I do this manually each Saturday, usually in the morning over coffee: collating most of the little comments I’ve made on social media (as well as related notes), which I think of as my public scratch pad, during the preceding week. These days that mostly means post.lurk.org. Sometimes the material pops up earlier or in expanded form.
▰ Oh, cool. The Wire has a new design — and that mention of Negativland on the cover of the issue due out next week is for a new documentary I reviewed, Stand By for Failure, directed by Ryan Worsley.
▰ Best spam comment my blog has received in quite a while (this was on a post simply titled “520 Hz”)
▰ “Traverse the world’s lush soundscapes and record them with defined, dimensional precision.” Season: A Letter to the Future, a new video game in which a young woman collects memories, including audio field recordings, of a world in decline, is available as of today, after a long long wait, on PlayStation and Steam.
▰ Not all AI art looks like it belongs framed on a wall in Beaker’s living room, but if it looks like it belongs framed on a wall in Beaker’s living room then it’s likely AI art.
▰ Maybe 2023 has just melted my brain, but this captcha looks like it was created by an AI:
▰ Me a week ago: I really don’t care about whatever DC’s big new movie/TV changes turn out to be.
Me this morning: What?! There’s an Authority movie coming?! I am deeply invested in all casting news, especially Jack Hawksmoor.
▰ Sometimes you just need to stop reading that book you’ve been reading and move on (not a book I’ve mentioned here)
▰ Dang, the #HourlyComicsDay2023 hashtag yields exactly one participant from my Mastodon vantage. I recommend looking on Instagram if small-press comics are your thing.
▰ It’s a good day when I spell R. Murray Schafer’s name correctly the first time.
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, 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.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, February 6, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, February 2, 2023.
Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks appear in the lllllll.co discussion thread.
Step 1: The goal of this project is to simply perform and record again something you’ve performed and recorded previously. Think about something you’d like to revisit.
Step 2: Now rerecord the piece of music you decided upon in Step 1.
Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0579” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your tracks.
Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0579” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation of a project playlist.
Step 3: Upload your tracks. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your tracks.
Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:
Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #DisquietJunto so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.
Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Step 8: Also join in the discussion on the Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to [email protected] for Slack inclusion.
Note: Please post one track for this weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.
Additional Details:
Length: The length is up to you.
Deadline: Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, February 6, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, February 2, 2023.
Upload: When participating in this project, 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 always best to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).
For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:
More on this 579th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Memory Serves (The Assignment: Rerecord a piece of music), at: https://disquiet.com/0579/
Tape, plastic, metal — all the essential ingredients of a warm welcome. There’s so much going on here, so much aftermarket iterative change, from the built-in doorbell button, to the intercom speaker, to the standalone button reinforced in a protective container and then labeled “BELL” because the whole thing has gotten so complicated — and heck, why not replace the key with a keypad while one is at it. This is a marvel of domestic hodgepodge, of the not so much dark side as the deeply mundane side of DIY. It takes a lot of care to not care this much.
Cindy Williams, best known for her role as the latter half of the comedy duo who comprised Laverne and Shirley (1976-1983), died last week at age 75. For those especially attentive to the way sound is employed by filmmakers, she is perhaps more specifically niche-famous as half of a quite different couple, the one at the center of the intrigue that was Francis Ford Coppola’s classic 1974 film The Conversation (the other half is the gentleman wearing a tie in this still — not the mime). To watch The Conversation is to hear their conversation over and over, each time the phrasing gaining new meaning, thanks in large part to the ingenuity of sound designer Walter Murch, who worked right around the same time with Williams on George Lucas’ American Graffiti (1973).
It was in American Graffiti that Murch put what he called “worldizing” into effect. This meant that the sound of, say, a car radio was heard as if it were right there in the car seen on-screen, lending new realism to the storytelling, bringing the viewer ever more into the sensorium of the characters. In The Conversation, the potential of sound as a narrative tool emerged fully formed, at the behest of the character Harry Caul, played by Gene Hackman. To watch The Conversation is to hear the same sentence over and over — a sentence spoken to Williams (who infused the role, as Ann, with an essential tenderness), and scrutinized to distraction by an obsessed Caul: “He’d kill us if he got the chance.”
