Before DJ Spooky's Sinfonia Antarctica This Friday, Get Schooled At The Public Library

Photo by Mike Figgis

A Conversation on Antarctica with DJ Spooky and UT Assistant Professor Ginny Catania
Wednesday, November 18
Austin Public Library (2505 Steck Avenue)
6:30pm, Free
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If you plan on attending a 70-minute symphony about an unpopulated continent, you're probably going to want some kind of explanation first. That and maybe a drink. We can help you out with the first one.

On Friday, DJ Spooky—known most recently for his remix of the Ku-Klux-Krazy Birth of a Nation—will perform his newest work. Titled Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica, the piece is a multimedia work incorporating audio and video field recordings that Spook (aka Paul D. Miller) made during his visit to the land of ice. The symphony was dubbed "an acoustic portrait of a rapidly changing continent transforming Miller's first-person encounter with the harsh, dynamic landscape of Antarctica into visual and sonic portraits."

Right.

If you're looking for a way to, um, break the ice, you're in luck. Tomorrow night, DJ Spooky and UT Geosciences Professor Ginny Catania will hold forth at the North Village branch of the Public Library for a Q&A session. Miller will discuss his thoughts about the acoustic qualities of Antarctic ice forms, and Catania, who has done fieldwork in Antarctica and Greenland, will help you explore how Miller's work creates "a unique and powerful moment around man's relationship with nature."