Each Thursday at the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate.
This assignment was made in the evening, California time, on Thursday, June 13, 2013, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, June 10, as the deadline.
Below are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto.
Disquiet Junto Project 0076: Dream Sound Dream
This project is about dreams and surveillance. It involves the human voice. Some projects require unique resources that not everyone necessarily has: access to an iOS or Android device, ability to record a specific sound, even the simple availability of requisite time. This specific project requires that you have a dream — which not everyone will — sometime between the launch and the close of the project. Then again, if you don’t have a dream, perhaps you will devise an interesting alternative approach.
In this project you will create an original recording that consists of you describing in words a dream or a portion of a dream. The score to your verbal description of the dream will consist of music made from sounds recorded during your sleep. The idea is to explore the feedback correlation between dreams and the sounds of the environment in which those dreams unfold.
These are the steps:
Step 1: Set up a recording device to record the sounds of the room in which you sleep. (Avoid recording any material for which you do not hold the copyright, such as the radio playing from an alarm clock.)
Step 2: Put a notebook or equivalent device (tablet, phone) near your bedside.
Step 3: When you wake, either quickly write down what you recall from your dream, or record yourself speaking about what your recall from your dream.
Step 4: If you opted to write down your dream, then proceed to record yourself recounting the dream.
Step 5: Between Step 3 and Step 4 you have a recording of you describing a dream. Now take the audio that resulted from Step 1 and use elements extracted from that audio as source material for what will serve as score and sound design for your spoken description. You can manipulate the extracted elements as you wish, but do not add anything else to them.
Step 6: Combine the spoken and score/sound-design tracks into one track. You have now completed the project.
Deadline: Monday, June 17, 2013, at 11:59pm wherever you are.
Length: Your track should have a duration of between 30 seconds and five minutes.
Information: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto.
Title/Tag: Include the term “disquiet0076-dreamsound”in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track. Also use the tags “spoken word”and “dream”for your track.
Download: Please consider employing a license that allows for attributed, commerce-free remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution).
Linking: When posting the track, be sure to include this information:
More on this 76th Disquiet Junto project, in which the sounds of the room in which you sleep serve as source audio for a score to you describing your dream, at:
Disquiet Junto Project 0076: Dream Sound DreamMore details on the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/
Image of pillow via Creative Commons and flickr.com.