Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group, 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. A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required. There’s no pressure to do every project. It’s weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when you have the time.
Tracks will be added to this playlist for the duration of the project:
This project was posted in the early evening, California time, on Thursday, December 15, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, December 19, 2016.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0259: Signals Lost Summon up a horror story in sound.
Step 1: There is a cool recent short fiction collection of horror stories, all with sound as their subject. The book is titled Lost Signals, and it contains 24 pieces of fiction, one of them, “The Night Wire” by H.F. Arnold, dating as far back as 1926.
Step 2: We’re going to take a short segment of one of the stories and try to represent it in sound. The story is “Transmission” by T.E. Grau. It’s about a mysterious radio station. You can either use the following segment, or read the book and find a different section of roughly similar length:
“Max was pondering the important issue of how petrogylphs differed from hieroglyphs when the radio halted its roll at the very far end of the electronic dial. After a brief silence, the weak signal transmitted indistinct sounds, like whispers, intermingled with an odd chanting that faded in and out like a spectral dirge. Intrigued by this strange combination, and hoping for a broadcast of a lonely Indian powwow, Max turned up the volume, but the higher it went, the softer the voice and chant became, going silent. There was no apparent signal, but the radio scan was still stopped, locked in on something”
Step 3: Render the text in Step 2 (or that you choose yourself from the book Lost Signals). However, do not read the text. Just let the text inform the sounds.
Five More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Per the instructions below, be sure to include the project tag “disquiet0259″ (no spaces) in the name of your track. If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to my locating the tracks and creating a playlist of them.
Step 2: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.
Step 3: In the following discussion thread at llllllll.co please consider posting your track.
http://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0259-lost-signals/5726
Step 4: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 5: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Deadline: This project was posted in the early evening, California time, on Thursday, December 15, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, December 19, 2016.
Length: The length is up to you, but three to four minutes sounds about right.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0259”in the title of the track, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.
Upload: When participating in this project, post one finished track with the project tag, and be sure to 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. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.
Download: It is preferable that your track is set as downloadable, and that it allows for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution).
Linking: When posting the track online, please be sure to include this information:
More on this 259th weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Signals Lost: Summon up a horror story in sound” — at:
https://disquiet.com/0259/
The text that inspired this is from the book Lost Signals, from by Perpetual Publishing out of San Antonio, Texas. More details on the book at:
perpetualpublishing.com/product/lost-signals/
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
https://disquiet.com/junto/
Subscribe to project announcements here:
http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
http://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0259-lost-signals/5726
There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.