No Fuses Inside

An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

There was an article in the Village Voice — or maybe it was Interview — many years ago by someone who had their car broken into repeatedly. At some point the car stereo was stolen, and the author put a sign in the dashboard window that read: “No radio.” When the car was broken into subsequently, tape cassettes were taken from the glove compartment. The author replaced the sign to, if memory serves, read: “No Kerouac, no Coltrane.”

There are electronics in plain sight all around the city, little bits of elemental public-utility infrastructure that accrue value, or at least perceived value. At some point, something becomes valuable enough that aspiring thieves apparently need to be informed what isn’t inside these municipal lock boxes.

twitter.com/disquiet: phone alerts & a singing bridge

From the past week

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I do this manually each Saturday, usually in the morning over coffee: collating most of the tweets I made the past week at [twitter.com/disquiet](https://twitter.com/disquiet), which I think of as my public notebook. Some tweets pop up sooner in expanded form or otherwise on Disquiet.com. I’ve found it personally informative to revisit the previous week of thinking out loud. This isn’t a full accounting. Often there are, for example, conversations on Twitter that don’t really make as much sense out of the context of Twitter itself. And sometimes I tweak them a bit, given the additional space. And sometimes I re-order them just a bit.

▰ Pretty sure that in my dream I heard the iOS “you have a text message” ping and then woke up, ’cause there was nothing on my phone when this happened. (I didn’t check at the time but I did in the morning.)

▰ Pretty sure the Golden Gate Bridge can, again, be heard from the backyard. Hard to tell. Definitely not as pronounced as it’s been, and the wind making noise of the trees and bushes masks it a bit. But I think it’s there. I’d register this as an improvement.

▰ I’d like a *Condor* / *Old Man* crossover just for Bob Balaban and Joel Grey to have a tête-à-tête.

(This would be complicated by Leem Lubany having to play two very different people separated by decades, nationalities, and continents — but she could pull it off.)

▰ Every time I see a Webb Telescope image my first thought is, Yeah but when’s the second season of *Star Trek: Strange New Worlds*?

Disquiet Junto Project 0550: Abrupt Probability

The Assignment: Make music based on a chance graphic score.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

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.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, July 18, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, July 14, 2022.

These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):

**Disquiet Junto Project 0550: Abrupt Probability**
The Assignment: Make music based on a chance graphic score.

This project is the first of three that are being done in collaboration with the 2022 Musikfestival Bern, which will be held in Switzerland from September 7 through 11. The topic this year is “unvermittelt,” which is a little tricky to translate. Literally it’s “unmediated,” but it can also mean “sudden,” “abrupt,” or “immediate.”

We are working at the invitation of Tobias Reber, an early Junto participant, who is in charge of the educational activities of the festival. This is the fourth year in a row that the Junto has collaborated with Musikfestival Bern.

Select recordings resulting from these three Disquiet Junto projects will be played and displayed throughout the festival.

Also, if you post your graphic score (see below) for this week’s project, it will be considered for display at the festival, either in public viewing box or in the Cage Room.

Step 1: Consider the nature of everyday randomness.

Step 2: Devise a situation (thrown coins, drained tea leaves, patterns in condensation, etc.) that depicts randomness visually.

Step 3: Take a photo of the chance-inducing scenario you decided upon in Step 2.

Step 4: Edit the photo from Step 3 to create a graphic score.

Step 5: Create an original piece of music that is an interpretation of the score you created in Step 4.

Also: When posting the track, describe a bit of your thinking and process.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0550” (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 “disquiet0550” (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:

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: [https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0550-abrupt-probability/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0550-abrupt-probability/)

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:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, July 18, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, July 14, 2022.

Length: The length is up to you. Maybe leave it to chance?

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0550” in the title of the tracks, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.

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 550th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Abrupt Probability (The Assignment: Make music based on a chance graphic score) — at: https://disquiet.com/0550/

Thanks to Tobias Reber and Musikfestival Bern for collaboration on this project. More on the festival at:

[https://www.musikfestivalbern.ch/](https://www.musikfestivalbern.ch/)
[https://www.instagram.com/musikfestival_bern](https://www.instagram.com/musikfestival_bern)
[https://www.facebook.com/musikfestivalbern](https://www.facebook.com/musikfestivalbern)

More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: [https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0550-abrupt-probability/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0550-abrupt-probability/)

About the July 14 Disquiet Junto

Slight delay

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The July 14, 2022, Disquiet Junto project will go out a little later in the day than has been the norm. The projects used to be posted fairly late in the day each Thursday. This year I’ve posted right after midnight, Pacific Time, each Thursday. It’s been like clockwork, though the email has gone out at varying times because it can’t be automated in the system I currently use ([tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto](https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto)). There are some moving parts for tomorrow’s project I’ve got to sort out, so it’ll go out a bit later in the day. I’m mostly posting this so that people who might come to disquiet.com while wondering what’s up will see the notice.