Author: Marc Weidenbaum

Disquiet Junto Project 0712: Zebra Code

The Assignment: What rhythm do you hear in a bar code?

/ 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.

Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks also generally appear in the lllllll.co discussion thread.

Disquiet Junto Project 0712: Zebra Code
The Assignment: What rhythm do you hear in a bar code?

Step 1: Locate something you purchased or received that has a zebra code, or bar code, on the packaging.

Step 2: Interpret the bar code from Step 1 as a rhythm.

Step 3: Make music using the rhythm from Step 2.

This project was proposed thanks to Jason Richardson, who shared this Boing Boing post:

https://boingboing.net/2025/08/19/will-it-riff-turns-product-barcodes-into-heavy-metal-jams.html

Tasks Upon Completion:

Label: Include “disquiet0712” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.

Upload: Post your track to a public account (SoundCloud preferred but by no means required). It’s best to focus on one track, but if you post more than one, clarify which is the “main” rendition.

Share: Post your track and a description/explanation at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0712-zebra-code/

Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you. 

Deadline: Monday, August 25, 2025, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

About: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Newsletter: https://juntoletter.disquiet.com/

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 712th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Zebra Code — The Assignment: What rhythm do you hear in a bar code? — at https://disquiet.com/0712/.

Geo-Curious

A beautiful day in the neighborhood

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I went for a walk at the end of the day, down to the Bay at China Beach, here in San Francisco, and I encountered two microphone installations toward the end of the road. There’s a lot of construction going on, both domestic and municipal, and these boxes appear to be either seismic or noise monitoring setups. Maybe both. The company employed to do the monitoring is Integrated Geotechnical Solutions, Inc. (more at igs-inc.com). I stood at both sites, contemplating aloud what they might be, fully aware I was doing so with microphones in plain sight, but also wondering if the mics were even concerned with signals audible to human ears. One of the boxes employs solar power. The power source of the other was unclear. I have a tiny little noise monitor, called the AudioMoth, and these seem to be sort of like large, industrial versions of that. I hope to learn more.