Don Joyce

February 23, 2009





*Name: Don Joyce

*Are there any additional names used to describe this project: Don Joyce programs/hosts "Over The Edge", and is a member of Negativland.

*Members:

*Founding Members: Don Joyce

*Tape manipulations, digital deconstructions or turntable creations: Well, mixed feelings is the byword here. I love the micro-manipulations digital editing provides, but I still prefer the carts for playback in performance mode. Nothing is faster or more foolproof than the physicality of analog carts for performing a live mix, especially for how they can be paced and continuously interspersed in a mix without losing their place.

*Another genre descriptor: (Receptacle Programming, Culture Jamming)

*Is there a story behind your name? In the early '80s, I wanted to try live mixing on the radio. I hoped it would sound like it was over the edge of expectability in terms of the general radio entertainment out there in the air, so the name seemed appropriate to my hope.

*Location: I remain situated here in Oakland, very close to the Berkeley line, but nevertheless in Oakland.

*Original Location: New Hampshire.

*What is your creative/artistic background: I was a geometric painter and then an electric light artist who got into radio for its potential as an expressive medium made out of sound, then saw its potential as a mixed mediums live "performance" format as well. Electric sparks of live "thereness" that painting lacks.

*History: I first tried college radio as a DJ, then OTE began on KPFA in 1981. For a short while it was a regular DJ show with odd records played, then morphed into a live mix of live and pre-recorded elements, a fragmented collage of found sound sort of thing. I only met Negativland agents through OTE and they came up to play, and that's when it changed from my DJ record playing operation to everything getting mixed together live from multiple sources with improvised content.

*Born: 1944, Keene, N.H.

*Motivations: I think when sampling began in pop music, in the '80s, it was bound to appeal to artsy artists on the basis of its abstraction potential, and it did. Beyond the instant appeal of a sound manipulation/technique that seemed to typify and yet demystify mass produced music, sampling began the bigger musical process of a deconstructional expansion all over the recorded past. Everyone from pop stars to avant musicians were involved, and still are.

*Philosophy: "In the future, nothing will remain intact."

*How would you like to be remembered:

*Web address: negativland.com