- Flying to LAX out of SFO, which means missing the opportunity to check out the sound-art installation at the San Jose airport. #
- When the fog is this thick, and no fog horns are to be heard, the question lingers in the air: Is it so thick it's muffling them? #
- Nice way to end the evening: found a used copy of Bernhard Leitner's Sound:Space (Cantz, 1998) at Green Apple. #
- Sucker for directors who score their films? The twins Ranju and Sanjit Majumdar made @determinism — Ranju did the music: http://is.gd/duKnw #
- 17: Number of anechoic chambers at Apple for cell/device testing per current press conference http://is.gd/duyyd Look like time machines #
- Comics writers/artists who make/record/think-smart-re: music @wcraghead @robotdancerobot @warrenellis @mmaddencomics Who am I missing? #ff #
- Some days Twitter lists my location: Outer Richmond. Some days it lists it: Central Richmond. Does it depend on how hard the wind's blowing? #
- Enough foghorn action this morning to suggest a bagpipe factory had sprouted in the Presidio. #
- Listening to the sound of the city & detailing the critique of language in the novella Cosmopolis (2003) by Don DeLillo: http://is.gd/dtwF1 #
- Footage of live performance of Hans Zimmer's score to Inception, featuring (no kidding) guitarist Johnny Marr http://is.gd/dtkY8 #
- Speaking of e-mailing lists, currently experimenting with moving the Disquiet.com newsletter (1135 members) from Mailman to Google Groups. #
- Listening for vestiges of Latin Playboys in the forthcoming Los Lobos album, Tin Can Trust. #
- Freeware Win7 shout-out to ResophNotes/Simple-note, Input-Director, MaxTo, AVG, Volumouse, Filezilla, LiveSync, Songbird, Evernote, DarkRoom #
- I'm out and about, but let's see if @richard_kadrey does RT @JDKun: Have pdf of or link to Ballard's "The Sound-Sweep" handy? #
- Given my manga years, was happy my old ReadComicsInPublic.net URL is now owned by Japanese firm, until I saw it's just a robo-spam-site now. #
- Morning sounds: Neighborhood is especially quiet now & three rooms have hard drives running. It's like a white-noise sound-art installation. #
- If I could select the next act after Throbbing Gristle (i.e., Gristleism) to get the @buddhamachine treatment, it'd be Lovesliescrushing #
- Researching relation between @ascap & @bmi & @cesac and club owners for story about @creativecommons — tactics at times are darkly comedic. #
- RIP, Harvey Pekar (b.1939). With whom hasn't he fought? He slammed the phone on me when I was at Pulse! in the early '90s. A badge of honor. #
- Details on new Shane Carruth (Primer) film, A Topiary: http://is.gd/dp6MO And the welcome addition of fake-Carruth Twitter: @itsshanecarruth #
- With shades drawn, hard not to imagine young children might think sanitation trucks are darkly magical machines of combustion and activity. #
- A Monday morning without an alarm is a nice thing. Still, up by 6am, listening and typing. #
- The DVD I'm about to watch is for "entertainment purposes only." Does that mean watching it critically is a breach of the user agreement? #
- Is there a sophistry filter for @wordpress comments? #futurefeature #
- Morning sounds: suspiciously numerous buses; Tivo hard drive coyly ticking away (no doubt jealous of District B13 Ultimatum DVD I rented). #
Current Activities
Upcoming
• February 5, 2020: The first session of the 15-week course I teach at the Academy of Art about the role of sound in the media landscape.
• April 15, 2020: A chapter on the Disquiet Junto ("The Disquiet Junto as an Online Community of Practice," by Ethan Hein) appears in the forthcoming 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.)
• December 13, 2020: This day marks the 24th anniversary of Disquiet.com.
• January 7, 2021: This day marks the 9th anniversary of the start of the Disquiet Junto music community.Dates TBA
• 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.
• At least two live group concerts by Disquiet Junto members in the San Francisco Bay Area are in the works for 2020.
• I have liner notes for a musician's solo album and an essay in a book about an art event due out. I'll announce as the release dates come into focus.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
• 0456 / Line Up / The Assignment: Interpret a painting by Agnes Martin as if it were a graphic score.
• 0455 / Inner Invertebrate / The Assignment: What does a moment (or a day) in the life of a jellyfish sound like to a jellyfish?
• 0454 / Lsoo Vneg / The Assignment: Encode the name of someone you love into a piece of music.
• 0453 / Dial Up / The Assignment: Imagine the technologically mediated First Contact through sound.
• 0452 / Let's Scream / The Assignment: Get cathartic. Be resilient. Turn your scream into music.Full Index
And there is a complete list of past projects, 456 consecutive weeks to date.