Listening to MP3s of sound from outdoor installations can be a bit like watching an Akira Kurosawa film on your laptop: less than faithful to the original. That said, as site-specific art with audio becomes more common, a seven-megabyte file sure does trump a roundtrip plane ticket for cost efficiency. Michael Samos created sound as part of a multi-speaker installation by sculptor Barbara Westermann, herself a specialist in audio-oriented art, like concrete-steel renditions of baby monitors and reliefs that suggest the music of the spheres. Their exhibit, Observatory Sounds, isn’t due for display until this coming autumn, at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, New York. But there are already two ways to hear it. Pick up a copy of Loud5, a “sound magazine” with a focus on sound art (more info at loud5.com) or download a seven-minute excerpt of casual noise, cycling tones, chance field recordings and light sonic manipulations (MP3) from Samos’ website, michaelsamos.com.
Current Activities
Upcoming
• July 28, 2021: This day marks the start of the 500th consecutive weekly project in the Disquiet Junto music community.
• December 13, 2021: This day marks the 25th anniversary of the founding of Disquiet.com.
• January 6, 2021: This day marks the 10th anniversary of the start of the Disquiet Junto music community.Recent
• There are entries on the Disquiet Junto in the forthcoming book The Music Production Cookbook: Ready-made Recipes for the Classroom (Oxford University Press), edited by Adam Patrick Bell. Ethan Hein wrote one, and I did, too.
• A chapter on the Disquiet Junto ("The Disquiet Junto as an Online Community of Practice," by Ethan Hein) appears in the book The Oxford Handbook of Social Media and Music Learning (Oxford University Press), edited by Stephanie Horsley, Janice Waldron, and Kari Veblen. (Details at oup.com.)Ongoing
• The Disquiet Junto series of weekly communal music projects explore constraints as a springboard for creativity and productivity. There is a new project each Thursday afternoon (California time), and it is due the following Monday at 11:59pm: disquiet.com/junto.
• My book on Aphex Twin's landmark 1994 album, Selected Ambient Works Vol. II, was published as part of the 33 1/3 series, an imprint of Bloomsbury. It has been translated into Japanese (2019) and Spanish (2018).
disquiet junto
Background
Since January 2012, the Disquiet Junto has been an ongoing weekly collaborative music-making community that employs creative constraints as a springboard for creativity. Subscribe to the announcement list (each Thursday), listen to tracks by participants from around the world, read the FAQ, and join in.Recent Projects
• 0484 / A Movable Heart / The Assignment: Transplant the sounds of Chris Kallmyer's wind chimes to a new location.
• 0483 / Type Set / The Assignment: Use a recording of yourself typing something as the underlying rhythmic track for a piece of music.
• 0482 / Exactly That Gap / The Assignment: Make a musical haiku following instructions from Marcus Fischer.
• 0481 / Capsule Time / The Assignment: Record a time capsule for yourself in the future.
• 0480 / Ongsay Aftcray / The Assignment: Record a piece of music by employing Pig Latin as a technique.Full Index
And there is a complete list of past projects, 484 consecutive weeks to date.