- Morning sounds: hard drive/fan whirring, heater revving up, toilet tank refilling, fridge droning, baby cooing. #
- First blue screen (of death) I've witnessed on this machine, almost a year to the day since I bought it. (Noting for future reference.) #
- Android shoutout: PDANet (tether, SMS agent), Barnacle (wifi hotspot), OverDrive (ebook); widgets: Pure Calendar, Sticky Pad, Google Reader. #
- Upton Sinclair is the John Muir of industry. #protophonography #
- At the cafe, the flyer for the Textured Earring Workshop is tacked to the wall next to the flyer for the Digital Storytelling Workshop. #
- [email protected] A pair of ebows for one of Blood Wedding people. One for one of Vertex guys. Vertex drummer's battery-power brush may count, too. #
- Wondering if tech firms do anything that's the engineering equivalent of wearing sexy underwear in expectancy of @ifixit teardowns. #
- Spoiler: As a paranoid fantasy of professional rivalry, Unknown is more entertaining than Black Swan. + Bruno Ganz :) – No Clint Mansell. :( #
- Odd @nytimes piece calls Rothko Chapel, Satie & Cage "quirky, discerning picks"; it's syndicated @texasmonthly content: http://j.mp/g1A6C3 #
- It was a three-ebow evening. #
- Tonight's agenda: Blood Wedding and the Norwegian duo Vertex at the Luggage Store. #
- Afternoon sounds: hard drives/fans (netbook, TiVo), sleeping six-month-old's breathing, distant dog, cars on wet street, typing. #
- Samsung Galaxy S 4G pairs w/ Bluetooth Think Outside keyboard (DroidX + NexusS didn't w/o BlueInput app). Now, if only USB keyboard worked. #
- Continuing my cellphone trial-period search: now using the T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S 4G (returned Droid X and, prior to that, the Nexus S). #
- San Francisco art PSA: @gaffta exhibit by Zimoun closes Saturday. It's a must-see/hear. Video example: http://vimeo.com/20283981 #
- I'm all for removing the taboo of calling San Francisco "Frisco," if only to make it more Twitter/SMS-friendly. #
- According to SpeedTest my current phone has better web connection (T-Mobile/Samsung: 5.32↓ 1.83↑) than does my home (AT&T DSL: 4.94↓ 0.63↑). #
- http://www.touchradio.org.uk/ has been quiet. March will bring "new TouchRadio by Hild Sofie Tafjord" + "TouchRadio news." Can't wait. #
- Yes, briefly misinterpreted the words "animal sound or movement" today as a lyric during Baby Rhyme Tyme at local library. #
- Wishing I could make the Christian Wolff lecture (tomorrow) and concert (Saturday) at Mills, but timing conflicts abound. #
- The guy behind Jaydiohead & Dub Kweli made a Clint Mansell”“sampling rap EP based on sci-fi film Moon: http://www.seleneproject.com/ #
- Poet Toni Mirosevich will read from her The Takeaway Bin, inspired by Eno/Schmidt Oblique Strategies, @SFPLNews (Main Branch) March 2, 6pm. #
- Evening sounds: dryer, dishwasher, cars. #
- Borrowed a book (an ebook) from the library on my phone while on the bus and started reading it. #
- Noon siren on a clear day, followed by its standard announcement, so muffled that were there an emergency it would serve no purpose at all. #
- Remembering living in France (summer '86) when Libya was major threat. Was a human conversation piece, there were so few Americans in Paris. #
- Netbook days are so much more peaceful than desktop days. #
- Open-source classical: crowd-managed scores. Service named for Petrucci, who 1st used movable type to print sheet music: http://j.mp/f21obs #
- Bringing the Outdoors In: performing John Luther Adams' nature-infused "Inuksuit" http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/arts/music/22luther.html #
- Kenneth Kirschner redesigned http://www.kennethkirschner.com/ and the indeterminate pieces (halfway down page) are particularly recommended. #
- Facebook page of slain Egyptian electronic musician Ahmed Basiony who died during Jan uprising 172 followers shy of 9,000 http://j.mp/f3oOz2 #
- "[Playing ']Waterloo Sunset[' to my (nearly) six-month-old on a ukulele], I am in paradise." #
- If I'm not mistaken, the New York Times runs Phillip Alder's bridge coverage just as often as it runs Seth Schiesel's video game coverage. #
- Apple patent uses acoustic transducers as gestural interface. http://j.mp/ibyKPj Is that what Keith Jarrett's been up to all these years? #
- Much microsound music is what the Saw movies might have sounded like had Samuel Beckett conceived them. #
- Evening sounds: dishwasher, drip coffee, footsteps, hard drive/fan. #
- â–º J Lesser records a San Diego winter storm, all drizzle, wind chimes, and vehicular droning: http://soundcloud.com/lesser/stereo-rain #
- Outside it's like if Blade Runner had been set in East Germany instead of Los Angeles. #
- Sometimes I wonder if Groupon and Kickstarter are the same service with different skins. #
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.