My friend Mahlen Morris, who proposed this past week’s Disquiet Junto project and who develops some very cool virtual synthesizer modules, recently came to recognize that when his phone records video in slow-motion, the resulting sound is, naturally, also slowed down. Here’s a short clip of a metal chain clanking, to provide an example of the effect. When recorded this slowly, the sound of the clank has a depth and detail that is unlike the almost binary on/off thunk of it in real (i.e., real-time) life. And in addition, there is a haunting background drone, perhaps just artifacts of the chain, or a passing plane, or something else entirely. No matter, it’s a splendid effect.
Please Forget (Everything)
A sound collage by Charles Lindsay
My friend Charles Lindsay — who long ago invited me to speak at SETI, back in 2014, when he was running the artist-in-residence program there — asks: “Can AI become sentient? If AI can become sentient, can it become conscious? If AI can become conscious, can it become enlightened?” And he does so in the context of an exhibit of his art currently showing at Heron Arts here in San Francisco. It will run through October 30. In addition to a range of pieces that explore the intersection of cybernetics and enlightenment, he’s been hosting a series of events at Heron. Just this week there was an interesting conversation I attended about Art, AI, and psychedelics. There’s also this hour-long soundtrack he created, a mix of field recordings, music, voices, and other sonic effluvia. He explains that among the founds sounds heard in this flowing collage are “the persistent ‘do not forget anything’ messages delivered by synthesized voices in all manner of public transportation in Japan.” It is from those messages that he derived the name of his show, Please Forget (Everything).
Disquiet Junto Project 0668: All Right Then, Keep Your Secrets
The Assignment: Bury a secret sound until it is no longer identifiable.
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 0668: All Right Then, Keep Your Secrets
The Assignment: Bury a secret sound until it is no longer identifiable.
This project was proposed by Mahlen Morris.
Step 1: Record a 30-second chunk of sound from a single source. This may or may not involve a microphone. This recording shall be referred to as The Sound.
Step 2: Manipulate the Sound extensively. Stretch, break, torture, soothe, remove, heighten The Sound. Reveal subtleties of The Sound you didn’t notice when you recorded it.
Step 3: Layer the results of Step 2 in a way that pleases you. Revel in it.
Step 4: Reveal to no one the original source of The Sound. Ever. In the description when posting your finished track, you can say what you did to The Sound, but do not even hint at the source.
Step 5: Keep and carry that secret. Not all must be revealed.
Tasks Upon Completion:
Label: Include “disquiet0668” (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-0668-all-right-then-keep-your-secrets/
Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.
Additional Details:
Length: The length is up to you. How hard do you need to work to keep your secret?
Deadline: Monday, October 21, 2024, 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 668th weekly Disquiet Junto project, All Right Then, Keep Your Secrets — The Assignment: Bury a secret sound until it is no longer identifiable — at https://disquiet.com/0668/
This project was proposed by Mahlen Morris.
The image associated with this track is a detail from a photo by Chris Riebschlager, found on Flickr and used thanks to a Creative Commons license:
https://flic.kr/p/2eGb3D
Moran x (James + Dobson) =
Oh, "Superhuman"
Kelly Moran tapped the great Loraine James and her percussionist colleague Fyn Dobson to do a remix of the track “Superhuman,” off Moran’s recent album, Moves in the Field. The title of the track references how Moran’s instrument on the recording is a Yamaha Disklavier, a tool that allows her to compose and perform music that would be, in effect, impossible for an unaided human to accomplish on their own. In the able hands of James and Dobson, the source material is muffled, its intricacies heard as if through glass, and that sonic shape is improvised upon with drums and synthesized tones, individual bits of the piano occasionally peeking out.
And here’s the original track for comparison’s sake:
A WFMU Tribute to Steve Roden
With Daniel Blumin, Stephen Vitiello, and Michael Raphael
WFMU ran a tribute to the late Steve Roden on October 14, 2024. Roden died in September 2023, and for this show, its host, Daniel Blumin, played tracks selected with Stephen Vitiello and Michael Raphael, and he interviewed them, and the show also includes interview segments featuring Roden himself. I was excited to see here the recording “Sandy,” which Roden and Vitiello collaborated on for the 44th Disquiet Junto project, way back in November 2012, following Hurricane Sandy’s assault on the East Coast. The project, and this track, utilized field recordings made by Raphael. The WFMU show opens with a recording of Roden singing as a child, and includes numerous pieces of his own work, plus 7” records from his personal collection. Roden was an instigator of what came to be called “lowercase” sound, music that emphasizes small noises and quiet gestures. He was also a visual artist, and a collector, and a wonderful human being, whom I got to spend time with over the years. This broadcast is a great introduction to Roden and his music and the way he thought about and worked with sound.
Check out the archived WFMU show at wfmu.org. More on the Disquiet Junto project that led to the track “Sandy” here at disquiet.com. Far as I can tell, the first mention of Roden on my site was back on October 29, 2000, a year and a couple weeks shy of a quarter century ago.