- By day, buses rattle past. By night, when they stop for passengers, the beepy dis/embark melody sounds like a Japanese train station. #
- Weirdly frequent (and presumably DNS-related) issues accessing various websites this evening. #
- Starting to find A/B stories on TV just as claustrophobia-inducing as verse/chorus/verse structure in songs. But at least TV has story arcs. #
- Entirely caught up with email. Zero inbox. Victory! … Er, for 2011. … As for 2010, that's a major backlog. … #
- Wishing a speedy recovery for Adam Yauch. #
- RT @vuzhmusic New blog series #netlabel artists recommend free downloads, 2nd post by @disquiet http://www.vuzhmusic.com/blog/?p=704 #
- Thankful for the #lessambitiousearthquake / Baby's first, slept right through it. #
- Not one of the @gdgt #CES smartphone favorites has a physical keyboard. #kindabummed #
- Lab Tech Manhattan #lessambitiouswatchmen #
- I have unintentionally slurred registered nurses. Allow me to revise… #
- #lessambitiousmemes #
- Strawberry 10% #lessambitiousmanga #
- Registered Nurse Strange #lessambitiouscomics #
- Justice Club #lessambitiouscomics #
- Fantastic Three #lessambitiouscomics #
- Acme Novelty Department #lessambitiouscomics #
- Trial of "one-time superlobbyist Paul Magliocchetti" sheds light on the Military-Symphony Complex: http://j.mp/fYV9k1 #
- â–º Video of Latin sung at dawn in Singapore, multiple locations layered; think Lucier divided by Cardiff/Miller: http://t.co/OLlITmc #
- Noon bells pierce the cold, and the closed windows. #
- Relieved to learn, first hand, that the "version history" in @simplenoteapp works smoothly and effectively. #
- That's pretty cool, 250-plus plays of my Unsilent Night field recording @soundcloud http://t.co/OdBMI4y #surveillance #fluxus #
- Evening sounds: traffic bleeds into hard-drive whir bleeds into general appliance hum bleeds into light tinnitus. #
- [email protected] Yeah, you know, the second I wrote to you, I started wondering what the mail-art of email is. Spam is like Ballardian email-art. #
- Just heard "da da" for first time. Sure, just random syllables by four-month-old, but still something. #
- ♫ Afternoon analog-synth audiostream: Keith Fullerton Whitman live at the Bunker (2010.11.05), cascading-tastic: http://j.mp/9dn6jq #
- Best recent song title: Derrick Hart's "0073735963" (the code to get to Tyson on the NES game Mike Tyson's Punch Out). #
- RIP, Ann Southam, Canadian composer (b. 1937) Listen http://j.mp/gna4zV Obituary http://j.mp/gC1ybZ Via @alexrossmusic http://j.mp/gjCgQa #
- Morton Feldman and Samuel Beckett's Either #lessambitiousoperas #
- Hydrogen iPod #lessambitiousoperas #
- Someone at @CNN appears to be learning how to use its email newsblast system this morning. #studentdriver #
- RIP, Mick Karn (b. Adonis Michaelides, 1958), musician best known as the bassist for Japan. #
- Pool scenes in recent CSI: Miami ("Match Made in Hell") resembled early Bill Viola video. Yesterday's avant-garde, today's Hollywood effect. #
- Before designing the new Broad museum in downtown Los Angeles, Diller + Scofidio did this great mesh of corporate logos: http://j.mp/fYC5NT #
- Very emperor's-new-clothes, these touch tablets/phones. Tech writers describe each like fashion writers do the latest little black dresses. #
- Libération.fr for real. The DeLillo story from Harper's I mentioned is up there for free now en Anglais. http://j.mp/hgCOaM via @1000DIGIKI #
- Somewhat Attenuated Jest #lessambitiousbooks #
- City of Lucite #lessambitiousbooks #
- ♫ Pre-noon beats: Tictoc's entry in the 199th (!) weekly @stonesthrow Beat Battle: http://j.mp/eRR1tZ #
- Remembering packing as much information as possible onto a postcard, to save on postage. #lifebeforeemail #
- "Internet dark" comes in various shades of gray. (Back on Twitter, after two weeks of relative social-media/web silence.) #
- Happy 70th, Hayao Miyazaki. Flipping thru my Princess Mononoke (ã‚‚ã®ã®ã‘姫) storyboard book bought after Ghibli visit during my first Japan trip. #
- RIP, Carl Tupper, founder of BSI Comics in Metarie, La, where I used to shop a lot. Stands for "Book Swap Incorporated" http://is.gd/kafJc #
- Many thanks, belatedly due to my Twitter break, to Natalia Ludmila @n_ludmila for drawing my Twitter background. http://is.gd/kafx5 #
- Following CES coverage with practical rather than hypothetical self-interest: my G1 is about to die; want to know what next phone will be. #
- Morning sounds: low (refrigerator hum), middle (bus rumble), high (baby breathing). #
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.