- There's a special smile that greets "all rights reserved" photos of public graffiti on Flickr.com. #
- Morning sounds: shower, hard drive; no birds, no cars. The entirely unfamiliar industrial drone that preceded yesterday's quake is gone. #
- Sprinklers on, so water pressure's low. Carbonite's backing up my hard drive to the cloud, so same can be said of my Internet connection. #
- Footage of original Hawaii Five-0 theme-song musicians in re-recording session (for TV reboot) embedded in this story: http://is.gd/dDUt8 #
- Continuing to enjoy habit of listening to score before seeing movie — it's kinda like a sonic spoiler, and brings it out during showing. #
- Yowza — that quake moved my chair. Of course, my chair is on wheels. Looks like it was maybe 10 miles off the San Francisco coast. #
- 5 Reasons for a Musician to Consider @creativecommons — a little guest post I just did for @wammusic — http://is.gd/dDwnQ #
- Gotta love "cassette only" albums that will later "appear as a compact disc." So they're "only" for now. #
- All electronics are louder in the evening. Refrigerator, hard drive, a watch's hand, a light switch turned off then on, a distant motor. #
- This new @firefox build, 3.6.7, has been crash-tastic. #
- After serious CSS fiddling, comments on Disquiet.com now cleaner: threaded, spaced right, colored simply. Numbering is odd, but otherwise… #
- Morning sounds: Tivo hard drive like some digital babbling brook, buses outside rampaging like rhinos. #
- Pretty great that @xlr8rmag does free full-issue PDFs. August has Oval, LA's "abstract instrumental scene" & more http://is.gd/dBt0m #
- People come & go on Facebook so often that if you use an IM client (like Pidgin), there's a near-constant stream of enter/exit tones. #
- Excellent abstract hip-hop instrumentals by @knxwledge http://is.gd/dB2pb — via @whyarcka in reply to WhyArcka #
- Between The Matrix & Inception, Robert Longo may be a bigger influence on movie fight scenes than John Woo & Quentin Tarantino combined. #
- Best sounds in Inception: Johnny Marr's guitar, the knowing use of Édith Piaf, & (yeah, cautious on spoilers) a certain truncation. #
- Can't overstate pleasure, if not outright benefits, of living walking distance from movie theater, especially one offering double features. #
- Morning sounds: shower, heater (this is San Francisco), hard drive, various netlabel offerings. #
- Walking by neighborhood restaurant, briefly mistook sound of fan for, yes, vuvuzela. #ptsd #
- Wouldn't it be easier to tidy up to non-English-language movies if a beep signaled that it's time to look at the screen to catch a subtitle? #
- Q: What did William Faulkner's voice sound like? A: Exactly as you imagined: http://is.gd/dzRuE #
- Thanks @dylanhorrocks for my Twitter background, up all this month, in my "Curating Twitter: Sketches of Sound" project: http://is.gd/dzOJ5 #
- Looks like @evernote sync is back up. Finishing some projects before heading to @sfelectricworks for David Byrne / Dave Eggers exhibit. #
- Man, @evernote sync issues, too (judging by an @twitter search, not an isolated issue). Trouble in the cloud this morning. #
- Supposed to update @twitter background with great original @dylanhorrocks image but profile updates now have tech issues: http://is.gd/dzrIe #
- Morning sounds: hard drive, distant sanitation vehicles (and related activity), little if any birdsong. #
- Will not be attending #comiccon this week — may time reading of China Miéville's Kraken to experience it vicariously. #
- Last day for @mintylewis background on my Twitter account; new one tomorrow. Disquiet.com enewsletter Wednesday to include Scorn CD contest. #
- Another netlabel into the eternal Internet dustbin RT @nq_music @jhfisher Hippocamp closes after 9 years: http://hippocamp.net/?catID=200 #
- Celebrate World Listening Day with Pootie Tang: http://is.gd/dxsZg (following up @npseaver on AC/DC's critique of R. Murray Schafer). #
- My friends' kid apparently wakes up singing happy birthday to her stuffed animals. It's a riot. #
- Morning sounds, Pasadena edition: HVAC, laptop drive, birds (latter in surround-sound mode rather than just from backyard like back home). #
- It's July 18 — happy "World Listening Day": http://worldlisteningproject.org. And in not unrelated news: happy birthday, R. Murray Schafer. #
- Los Angeles vanity-plate moment: confirmed guy with OBOE DR plates actually repairs oboes for a living. Convertibles allow for conversation. #
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about
Marc Weidenbaum founded the website Disquiet.com in 1996 at the intersection of sound, art, and technology, and since 2012 has moderated the Disquiet Junto, an active online community of weekly music/sonic projects. He has written for Nature, Boing Boing, The Wire, Pitchfork, and NewMusicBox, among other periodicals. He is the author of the 33 1⁄3 book on Aphex Twin’s classic album Selected Ambient Works Volume II. Read more about his sonic consultancy, teaching, sound art, and work in film, comics, and other media
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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).
Most Recent Posts
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
• 0472 / Jam Time (1 of 3) / The Assignment: Record the first third of a trio that others will complete.
• 0471 / Phase Transition / The Assignment: The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it.
• 0470 / Calendar View / The Assignment: Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen (or more) super-brief segments.
• 0469 / [Missing in Caption] / The Assignment: Make music that pushes the constraints of descriptive television captions.
• 0468 / Mirror Rorrim / The Assignment: Create a new persona for yourself, and record a duet together.Full Index
And there is a complete list of past projects, 472 consecutive weeks to date.Tags
8-bit app audio-games brands of sounds Buddha Machine chiptune classical comics copyleft field-recording film free free download gadget generative i-hop IFTTTgram installation ios ipad iphone ipod ipod touch junto live-performance live performance modular netlabel noise recommended stream remix saw2for33third science-fiction score site-maintenance software sound-art sounds-of-brands studio journal this week in sound turntablism TV video video-games voiceMost Recent Comments
- paolo i. on Ambient Gets More Trombones: “very nice and thank you for sharing. this (and yesterday’s video) is probably the current segment of an uninterrupted line… ”
- Dietmar Sittek on 10 Favorite Ambient/Electronic Albums of 2020: “My favorite album of the year and equally the favorite ambient album is by Ferr “As above so below”. Proved,… ”
- jet jaguar on Chris Herbert’s Sketches: “Thanks for sharing, Marc, I’d missed this one and really like Chris Herbert’s stuff. So far I’m enjoying the wider… ”
- Kent Sparling on RIP, Harold Budd (1936 -2020): “a hero, a genius thank you Harold for all your gifts to us. ”
- Yves Meynard on Cross-Device Ambient: “Lovely piece, thank you for giving us a chance to discover it! ”