At the end of each week, I usually collate a lightly edited collection of recent comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I tag on what books I may have finished reading. Knowing I’ll revisit my social media posts serves, I’ve found, as a positive and mellowing influence on my online activity. Some items show up on disquiet.com before this post, in which case I don’t repeat them. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I generally take weekends off social media.
▰ Yeah, I kept pausing the “Jumpupw!nya” video to see what Eurorack synthesizer modules (and other instruments) Chad Hugo (of the Neptunes) uses.
▰ Yo, manga-headz: will there be more of the series Tatsumaki by Tomoko Yamashita (of Ikoku Nikki fame)? The web comic had five issues in January, four in February, and one in March — and silence since. Thanks.
▰ Regarding this week’s project, number 0760: Remember that Benjamin Franklin — after whose 1727 Junto our Disquiet Junto collective is named — famously harnessed the power of lightning with his “kite experiment.”
▰ I finished reading one novel this week, George Saunders’ Vigil. Read a bunch of manga, too, but lost track. I’ll tally it shortly
Discommunication, a fantastic book of street photography by Hiroshima, Japan–based artist Yoshi Yubai (right, white t-shirt), published by Landslide, a Sydney, Australia–based imprint run by Jake Wotherspoon (left), is part of the ongoing SF Art Book Far (sfartbookfair.com), which opened last night, Thursday, July 23, and runs through Sunday, July 26.
I wrote the book’s essay (which I’ll publish online in the near future), and I spent the second half of today, Friday, at the fair, where Landslide held its launch event (at booth D14, shown here), at 1150 25th Street in San Francisco, aka part of the Minnesota Street Project (minnesotastreetproject.com).
I’m going to try to make it back Sunday, July 26, in part to hang out some more at the Landslide booth, and also for the Santino “Tino” Gonzales (santinogonzales.com) performance for his Holy Dirt album release from Deep Time Press. And, you know, to buy some more books.
The Assignment: Use audio of a light bulb to express the pervasiveness of energy.
/ By Marc Weidenbaum
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have five days to record and upload a track in response to the project instructions.
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. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align.
Disquiet Junto Project 0760: Harness the Light The Assignment: Use audio of a light bulb to express the pervasiveness of energy.
This year at Musikfestival Bern, the musician and media artist Michael Vorfeld will have an installation that “investigates lightning as a natural phenomenon, a carrier of electrical energy, a source of light, and a source of danger.” He has provided us with a sample of his Light Bulb Music setup for our creative use:
There is one step in this project: Utilize Michael Vorfeld’s shared sample in the creation of an original piece of music/sound that expresses and explores the pervasiveness — whether subtle or overt — of light and energy all around us.
Bonus: Remember that Benjamin Franklin — after whose 1727 Junto our Disquiet Junto collective is named — famously harnessed the power of lightning with his “kite experiment.”
Additional Background: The immediate and intense encounter of light and sound during thunderstorms and lightning is one of the primal distinctive experiences of humankind. Already at a very early state, lightning has also shown its enormous potential of electric energy. With the discovery and the utilization of electric current in the 19th and early 20th centuries, our lifestyles were confronted with radical changes, in which the invention of the light bulb and the overall general dissemination of electric light plays an essential role. Through the increased use of electric light at the beginning of the 20th century, the urban environment received its modern, nighttime appearance. Street lanterns, shop window and entertainment lighting, the headlights of cars, light architecture and advertisement lighting spreading out from the upper storeys to the roofs all came to define the modern society of light. Thereby, the light bulb became the symbol of modernity and urban ingenuity. The sound file made by Michael Vorfeld is the result of direct interplay of electric current and a light bulb made audible. The changes in the light intensity, the incandescence of the filament, and the rhythmic variety of the flickering light is directly transformed into a comprehensive and microcosmic electroacoustic world of sound.
About Michael Vorfeld: Michael Vorfeld is a musician and media artist, plays percussion and self-designed string instruments, and realizes electroacoustic sound pieces. He works in the field of experimental, improvised music, and sound art, realizing installations and performances with light and sound, and working with photography and film. In addition to his solo activities, he is a member of various ensembles and collaborates with artists who work in many different art forms. His list of activities includes numerous concerts, performances, and exhibitions, as well as the realization of site-specific works in Europe, America, Asia and Australia. He is based in Berlin.
More on Musikfestival Bern at https://musikfestivalbern.ch. Many thanks to the festival’s Tobias Reber for the invitation to again collaborate, and to Michael Vorfeld. This is the eighth consecutive year of Bern x Junto collaborations. This is the third of this year’s four planned projects.
Tasks Upon Completion:
Label: Include “disquiet0760” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.
Upload: A person participating in the Disquiet Junto should post only one track per weekly project (SoundCloud account preferred but not required). If on occasion you feel inspired to post more than one track (whether to a single account or across multiple accounts), you should clarify which is the “main” rendition for consideration by fellow members and (if on SoundCloud) for inclusion in the SoundCloud playlist.
License: It’s preferred (but not required) to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., an attribution Creative Commons license).
Please Include When Posting Your Track:
More on the 760th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Harness the Light — The Assignment: Use audio of a light bulb to express the pervasiveness of energy — at disquiet.com/0760.
Introducing the book Discommunication (Landslide) by Yoshi Yubai
/ By Marc Weidenbaum
I am excited to report that I wrote the essay for a gorgeous new book, Discommunication, by Japanese street photographer Yoshi Yubai, released by the Australian publisher Landslide. There will be a signing for the book at the San Francisco Art Book Fair on Friday, July 24, from 4pm to 6pm at booth D14. I’ll be there. Come say hello.
