a website dedicated to
recycled culture (located at
detritus.net), founded in 1997. Also a cassette of
sample-based music released by
steev
hise in 1995 on the Viral Communications label. From
the original detritus manifesto:
in nature, detritus is dead plant and animal
matter that makes new life possible. The very bottom
of the food chain, detritus is the rotting leaves in
the forest, the silt on the bottom of the pond, the
thick dark mud in thesalt marsh. It sticks to your
shoes, it smells, but someday it will be food for
something else, and that something will be food in turn,
on and on up the food chain until you pick it up in the
supermarket and put it in your mouth.
Our society spends a lot of time
telling us that there is some brand new,
fresh cultural produce, generated from thin air and
sunshine, slick and clean. They package it
with pretty plastic & ribbons and then feed it to us. A
lot gets thrown away: the ribbons, the wrapping;
culture becomes garbage, or it dies, and rots behind
the refrigerator. But the new fluffy shiny stuff still
gets churned out, and it gets forced between our
teeth. And we are told to swallow it.
We will not swallow. We will chew, and
then spit. We will play with our food, and
create something new and interesting from it.