native Instruments released its own ‘Traktor Scratch Pro’ DVS, one of the industry’s standards until today. Since then, Stanton has stopped manufacturing any DVS related product and has been focusing on the development of MIDI controllers and DJ CD players. After this brief introduction to vinyl emulation software, the rest of this section focuses on ‘Cross’, the DVS that I chose to add to my own DJ setup three years ago. ‘Cross’ was introduced in 2008 by Mixvibes (a French Figure 2: The complete 'Cross' DVS package, including the software, an external soundcard, audio research company founded in Paris, in two timecoded vinyl records, and two timecoded CDs. Original Image Source: 1999 by Eric Guez) and followed ‘Mixvibes http://goo.gl/Syndnx DVS’, the first DVS from the company released in 2003. The full ‘Cross’ DVS was initially retailed for 200 euros which is roughly its current price as well. This was the main reason why I chose to buy this exact system among other choices.15 Like many users of ‘Cross’ in the beginning I also experienced latency problems with this DVS; an issue that initially did not allow me to perform with it for an audience. However, after many discussions on the Mixvibes

13 Latency refers to the delayed reaction of the sound through the software after the action of the DJ. Especially in scratch and beat-juggling performances which recommend high precision, latency is the major technical obstacle for the DJ. 14 During this collaboration ‘Traktor FinalScratch’ - previously functioning only with Macintosh computers - became compatible with Windows PCs as well. 15 For example one of its competitors, ‘Serato’, developed by ‘Rane’ corporation costs about 600-800 euros depending on the version of the DVS.

30 forum16 and a considerable number of updated versions by the manufacturers, I managed to overcome latency and count on ‘Cross’ for my live DJ sets and web radio show. Despite the competition from the other DJ market standards, ‘Serato’ and ‘Traktor’, ‘Cross’ was awarded twice in 2010 and 2011 “Best DJ Software” at ‘MIXMOVE Tech Awards’. Besides that, Mixvibes by organizing DJ events and contests along with other audio companies specializing in DJing like Allen Heath managed to build a strong brand name around its product-line. Moreover, by sponsoring DJs and forming a professional DJ team, Mixvibes made itself known within the hip hop community and ‘Cross’ became not only the company’s flagship, but also another standard music managing system in the contemporary DJing scene. When ‘Cross’ entered the market in 2008 the MP3 had already become the main audio format for music consumption and many record labels had started to adopt it in order to release and distribute their products. At the same time, the fact that top-name and pioneering hip hop DJs were using DVS at their gigs proved that this new technology can work adequately for any DJ who previously relied on analog media. In fact, today only a few DJs remain analog, since it is much easier to carry a laptop, a small soundcard, and two pieces of timecoded control vinyl instead of heavy crates with analog vinyl records – especially in the case of travelling DJs. ‘Cross’ from its first release was considered as an alternative choice for those who wanted to add a stable DVS to their setup, but could not afford ‘Serato’ or ‘Traktor’ (Morse 2012). Its low price in combination with the fact that experienced DJs were using it at their performances captured my interest and in 2011 I emptied my savings on ‘Cross’. After several performances and practicing sessions with ‘Cross’ I got to know its characteristics and functionalities quite well. In what follows, therefore, I focus on the different methods I employed in this research to analyze ‘Cross’ and subsequently create an understanding of the ways in which the cultural heritage of hip hop is being remediated through software.

16 http://forum.mixvibes.com/

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3.2 Software and Platform Analysis

With the publication of the article New Media as Material Constraint: An Introduction to Platform Studies (2007) the authors Ian Bogost and Nick Montfort introduced a new academic field of inquire: namely platform studies. According to the authors platform studies seeks to address the overseen (by software studies) ways in which both the hardware and software components of a platform influence “particular forms of computational expression (Bogost and Montfort 2007, 1). In a most recent account on platform studies, that is their book Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System (2009b), Bogost and Montfort call the humanities to “to seriously consider the lowest level of computing systems and to understand how these systems relate to culture and creativity” (vii). This becomes possible by paying attention to the “detailed technical workings of computing systems” (Bogost and Montfort 2007, 1); a strategy that demonstrates my decision to employ a platform studies approach to my investigation of the connections between software and the creative work of hip hop DJing. Moreover, the foundation of this decision is also demonstrated by ‘Cross’ itself, because in order “to be used by people and to take part in our culture directly, a platform must manifest itself materially” (ibid). As it has been already mentioned, ‘Cross’ is a vinyl emulation system which includes both software and hardware components; a characteristic which fits aptly Bogost and Montfor’s (ibid) argument that “platforms are layered - from hardware through operating system and into other software layers - and they relate to modular optional controllers and cards”. In Racing the Beam (2009b, 145-7) Bogost and Montfort distinguish five different levels (in a linear progression) that characterize how the analysis of digital media has been executed as well as their relations with ‘creative computing’ and ‘contexts of culture’: 1) reception/operation; 2) the interface; 3) form/function; 4) code; and 5) the platform which refers to “the ‘base’ or most fundamental level” (Leorke 2012, 259). Following the example of other studies which have focused on one level (Bogost and Montfort 2009b, 146), here I rely on the level of the ‘interface’. The ‘interface’ layer - being situated “between the core of the program and the user” (ibid) - has been employed

32 to investigate the human-computer interactions. Nevertheless, since the ‘platform’ layer is the lowest one and “shapes or determines those above it” (Leorke 2012, 259) I also take under consideration the hardware components of ‘Cross’ as well: namely the external soundcard and the two timecoded control vinyl records. Drawing from relevant text and video sources concerning digital DJing, and analyzing both the interface and the peripherals of ‘Cross’, I follow Parikka’s (2012, 89) suggestion that “we should not only engage in textual analyses of media culture, but be prepared to tackle what goes on inside the machine as well”. Besides software and platform analysis, this thesis employed the research methods of auto-ethnography and interviews with DJs who have been using both analog and timecoded control vinyl records in order to provide a more detailed account of the contemporary practices and technologies that serve hip hop DJing. Moreover, the knowledge produced by the combination of all these different methods helped me create a general understanding of the ways in which software is influencing hip hop subculture and its values.

3.3 Autoethnography

Autoethnography is a form of qualitative sociological research which utilizes both ethnographical and autobiographical inquiry methods (Chang 2008; Anderson 2006; Maréchal 2010; Ellis, Adams and Bochner 2011). While traditional ethnography employs participant or passive observation and interviews to document “people’s beliefs and practices from the people’s own perspectives” (Riemer qtd. in Bucher 2012, 69), autoethnography involves reflexive self-observation in order to create a “cultural understanding of self and others” (Chang 2008, 13). According to Bochner and Ellis (2006) autoethnographers are storytellers who “instead of talking about communication” they use it through the process “to achieve an understanding of their lives and their circumstances” (111). Drawing from Ellingson and Ellis (2008), the usefulness of autoethnography stems from its capacity to challenge some otherwise binary oppositions that structure social research, such as the researcher and the informant; the subject and the object; the self and the others; and finally the emotional and the rational (448). In this

33 respect, my decision to employ autoethnography is justified by the overcoming of such dichotomies when examining the ‘interface’ layer of computing systems. The ‘interface’, as I have already discussed in the previous section, is situated between the program and the user, and thereby related to the human-machine interactions. According to Manovich (2013, 83), interactivity is a key feature of computational media which supports the process of creative expression. Considering my dual role as both an observer and observed who represents what Robert Merton (1988, 18) called the ‘ultimate participant’, autoethnography is an appropriate method for understanding how hip hop DJs interact with software/hardware systems like ‘Cross’. Following from this, the empirical data generated from the interface analysis of ‘Cross’ is supplemented by my self-experience using the tool, and thereby generalized “to a wider field of social relations than the data alone contain” (Maréchal 2010, 44). Software analysis and autoethnography were employed alongside semi-structured interviews with other hip hop DJs who have been using both analog and timecoded control vinyl records for practice and performance. The purpose of this within-methods triangulation was to gain a more in-depth understanding of the contemporary software- based phase of hip hop DJing. Moreover, the knowledge produced from interviews helped me document the similarities and differences between those DJs and myself, and thus increase the ‘generalizability’ (Ellis 2004, 201) of my empirical findings. In the next section, therefore, I discuss semi-structured interviews as a method for qualitative research.

3.4 Semi-structured Interviews

Although autoethnography is a research method usually employed within creative and performing arts, because of its advantage to embrace and reflect upon the personal and creative experiences of the researcher (Pace 2012, 2), most hip hop scholars have not used it in their works. Rather, they have employed other traditional research techniques, such as fieldwork and qualitative interviews with hip hop practitioners. For example, Tricia Rose in her highly influential book Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994) has explored the New York rap scene of the period by

34 interviewing key figures within the hip hop community like the female MC Queen Latifah, producer Eric Sadler, and break-dancer Crazy Legs. Likewise, Patrick Turner in his PhD thesis Hip Hop Versus Rap: An Ethnography of the Cultural Politics of New Hip Hop Practices (2010) has relied on field observations, lyrical analysis, and interview narrations to investigate the current shift of hip hop from a community-activism art form towards a multibillion and antisocial rap business. Interviews - either with groups or individuals - are a very common form for gathering rich, personalized information about the subject under research (Hancock and Algozzine 2006, 39). According to Lindlof and Taylor (2002, 173) the major purpose of qualitative interviewing is to “understand the social actor’s experience and perspective through stories, accounts, and explanations”. Thus, in order to gain further insight into the ways in which software remediates and transforms hip hop’s cultural heritage, approaching other hip hop DJs who make use of the DVS technology was central. My method followed a semi-structured approach to interviewing. As Hancock and Algozzine (2006, 40) argue, semi-structured interviews are well-suited tools for case study research. Researchers employing this approach are able to “ask predetermined but flexibly worded questions”, and subsequently receive “tentative answers” (ibid). Thereafter, by posing follow-up questions, researchers invite their interviewees to express themselves openly and freely about issues of more interest (ibid). In my case, such issues were topics like the sentimental commitment of many hip hop DJs to analog vinyl records, the current dominance of the DVS technology, and the skills that a ‘real’ hip hop DJ should have, to name only three. Whereas a more structured setup would strengthen the comparability of the responses between the informants as the same issues were addressed across all interviews, the semi-structured format I chose to use allowed the participants to talk about their experiences through their own perspectives. Employing a semi-structured approach, therefore, allowed me to focus on different topics and aspects where needed, always in accordance with the story of each participant.

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3.5 Approaching and Interviewing Hip Hop DJs

According to Hancock and Algozzine (2006) the selection of participants is a crucial step for a successful interview as they “directly influence the quality of the information attained” (40). Besides availability, the most important criterion for selecting interviewees is to approach people that have the best information on the study’s research questions (ibid). Being in close contact with both analog and timecoded vinyl records as well as hip hop itself, hip hop DJs have a unique position from which to reflect on this study. Unlike well-known DJs sponsored and endorsed by companies like Mixvibes, Rane, and Native Instruments to promote their product-lines, my interviewees were free to talk about the functionalities of DVS, their advantages and disadvantages. Importantly, the DJs included in my interview sample were those who adhere to the hip hop aesthetic, even though the technologies (turntables, vinyl records, and DVS) discussed in this thesis have been also utilized by other DJs who specialize in different music genres and DJing techniques. Initially, I tried to get in touch with fifteen DJs, but my attempts ended up with five positive and one negative – due to busy schedule – replies; of course, if time permitted many additional DJs would have been added in my sample in order to increase the degree of variance. All interviews were conducted in May and June 2014. The participants in this study were contacted through their Facebook pages and by email. Geographically, two of them live in Greece, two in the United States, and one in the Netherlands. Two interviews were conducted by e-mail, and three over the video calling application Skype. The interviews that took place over Skype were audio recorded and then transcribed to provide me with additional data. Conducting interviews over Skype allowed me and my participants to get into lengthier and deeper conversations as it was easier for me to ask them follow up questions. On the other hand, using e-mail interviews gave to my participants the opportunity to think more their answers and respond adequately to the issues addressed. The disadvantage of e-mail interviewing, though, was the lack of the (even virtual) one-to-one situation that Skype can provide, which can make the communication between the two ends more natural.

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4. Findings

4.1 A Note to Remediation

In Remediation: Understanding New Media (2000), the authors, Bolter and Grusin, present the groundwork for their theory of remediation. According to the authors, “what is new about new media comes from the particular ways in which they refashion older media and the ways in which older media refashion themselves to answer the challenges of new media” (15). From this excerpt, it can be argued that remediation relates to the process by which old media are incorporated into new ones. For Bolter and Grusin, there is a twofold relationship between old and new media. On the one hand, by emphasizing the differences between the old and the new, developers offer electronic versions as improvements, such as the CD-ROM encyclopedias which provide not only printed text and graphics, but also sound and video (46). On the other hand, new media can remediate by trying to absorb older media entirely “so that the discontinuities between the two are minimized” (47). This cyclical way of thinking, associated with media archaeology, can be also seen in the case of timecoded vinyl records in particular and DVS technology in general. Indeed, as I pointed out earlier, the philosophy behind DVS is the manipulation of MP3s and other digital audio formats with conventional turntables and vinyl records. In other words, the timecoded control vinyl records remediate their analog predecessors in a manner of converging the old and the new, and thus DVS technology and its users can ‘stay true’ to hip hop’s original medium. Focusing on new digital media, Bolter and Grusin (15) contend that a medium or a media event cannot function in isolation in our culture. More precisely, the authors’ view on the relationship between technology and culture stays clear of technological determinism, as they consider new digital media as agents within culture. Such agents are not external forces “that come to disrupt an unsuspecting culture”, but rather, as the authors further argue, “they emerge from within cultural contexts, and they refashion other media, which are embedded in the same or similar contexts” (19). In a similar vein, Lev Manovich (2001) has also employed a cyclical way of investigating the ‘newness’ of

37 new media. As he says, “New media does not radically break with the past; rather, it distributes weight differently between the categories which hold culture together” (202). Lastly, looking at remediation through recorded audio formats, Will Straw (2001, 58) has argued that technological innovations are most commonly adopted by music producers. However, a new format in order to be broadly accepted and, more importantly, embraced by an older audience it has “to keep alive the past” (ibid). Again, this symbiotic relationship between the past and the present or the old and the new is central in DVS technology. For example, the manufacturers developing ‘Cross’ aim to offer “the feel of real records with all the benefits of digital” (Mixvibes 2014). In order to examine the mechanisms behind this feel and the ways in which the hip hop DJ interacts with the program during the creative process, the following sections focus on the analysis of the ‘Cross’.

4.2 Getting into the Groove: The hardware components of ‘Cross’

The full package of ‘Cross’, as previously described, consists of two timecoded control vinyl records, an external soundcard, and the ‘Cross’ software. At first sight, the ‘Cross’ control records look like traditional analog vinyl. A closer look, though, reveals the differences between the two types. As illustrated in figure 3 below, it is evident that in timecoded technology we are dealing with a defined set of grooves placed at periodic intervals across the control record. Instead of music, in these grooves it is inscribed an audio signal: namely the timecode. It is important to note that if the turntables are not wired to a ‘Cross’-enabled computer this signal is emitted as an intense, high-pitched and disturbing sound.

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Figure 3: A close-up of a ‘Cross’ control vinyl record. Original Image Source: http://goo.gl/E2p9WE

But when the ‘Cross’ control records are played on turntables that are properly connected to a computer, through the external soundcard, the unwanted noise fades away and is getting replaced by the audio signal of a digital sound file selected from the ‘Cross’ software. Now the DJ is able to control the playback of the sound file by simply manipulating the ‘Cross’ records. In order to make this kind of playback possible, the software extracts three different types of information from the incoming timecode signal: The playback speed of the control vinyl, the playback direction (forward/backwards), and the playback position of the control vinyl (Mixvibes 2012, 20). The detection of the playback speed is the most straightforward task for the ‘Cross’ software, as it follows the principles of its analog precedent. Simply put, if the record on a turntable slows down, then the pitch (playback speed) of the music drops. Accordingly, if the record speeds up, the pitch rises. The ‘Cross’ software adheres to the same logic, as it knows in advance the original frequency of the incoming timecode signal. When, for example, the rotation speed of the turntable’s platter is higher than 100%, the frequency increases. Then, the software calculates the difference between the incoming and the original frequency to adjust the current playback speed of the digital audio file. As far as the spinning direction of the record is concerned, the frequency information of the incoming signal is able to recognize only the forward playback of a digital audio file. But how does the software detect the backward movement of the record - highly important when scratching, beat-juggling, and mixing? The answer is provided

39 by the ‘Cross’ timecode signal itself, which is actually constructed from two sinus waves (control tones), one for the left and one for the right audio channel of the record. As depicted in figure 4 below, the phases of the waves are slightly displaced.

Figure 4: Two sinus waves pressed onto a ‘Cross’ control record. Original Source Image: http://goo.gl/wU7Flo

The software makes use of this tone shifting to determine the playback direction. If the control record is spinning forward, the wave in the right channel will be ahead of that in the left channel. On the other hand, if the control record is moving backwards, the wave in the right channel – as represented in figure 4 above – will be behind that in the left channel. What should have become clear by now is that ‘Cross’ detects the speed and direction of the playback using the timecode signal that is pressed onto special control vinyl records. But how does the software recognize the exact position of the needle on the record? In order to deal with this issue, Mixvibes has employed a set of timestamps, which is a binary system of ones and zeros encoded into the timecode signal. These timestamps are placed along the periodic intervals of the ‘Cross’ control record (see figure 3), and the software maps them automatically to the digital audio file playing back on the computer. When the needle passes over a timestamp on the record, the software decodes it to recognize precisely the corresponding playback location. In this manner, the

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DJ can treat a control record as traditional vinyl, and skip different sections of a song such as a beat-less intro, in order to ‘catch’ the break. Having discussed the anatomy (surface and operations) of the ‘Cross’ control records, I now turn to the nodal point on the path of the timecode and audio signals; namely the U46MK2 external soundcard depicted in figure 5 below.

Figure 5: The U46MK2, released in 2007. It is a multi-channeled external soundcard that connects the analog components of a DJ setup (the turntables and mixer) to a computer and the ‘Cross’ software. Original Image Source: http://goo.gl/Hf414I

This hardware component is of great importance for any DVS setup, as it bridges the gap between the turntables and mixer, and the ‘Cross’ software (see figure 6). Practically, this bridging enables the audio signal of a digital sound file to take over the unwanted noise of the control record described earlier. The U46MK2 is an analog-to-digital converter which transfers digitized information about changes in sound from the timecode signal of the control record to the ‘Cross’ software. The data are translated by the software into analogous changes in the playback speed, direction, and position of the digital sound file, and then forwarded, through the U46MK2, to the mixer where the DJ can manipulate them like the analog audio signal of any traditional vinyl record.

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Figure 6: A typical DJ setup using the U46MK2 external soundcard. The turntables and the mixer are connected to the stereo inputs and outputs of the external soundcard respectively. The external soundcard connects to the computer via a USB cable. Original Image Source: http://goo.gl/Yf2Rty

Thus far, I have discussed the hardware components of ‘Cross’; namely the timecoded control vinyl records and the external soundcard. In order to make a better understanding of the functionality of DVS and its features, in the following section I analyze the ‘Cross’ software by focusing on its user interface.

4.3 The ‘Cross’ User Interface

The software is the last component of ‘Cross’ DVS to grasp. In this part I provide an account of the various features of its user interface (see figure 7 below), in order to explore the hip hop DJ interacts with ‘Cross’.

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Figure 7: A session with the ‘Cross’ software, version 2.0. Original Image Source: http://goo.gl/P5eG5S

Let us start from the bottom half of the interface, where the imported music is displayed in the ‘Collection’. The DJ can select from three different sources to import his/her music: the computer’s hard drive, an external hard drive, and his/her iTunes library. After the import of music, the tracks are sorted in different columns, and the DJ can create various playlists or ‘virtual crates’. In addition to song titles and genres, artist names, album artworks, and year of release, ‘Cross’ analyzes the tracks and provides the DJ with extra information about their properties, such as the beats per minute (BPM) depicted in the far right column of the screen (see figure 7 above).17 Another example is the quality of a track illustrated as a colored smiley face; the higher the quality, the happier the face.18 The DJ in order to select a track for playback in ‘Cross’ must highlight it and just drag and drop it into one of the virtual decks in the top half of the screen. Importantly, the

17 BPM refer to the tempo or playback speed of a track. The calculation of BPM used to be a manual process executed with a metronome. With the advent of modern (not only DJ) technologies, though, this calculation has become automated and its results extremely precise.

43 same track can be assigned to both decks at the same providing the DJ with two copies of the same ‘record’. The top half, shown in figure 8 below, is the part of the ‘Cross’ interface where most of the (inter)action takes place. When a track is loaded into the decks and by extension the turntables, then its waveform appears (yellow for the left or deck-turntable and red for the right). Above the waveform are specified the BPM, the title, length, and current playback position of the track. Under the waveform are three buttons which represent the different control modes: absolute, relative, and flexible.

Figure 8: The top half of the ‘Cross’ user interface. The red arrow in the left deck points the three different control buttons.

In absolute mode the playback position of the control vinyl corresponds precisely to the playback of the track in the digital deck. In this mode the DJ can treat the control record as if it were traditional vinyl as the start of the track is mapped to the record’s beginning. If, for example, the DJ lifts the needle and sets it down some grooves further towards the end of the record, the current playback position will be detected by the software and the track will be played back correspondingly. On the other hand, in relative mode the playback position of the track does not match with the playback position of the control record, and the software can recognize only the playback speed and direction. This means that the track will continue playing at the same point, regardless if the DJ lifts the needle form the control record, or if the needle jumps. In this sense, relative mode is primarily used when the DJ does not aim to complicated performances which include techniques of scratching and beat-juggling. Lastly, when the flexible mode is selected, the timecode signal (and by extension the control records and the external soundcard) is

18 The quality of the majority of the tracks in figure 8 above is at 320kbps.

44 deactivated. This means that the DJ can manipulate digital sound files by using only the ‘Cross’ software and its internal mixer; a digital analogue of traditional DJ mixers which is situated between the two virtual decks (see figure 8 above). Flexible mode is an ideal option when the DJ wants to take advantage of cueing and auto-looping; features that became possible thanks to DVS technology. Having discussed the hardware and software components of ‘Cross’, this section aimed to offer a detailed account of the interactions between the hip hop DJ and ‘Cross’. The following section focuses on the data derived by semi-structured interviews and autoethnography.

4.4 Interviews and Autoethnography

While each one of the DJs interviewed in this study has its own history about their early days in hip hop, one common denominator is that they all started DJing by using analog vinyl records. DDay One who is a DJ, producer and the founder of the Los Angeles based indie imprint ‘The Content Label’, started DJing in 1993 that is nine years before the invention of DVS technology. As he describes:

In addition to buying tapes, I started buying hip hop 12-inches and growing my collection. Luckily around this time my father owned a night club and sometimes the booked DJs would leave their turntables overnight. This provided an opportunity for me to practice with their setups until I got my own gear (DDay One. interview, 29 May 2014).

DJ Longplay – member of the ‘Stinky Breath Entertainment’ crew (SBE) from Greece – started DJing in 1998 with his parents’ turntables, which until then were used only for listening purposes. DJ Spells – another member of the SBE crew – grew up listening to hip hop and as he reminisces over his childhood:

It was natural for me to get involved with DJing. Of course I’ve to mention D- styles, Toadstyle, Ricci Rucker and Ned Hoddings in general as a big influence that made me want to be a part of turntablism. Same goes out for my SBE friends who used to scratch and perform live routines here in Athens at a time that few knew about this scene (DJ Spells. interview, 18 May 2014).

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Proppo’88, DJ and producer from the Dutch hip hop group ‘Da Shogunz’ got into hip hop culture and vinyl records by making his own beats using samples. As he contends:

I wanted to do it the old way, so I was looking for samples. Basically, I found out pretty quick that I need to get my samples from old records. Then I needed two turntables to spin the records all the time at home; one turntable just for samples and one to learn how to scratch. You know piece by piece, but I started with digging for samples (Proppo’88. interview, 16 May 2014).

DJ Trackstar - from Wisconsin, United States – who is a tour DJ with the hip hop duo ‘Run the Jewels’ (El-P and Killer Mike) entered hip hop DJing during his college days. In his own words:

The first building I stepped foot in [the college] was the radio station full of records...I immediately started doing a radio show and eventually built up to recording mixes and playing in bars and clubs. Back then it was all new to me so I was just excited to hear new records, learn the basics of scratching and mixing, and get to meet established DJs and MCs through the station (DJ Trackstar. interview, 12 June 2014).

As I stated in the beginning of this section, all five interviewees of my sample started DJing with analog vinyl records. This is the main difference between them and me, as I started taking my first steps into DJing in 2006 by playing alternative and indie rock tunes with Pioneer CDJs in a small bar in Athens. My involvement with hip hop and vinyl records origins in 2008 after many music-related discussions with other DJs. Shortly thereafter, I decided to buy my own turntables and DJ mixer, and build a record collection in order to improve my skills in (hip hop) DJing. Although I was aware of the DVS technology when I was buying my DJ gear and records, I preferred to stay analog because it seemed more authentic. However, after three years of practicing and performing with analog records, and driven by my curiosity about timecoded technology I decided to add ‘Cross’ to my setup mainly because of its affordable price. Even from the first sessions with ‘Cross’ my initially critical view on this technology changed, as I realized that I was able to maintain the feel of vinyl as well as make use of features, such as auto-loops and digital effects

46 which are not available in analog DJing. Besides the manipulation of MP3s with vinyl records, DVS technology effects other areas of DJing as well, such the transportation of analog records. As DJ Trackstar argues, “[DVS] basically arms you with a selection of thousands of records on a single hard drive instead of carrying crate after crate” (ibid). In a similar vein, DJ Longplay contends:

You don't have to carry crates with records anywhere you go. Weight lifting can be done only by those interested at their local gyms. Now you can attend any gig to perform simply by carrying just a laptop. No extra energy spent no more (DJ Longplay. interview, 15 May 2014).

DVS is also a very good solution for hip hop DJs who also produce their beats. According to DJ Spells (interview, 18 May 2014), “the fact that you can produce your own music and the next minute you can spin a time-code record to play it, as if it was a vinyl record, is pretty amazing by itself”. Similarly, Proppo’88 states that:

When I am doing a show with my group, I can use any beat, any instrumental, any sound that I want by still using vinyl. You know, if I was limiting myself to strictly vinyl then we would have to press all the beats that we have on vinyl. And that also goes for DJing in clubs and stuff. Before I had to say ‘no’ to certain gigs, because there are music styles which I like but I just don’t have many records in. Now I can do everything (Proppo’88. interview, 16 May 2014).

The ability to choose from an entire collection of digital music, unavailable in physical recordings, and control its playback under timecoded but still vinyl records has been of great importance for me as well, as I used to host a web-radio show in which my aim was to present new music every week. However, DVS technology does not come without critique. The issue of skills in the digital era seems to come up most often among my interviewees. According to DDay One argues the skills a hip hop DJ must have do not differ in analog and digital formats. For him such skills are “the ability to improvise, knowledge of music and rhythm, and good sense of time” (DDay One. interview, 29 May 2014). DJ Spells has a more technical approach to define skills; as he claims:

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In hip hop culture everything has to do with skills, there is no doubt about it. So if we are talking about somebody being good at mixing records, then we mean that he has the skills to do it. When someone comes to talk about being master at mixing records I would expect from him not to have to look at a screen to match the tempo of the tracks obviously (DJ Spells. interview, 18 May 2014).

Mentioning the automation-based tools and practices of modern hip hop DJing, DJ Longplay points out that, “if you simply get a software, download a bunch of music albums and have the program do any analysis needed (detect BPM, beat matching etc.) then at least you can call that cheating” (DJ Longplay. interview, 15 May 2014). For Proppo’88 a disadvantage of DVS technology is that “people lack knowledge of music and vinyl records, because they don’t have to look for music anymore. Everything is online” (Proppo’88. interview, 16 May 2014). Overall, the interviewees share the same perspective on how software affects the hip hop DJing scene. As they stress, hip hop DJing has become easier and more commercial thank to DVS technology. For DJ Trackstar DVS “can be a new avenue for creativity or a crutch, depending on the DJ - both skillswise and as far as selections. It's easier than ever for DJs to access and play a much wider variety of music, but it also seems to make some DJs lazy” (DJ Trackstar. interview, 12 June 2014). Proppo’88 also thinks that DJing software can be both beneficial and harmful:

One the one hand, it hurts me a little bit that vinyl is less of the sport. On the other hand, I think is beautiful that people make sure we have a way to progress in technology but still we can use all the types of turntables that we want and that is also possible for people that have less chances to get into it. There is good and a bad side (Proppo’88. interview, 16 May 2014).

In this chapter I focused on a platform and software analysis of ‘Cross” DVS. First, I introduced the hardware components of the system, namely the timecoded control vinyl records and the U46MK2 external soundcard. Second, in order to provide an understanding of the interaction between the hip hop DJ and the software, I analyzed the user interface of ‘Cross’. The last part of the chapter was a blend of my self-experience using ‘Cross’ for my DJ sets and the opinions of other hip hop DJs about the effects DVS technology has on their performances and hip hop in general.

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5. Conclusion

Hip hop is heterogeneous artistic form, which consists of four basic elements such as MCing or rapping, DJing/Turnatablism, B-Boying, and Graffiti. However, the element which gave rise to the whole culture of hip hop was DJing. Following from this, the research question of this thesis was the following: How have the turntable and its attendant cultural techniques historically shaped the aesthetic and cultural values of hip hop, and to what extent does the introduction of digital DJ technologies remediate and transform hip hop’s cultural heritage? In order to answer this question I employed a set of different theories and methods. As far as the theoretical part is concerned, I began my research with the insights of Marshall McLuhan concerning media and their agency to create new environments, and bring changes into the ways in which we understand the world. His idea that media are the extensions of man prompted me to suggest that the turntable can be perceived as the extension of the hip hop DJ. After that, I moved to Germany and Friedrich Kittler in order to focus on analog technologies and by extension the turntable. Thus, by paying attention to his study of the material properties of technological media and their historical emergence, this thesis aimed to trace the genealogy of hip hop through the history of the turntable. Considered together, the techno-deterministic approaches of both McLuhan and Kittler tend to isolate the agency of humans in shaping cultures. To tackle this issue, I employed the concept of cultural techniques which perceives the interactions between humans and media as the constitutive factor for the formation of cultures. From this it can be argued that it was not just the turntable that shaped hip hop culture and its aesthetic, but first and foremost its transformation from a playback device into a new musical instrument. By using those theories this thesis contributed to the re-introduction of the influence the turntable as a medium has on hip hop. In my attempt to rewrite the history of hip hop through DJing and the media technologies that serve it, I found that the first experiments with vinyl records started in the early 1930s. Even though hip hop DJs are regarded as the originators of scratching and beat-juggling, this thesis shown that such techniques had developed many years before the inception of hip hop. What the first hip hop DJs actually did was the bringing back of these techniques in a new musical and cultural context.

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In order to answer the second part of the research question I used ‘Cross’, a digital vinyl system, as a case study. The analysis of that program and DVS technology in general was conducted through a combination of software/platform analysis, semi- structured interviews and autoethnogrpahy. The main finding of this analysis was that hip hop DJing has become easier thanks to DVS technology. First, that is because software/hardware systems like ‘Cross’ analyze automatically the imported digital sound files and subsequently provide the DJ with useful information such as their BPM and length. This information is then displayed on the computer’s screen. The addition of a computer in a traditional DJ setup is the second reason why hip hop DJing has become easier in its digital era as it provides more safety. Skill-wise, though, performing is not anymore based entirely on listening, since the DJ can rely on the screen and use the information displayed there. Drawing from both the interviews and my personal experience as a user of ‘Cross’, two big advantages of DVS technology can be identified. The first is the ability to control the playback of a digital sound file by using vinyl controls, which means that the DJ can play at any gig without carrying heavy crates full of records. The second advantage, and as a consequence of the first, is that a DJ can play songs that are not available in analog vinyl records. This feature is of great importance for DJs who also produce their own beats, as they can introduce them to an audience without having to press real vinyl. At the same time, though, the fact that DJs nowadays can just download an MP3 and play it on ‘Cross’ implies the lack of musical knowledge which has been traditionally gained by searching for the perfect record in real crates. The structure of this thesis was designed to provide an alternative approach to the media technologies and techniques that have been serving hip hop culture. The paper was divided into two main parts, that is the past and present which subsequently represent the analog and digital era of hip hop DJing respectively. While not being a thorough examination, this thesis contributes to the New Media field by using a variety of theories with the intention to re-introduce the influence the turntable as a medium has on hip hop, as mentioned above. Regarding the empirical part of this research, through the software analysis of ‘Cross’ I elaborated and strengthen the idea that software remediates the cultural heritage of hip hop by preserving the physical form of vinyl records. Apart from the objective data generated by the software/platform analysis, I conducted interviews

50 with hip hop DJs who use DVS in order to also present the subjective aspect of this technology. Moreover, my personal perspective was presented in the form of autoethnography in order to highlight the commonalities and differentiations with my interviewees. As far as the limitations of this thesis are concerned, an issue that has not being thoroughly addressed is the analog era of hip hop DJing. Moreover, a larger and more diverse sample of interviewees would have provided me with a better plurality of opinions. Following from these limitations, a future research on the analog era of hip hop in comparison with the digital one would be interesting. Finally, interviews with manufacturers developing digital vinyl systems would benefit a more in-depth analysis.

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