Perhaps all too often, the sounds of outer space serve as a weak metaphor for electronic music. It’s why “space music” is virtually a genre name for all manner of headphones-only listening, despite the fact that, as we all learned in grade school, space is a vacuum. Well, here’s some real sound from the heavens: the European Space Agency has posted recordings from the audio sensors on the HASI probe (Huygens Atmospheric Structure Instrument) as it descended to Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, this past Friday, January 14. There are currently two HASI MP3s on the esa.int website: (1) a sequence of radar echoes as the Huygens approached the moon’s surface (download MP3), (2) a “laboratory reconstruction” of what the Huygens’ microphones witnessed (download MP3), sewn together from multiple recordings, not unlike the mosaic panorama images of Titan’s surface that were reprinted in newspapers across our planet this past weekend. The former sounds like a whirlybird that’s about to spin out of control, and the latter has a harsh, mechanical feel. Together, they’re one giant step for humankind, and one contextually rich sample source for remixers. More info on the esa.int webpage, “Sounds of Titan.” (Link via boingboing.net, here.)
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Upcoming Activities
Spring 2013: The Disquiet Junto is assisting Geoff Manaugh in a course he is teaching at Columbia University's GSAPP, "San Andreas: Architecture for the Fault." Details at bldgblog.blogspot.com.
February 26: I'm giving a three-hour guest lecture about listening to a class on writing for radio productions at the Academy of Art in San Francisco.
May 15, 2013: Last day of 15-week course I'm teaching about sound in the media landscape at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, California.
Ongoing: In January 2013 I became part of the SoundCloud Heroes project, more on which in the near future. In the short term, full disclosure, I was gifted the top-level account, Pro Plus. Initial post here: "What I'm Up To."
Ongoing: The film The Children Next Door (2012), on which I served as music supervisor and collaborated with Taylor Deupree on sound design, is currently touring festivals. It won a special jury prize at DOC NYC and has also played at the Denver and Hamptons festivals. Directed by Doug Block, produced by Lynda A. Hansen. More at thechildrennextdoor.com.
Down the Pike: Concerts in the Disquiet Junto series are in various stages of planning for London, England; Portland, Oregon; and elsewhere.
Way Down the Pike: Currently writing a book about Aphex Twin's landmark 1994 album, Selected Ambient Works Vol. II, for the 33 1/3 series.
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disquiet junto
The Disquiet Junto is an ongoing weekly collaborative music-making space in which restraints are used as a springboard for creativity. It's housed at soundcloud.com. Subscribe to the announcement list at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto. There is an FAQ. These are the weekly projects to date: 1: ice cubes • 2: duet for foghorn and steam whistle • 3: expanded glass harp • 4: remixing Marcus Fischer • 5: adding sounds to everyday life • 6: remixing archival Edison cylinders • 7: create through subtraction • 8: rework Benjamin Franklin's autobiography • 9: cross-species collaboration • 10: remix a previous Junto track • 11: everyday mechanical rhythms • 12: cut and paste • 13: remixing wild Up playing Shostakovich • 14: sonic version of Matt Madden's Oubapo story • 15: aural RGB • 16: sandpaper and dice • 17: transition between field and composed • 18: relative prominence • 19: graphic score (photo by Yojiro Imasaka) • 20: use the NodeBeat app • 21: the four seasons • 22: sonic decay • 23: palindrone • 24: a suite of sonic alerts • 25: remixing project 24 • 26: making music from your trash • 27: turm the instruction text into sound • 28: remix a netlabel release • 29: music from water, inspired by William Gibson's Count Zero • 30: sounds from silence • 31: Revisiting a 1955 Yoko Ono Fluxus piece • 32: sonify the 2012 U.S. presidential election polling data • 33: making music with a turntable but without vinyl • 34: Use the theme song of the Radius broadcast as the source of an original composition • 35: Make music from a sample page of Beck's Song Reader sheet music • 36: Reworking Bach into abstract expressionism • 37: The sound of commerce • 38: Make a fake field recording • 39: Combine three tracks from the Nowaki netlabel into one • 40: Turn a Kenneth Kirschner duet into a trio • 41: Dirty minimalism • 42: Record a "naive melody" with your oldest and newest instruments> • 43: Make mechanical roars from the sound of a retail space • 44: Transition from storm to calm using field recordings from Sandy 2012 • 45: Combine material from the public domain adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Tom Sawyer • 46: Investigate a recording of the voting process for its "sonic fingerprint." • 47: Turn the muffled voices of a distant party into the foundation of a recording. • 48: Celebrate the Creative Commons license that allows for derivative works by remixing music from the Three Legs Duck netlabel. • 49: Make a track, 50% of which is the sound of a tape cassette deck in motion. • 50: Encode a word or phrase in Morse Code and employ that as a track's rhythm. • 51: Create a 2012 audio diary with a dozen five-second segments. • 52: Celebrate the Creative Commons by remixing three tracks from the Bump Foot netlabel. • 53: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it (redux). • 54: Create an original musical score for the day's news. • 55: Combine two Nils Frahm solo piano pieces into one. • 56: Make music from the sound of the tick of a clock. • 57: Use sounds from the Phonetics Lab Archive at UCLA to depict emotions. • 58: Celebrate the Creative Commons by remixing three tracks from the Endless Ascent netlabel. • 59: Make music from three randomly assigned vowels. • 60: Record something about yourself and your music/sound in your own words and voice. • 61: Record a single for which the cover would be the image suggested by a @textinstagram tweet. • 62: Make music using just three sine waves. • 63: Make a new piece of music based on an echo-laden re-recording of Gregorian chant. • 64: Compose a piece to align with, from memory, 60 seconds of everyday sound. • 65: Compose music atop a randomly assigned segment of a pre-existing track by Jared Brickman. • 66: Collaborate posthumously with the late Jeffrey (Nofi) Melton. • 67: Compose music for a phrase from Homer's The Odyssey • 68: Combine three songs from the first release of the new deriv.cc netlabel. • 69: Make music from field recordings of earth, water, air, and fire. • 70: Create a single piece of music from two tones and three beats. • 71: Create an original score to the trailer to Christine Knowlton's film about blind sailors. • 72: Make a domestic score from sounds recorded in your own home. • 73: Read a map of the San Andreas Fault as if it were a graphic notation scoreTags
8-bit android app audio-games chiptune classical comics copyleft demix field-recording film forum-digger free gadget generative i-hop installation ios ipad iphone ipod ipod touch jazz junto live-performance mp3 discussion group netlabel noise reactive remix rock science-fiction score silence site-maintenance sketches of sound software sound-art sounds-of-brands turntablism TV video video-games voice year's besttwitter: @disquiet
- The whole time I was in NYC these past few days I imagined running into Steven Soderbergh and saying, “Your paintings better be awesome.” 1 hour ago
- “Why are you calling me! This is a Facebook thing! Not a phone thing!” Overheard at Greepoint Pier this morning. 1 hour ago
- Paying respect at Adam Yauch Park. instagram.com/p/Zs9pvwLIsW/ 2 hours ago
- There was a 5.7-magnitude California qyake last night just as we we launced the quake-themed @djunto/@bldgblog Junto: disquiet.com/2013/05/23/dis… 7 hours ago
- Earthquake sonics. Presented in conjunction w/ @bldgblog, the 73rd Disquiet Junto is now live: disquiet.com/2013/05/23/dis… soundcloud.com/groups/disquie… 15 hours ago
instagram: @dsqt
Paying respect at Adam Yauch Park.
Definitely sleeping on correct couch. Poster at apartment where I am spending the night.
Rose heads make good neighbors.
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