- The em-dash followed by the open quote is the bête noire of the ebook. #
- Hardly Strictly Bluegrass happening a few blocks from my house. From here it's muffled, more like Almost Certainly Shoegaze. #
- Thus far (10% in), Reamde is my favorite Neal Stephenson since Cryptonomicon. The plumbing of MMORGs is fascinating: R&D&D. #
- Noon carillon filtered through library's walls, windows, and air conditioning. #
- Listening to audiobooks in "fast" mode means expecting the narrator at any moment to interject, "I want to be … a dentist!" #
- Debating which makes the stronger icon for sound: the waveform or the spectrogram: http://t.co/wbOIOT9B #
- Special thanks to @vinylsaurus (né Scott Faulkner) for drawing my Twitter background for the coming month. #
- RIP, Leonard Dillon (b. 1942), cofounder of ska group the Ethiopians. #
- The Message: RIP, Sugar Hill Records founder Sylvia Robinson (b. 1936). #
- Christian Marclay exhibit at Fraenkel in San Francisco highly recommended. Cyanotypes of cassettes, plus splendid video of LP playfulness. #
- The seat cushions in this cafe suggest it is best for all involved that I focus on sound not smell. #
- The Kindle Fire doesn't have a microphone? #
- The galleries today at 49 Geary in oddly warm San Francisco were all humming with window fans. #
- Being in your home while construction to your home is taking place is like the the Fantastic Voyage of dentistry. #
- Occasional reminder: if you do The Facebook, there's a Disquiet.com page for that: http://t.co/DNmSGwqD #
- My http://t.co/xOB96gVV page was powered by @delicious but the Delicious relaunch has broken it. #
- Tuesday noon siren in San Francisco. Multi-speaker echo effect especially clear, as house lacks several windows (having them replaced today) #
- I submit that the Thunderbird requirements for Windows 7 understate the hardware minimums: http://t.co/Cw8Jw8Gm #
- Every six months someone dies who was "considered the founder of bluegrass." #
- Frotz: No iPad should be without one. #
- The music of a dry cleaner: http://t.co/MToXjm9M (with video) #
- Enjoying the Daemon/Ready Player One/Reamde gamer-inspired novels? Solid piece on AmberMUSH MUD's influence on writers: http://t.co/cRiXMkOR #
- Forgot to mark my @goodreads review of Davis' Satie bio for spoilers. Hope people don't mind I note Satie dies. #theideaofthespoilerisstupid #
- Very much looking forward to APE this weekend. Hope to have a new Sketches of Sound mini together but may have to just hand out last year's. #
- Proj Gutenberg founder had no mobile phone, yet his work made my phone valuable by letting me read books: http://t.co/0PNNVIA9 via @glennf #
- Haven't used desktop in two weeks. Benefits of (relative) quiet of laptop outweigh noise of fans and drives. #nextstepssd #
- Album "showcases [X]'s award winning songwriting which has earned her multiple awards" #greatmomentsinmusicpr #
- Stopped by Long Now as part of the @mechanicrawl. Heard the 10k-year bells. Now on to the SS Jeremiah O'Brien. #
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.