Disquiet Junto: Join Weekly Communal Music Projects • Previous: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 etc. • Current: 21
Projects: Instagr/am/bient • LX(RMX): Lisbon Remixed • Key Topics: #sound-art, #classical
How To: Submit for Review • Elsewhere: Twitter, SoundCloud (Disquiet & Disquiet Junto), Facebook

Listening to art. Playing with audio. Sounding out technology. Composing in code.

Topic Archives: field notes

Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet

[ April 28, 2012 / Department: field notes / Leave a comment ]
  • RIP, Swiss artist David Weiss (b.1946) of Fischli/Weiss: Rube Goldberg-ish video The Way Things Go (Der Lauf der Dinge) http://t.co/05DZynwH #
  • RIP, Joe Muranyi (b. 1928), latter-day Dixieland clarinetist in Louis Armstrong’s band: http://t.co/5xUFnQiN, http://t.co/KrGmazuP #
  • 17th Disquiet Junto project already has 2 new 1st-time participants: Biel, Switzerland’s @tobiasreber & NYC’s @clownfacee. #
  • Somehow got a http://t.co/ygIzHsQ1 MBAir cover at Apple store in @soundcloud orange/grey today even though they’re not on the @acmemade site #
  • Note from daycare today says my kid has started a band with two other kids. My kid turns 20 months on Monday. #
  • The telltale pocket-fabric swish with which begins the semi-surreptitiously recorded bootleg of a lecture. #
  • Anyone have any experience with the mailing-list services of http://t.co/abAJFrlp or http://t.co/2oFj6v4s? #
  • Read my first Kindle Single: Jonathan Biss’ Beethoven’s Shadow. Pondering his informed critique of the shadow cast by recording equipment. #
  • Wonderful! RT @tobiasreber: posted my 1st disquiet #junto contribution on soundcloud. glad I could finally participate http://t.co/0d6EsmUR #
  • Downtown San Francisco is like a busker convention today. #
  • Coldplay’s “Trouble” is Pink Floyd fan fiction. #

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Tangents: Lethem/Cage, Kracfive Gaming, iOS Updates

News, quick links, good reads

[ April 28, 2012 / Department: field notes / Leave a comment ]

4’33 Neoteny: Jonathan Lethem gave the tenth State of Cinema address at the 55th San Francisco Film Festival on April 21, and wired.it posted a bootleg of the audio. The sprawling lecture, which is highly recommended, is very much a novelist welcoming film to post-relevancy. Of course, Lethem turns matters of relevancy on their head, employing the concept of “neoteny,” in which juvenile traits surface in adult behavior (that is a poor paraphrase). In the process of outlining his thinking, he attributes neotenic qualities to John Cage’s 4’33″, describing it as the sounds a child might accomplish before even beginning to learn to play piano. Lethem’s latest book is a study of Talking Heads’ Fear of Music, which was produced by Brian Eno (continuumbooks.com).

Ball, Game: The name Noah Sasso will be familiar to longtime readers of Disquiet.com due to his having been a founding member of the Kracfive collective (kracfive.com), whose Iron Chef of Music was a big presence on this site for many years, and was an influence on the development of the Disquiet Junto. Like many electronic-music practitioners, Sasso has an active role in game development, and his new project, BaraBariBall, will debut at the NYU Game Center’s Third Annual No Quarter Exhibition (nyu.edu) on May 18. He’s posted this video trailer (at vimeo.com) for the game. It has that perfect mix of pixel elegance and stellar fluid motion, like watching basketball through mosaic sunglasses:

Sasso says it was developed for Windows and Mac but has no current planned public release. More on Sasso at strangeflavor.net and soundcloud.com/strangeflavor.

App Updates (iOS Edition): Tabletop, a virtual music studio with device emulators, has improved the manner in which one swaps between devices. …
Animoog has debuted a SoundSet by Richard Devine in its in-app storefront. …
The Buddha Machine app has been updated to include sounds from the Buddha Machine 3.

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CDM & The Verge on Disquiet.com Projects

Technology journalists focus attention on Junto, LX(RMX), Instagr/am/bient

[ April 25, 2012 / Department: field notes / Leave a comment ]


The Disquiet-commissioned projects Junto, LX(RMX), and Instagr/am/bient got some great attention this past weekend when both createdigitalmusic.com and theverge.com covered them.

In “Music Making, Shared: Communal Ambient Tracks Explore Instagram Photos, Lisbon, and More,” CDM’s Peter Kirn compliments the projects (“The results are imaginative, varied, superb music”), quotes at length from a discussion he and I had, and jokes about putting a dollar value on the Instagram project, in light of the company’s recent purchase by Facebook:

Now, given the Instagram sale for US$1 billion, I would value the free compilation inspired by its photo sharing at least a couple of million dollars. Finding a welcoming community both to spur on new musical ideas and share the results? Priceless.


The piece on the Verge, “Ambient Music Community Finds Inspiration in Instagram and Ice Cubes” by Jeff Blagdon, gives welcome emphasis to a major influence on the Junto project. It opens:

For communities of creative individuals, working under shared constraints can result in some incredible work, showing off what artists can put together with a limited set of tools. A great example is the “beat battle,” in which competing musicians are all given the same sample and compete to build the best instrumental track out of it.

Part of what is rewarding about these two stories is that they come from beyond the realm of publications that are focused solely on music as end-product. Much of CDM’s coverage is on the technology of music-making, and the Verge is pretty squarely in the gadget-journalism category. Between the two articles, an additional approximately 5,000 listens were registered at soundcloud.com/disquiet in the 48 hours or so after the posts appeared, and the Disquiet Junto had almost half a dozen new participants, bringing the total to 170 as of project 16.

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Sonic Infrastructure (ArtPractical.com)

The imminent future of San Francisco's role in the global sonic arts

[ April 21, 2012 / Department: field notes / Leave a comment ]


I have written an essay about the growing prominence of San Francisco as a provider of sonic-arts infrastructure services. It appears, for free reading online, at the journal artpractical.com.

The essay is part of an issue devoted to sound, which includes an introduction by Tess Thackara (who invited me to contribute), an interview with Paul DeMarinis by Renny Pritikin, a discussion between artists Joshua Churchill and Chris Duncan, Matt Sussman on Infrasound, Liz Glass on the Tape Music Center, an interview with Jacqueline Gordon by Ellen Tani, a profile of Ethan Rose by Bean Gilsdorf, a discussion about the forthcoming Invisible Relics exhibit at Park Life (parklifestore.com, a gallery in the San Francisco neighborhood I have long called home: the Richmond District), and an essay by Aaron Harbour drawing from his experience as a curator and DJ.

For my piece, titled “Sonic Infrastructure,” I use three examples of individuals and organizations whose work in sound art involves providing technology to artists and institutions to realize their ideas. I interviewed Shane Myrbeck (shanemyrbeck.com) about his work at Arup (and his own art) and Barry Threw (barrythrew.com) about his work as a solo developer (which includes developing Oval‘s OvalDNA software, a screenshot of which appears up top) and at Obscura Digital. And I also touched on Scott Snibbe‘s substantial contributions (snibbe.com), such as his work on Björk‘s Biophilia apps.

Read the essay, “Sonic Infrastructure,” at artpractical.com.

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Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet

[ April 21, 2012 / Department: field notes / Comment: 1 ]
  • Video of my introductory statement at the 4/19 Chicago Disquiet Junto Enemy group concert: http://t.co/lmuhx2AE #
  • Funny: The sound of a raging Dyson hand dryer from the bathroom of a small quiet cafe. #
  • Many thanks to @peterkirn for this thoughtful overview of Disquiet Junto, LX(RMX), & Instragr/am/mbient: http://t.co/5qSdxXDy #
  • More on this when time frees up, but I have a piece on San Francisco’s sonic-arts infrastructure at @artpractical: http://t.co/zwKL1lW2 #
  • The 16th Disquiet Junto project is at http://t.co/XdRJsrQ9. Due Monday, April 23, at 11:59pm wherever you are. #
  • RIP, graphic designer David Hillman Curtis (b. 1961), who directed Ride, Rise, Roar film about the Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno Tour. #
  • Belated RIP, Dick Clark (b. 1929), eternal teenager, and the Band’s Levon Helm (b. 1940), who always seemed old beyond his years. #
  • Disquiet Junto 16: Make a new track from samples of dice and sandpaper; use one as background, the other as foreground: http://t.co/XdRJsrQ9 #

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