twitter.com/disquiet: Armonica, GIF(t)s, Bosch

From the past week

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I do this manually each Saturday, collating recent tweets I made at [twitter.com/disquiet](https://twitter.com/disquiet/), which I think of as my public notebook. Some tweets [pop up](https://disquiet.com/2021/07/14/speech-to-text-as-the-new-cut-up/) (in [expanded](https://disquiet.com/2021/07/16/this-week-or-so-in-vocal-deepfakes/) form or [otherwise](https://disquiet.com/2021/07/17/the-rain-is-its-own-sort-of-pixel/)) [on](https://disquiet.com/2021/07/13/im-on/) Disquiet.com sooner. It’s personally informative to revisit the previous week of thinking out loud.

▰ I love when members of the Disquiet Junto post images of their works-in-progress. These are photos by participants’ set-ups from doing the latest project, which explores the glass armonica of Benjamin Franklin, whose original Junto society inspired our own.

The top one is by [sixolet/Naomi](https://soundcloud.com/user-978662985) from the San Francisco Bay Area. The bottom one is by [RabMusicLab](https://soundcloud.com/rabmusiclab) of Heidelberg, Germany.

▰ Oh, some Moog-stuff in that new Hulu documentary about Paul McCartney (featuring Rick Rubin on mixer and cross-talk interview chatter), via Rob Sheffield at [rollingstone.com](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-reviews/mccartney-3-2-1-tv-review-beatles-rick-rubin-hulu-1196447/). (“Day or night he’ll be there any time at all, Doctor Robert”).

▰ Diced carrots are the Legos of the kitchen (unless, of course, there’s already Lego on your kitchen floor).

▰ I’ve wondered why I say GIF as in “gift” (not as in a kind of peanut butter). Today I recalled: I learned the word in the early 1990s from a graphic designer who traded “gift images”* he made with other designers. Time passed before I learned “gift” was in fact “GIF.”

*obscene 😳

▰ Just loved how just before his final confrontation in the final season of *Bosch*, the title character went ahead and quoted the show’s long-running theme song (that he “can’t let go”). Not quite breaking the fourth wall, but sure as heck knocking on it.

▰ Wax Trax!, ECM, Warp, Leaving

▰ OK, on that note, have a great weekend. Between notes-tidying and bike riding and longform writing and recipe-trying-out and an inevitable nap … well, we’ll see what there is time for. See you Monday, or maybe Tuesday.

The Rain Is Its Own Sort of Pixel

A video wander by Nomadic Ambience

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Speaking of the cultural territory [around deepfakes](https://disquiet.com/2021/07/16/this-week-or-so-in-vocal-deepfakes/): this video of a walk around Manhattan in the rain is so high-resolution, its stabilization so strong, that it is as if we are ourselves playing, or at least watching, a video game of New York. We are reminded constantly that we are looking at pixels of reality. And of course, the world of this Manhattan is largely digital to begin with, what with all the massive video billboards defining the circumspect horizons of Time Square and its adjoining blocks. Throughout, there is sound, as high-resolution as the footage, the stereo spectrum rich with activity. There may be hybrids and electrics among the passing vehicles, but in the rain it doesn’t matter. The whir is a memory of catalytic masses. The rain is its own sort of pixel.

Video by Nomadic Ambience originally posted to [YouTube](https://youtu.be/a-yUAFJbQtM).

This Week (or So) in Vocal Deepfakes:

Lightly annotated

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

1. The director of a documentary film uses an AI engine so that his celebrated, deceased subject can speak from beyond the grave: [theverge.com](https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/15/22578707/anthony-bourdain-documentary-deepfake-voice).

2. A musician creates a business built around deepfake technology, letting other musicians engage with her voice: [rollingstone.com](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/holly-herndon-ai-deepfake-tool-1197200/).

3. Bedroom producers make “fan fiction” songs featuring the AI-engineered voices of actual stars: [billboard.com](https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/9596987/deepfake-music-imitations-history/).

4. Synthetic voices belatedly catch up with CGI, and all-digital animation may be in our near future: [technologyreview.com](https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/07/09/1028140/ai-voice-actors-sound-human/).

Initial vaguely related thoughts:

– All bands start as cover bands.

– There’s a whole culture of nightclub performers, cover bands, and actors having careers (or partial careers) being other people.

– There’s an uncanny valley between John Fogerty being sued for sounding like himself and the verdict against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams in the “Blurred Lines” case.

– A lot of the voices of fictional robots and androids in film and television are the voices of humans (see: *2001: A Space Odyssey*, *WarGames*, *Max Headroom*, *Colossus: The Forbin Project*, and so on).

– The future is especially meaningful when viewed through the lens of the past.

Disquiet Junto Project 0498: Sonic Entomologist

The Assignment: Create a new hybrid insect from the sound of two different insects.

/ 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 19, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, June 15, 2021.

Tracks will be added to the playlist for the duration of the project.

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

**Disquiet Junto Project 0498: Sonic Entomologist**
The Assignment: Create a new hybrid insect from the sound of two different insects.

This project is the second of three that are being done over the course of as many months in collaboration with the 2021 Musikfestival Bern, which will be held in Switzerland from September 1 through 5 under the motto “schwärme” (“swarms”). For this reason, a German translation is provided below. 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 third 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.

Step 1: You will be playing mad scientist this week, or at least sonic scientist. Put that hat on.

Step 2: A large number of insects were invented for the previous project in this series. Many of them were made available for download and subsequent remixing. Check them out here:

[https://we.tl/t-dWFMGwmyad](https://we.tl/t-dWFMGwmyad)

Step 3: Choose two insects from the ones available in Step 2. Imagine a hybrid of the two insects, created in a laboratory.

Step 4: By combining the sounds of the two insects selected in Step 3, record the sound of that hybrid you imagined. What does it sound like? Is it a refined creation, or a Frankenstein nightmare? Is it better, stronger, faster, or prone to mutation and ill health?

Background: There will be public display cases at the festival, and we will set up motion triggers that cause an insect sound to occur when people pass by. We will do so with signage explaining that it documents experimental insect life. The participants whose work is included will be listed by name.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0498” (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 “disquiet0498” (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 tracks in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:

[https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0498-sonic-entomologist/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0498-sonic-entomologist/)

Step 5: Annotate your tracks with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #disquietjunto and #musikfestivalbern 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.

Additional Details:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, July 19, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, July 15, 2021.

Length: The length of your finished track should be 20 seconds.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0498” 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 498th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Sonic Entomologist (The Assignment: Create a new hybrid insect from the sound of two different insects) — at: [https://disquiet.com/0498/](https://disquiet.com/0498/)

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/](https://disquiet.com/junto/)

Subscribe to project announcements here: [https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/](https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/)

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: [https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0498-sonic-entomologist/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0498-sonic-entomologist/)

There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

The image associated with this project is by Nick Southall, and used thanks to Flickr and a Creative Commons license allowing editing (cropped with text added) for non-commercial purposes:

[https://flic.kr/p/7Syf86](https://flic.kr/p/7Syf86)

[https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/)

. . .
Continue reading “Disquiet Junto Project 0498: Sonic Entomologist”

Speech-to-Text as the New Cut-up

Jamming algorithmic econo

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Judging by this recent interaction with my phone, speech-to-text (STT) still has a long ways to go. Consider that the message being transcribed here was, with the exception of my name (Marc Weidenbaum, apparently aka “Mark we D Bond”), a rote automated robocall script that thousands of people have no doubt received. (That is “Mark we D Bond,” aka “Mark, we didn’t bun,” aka “Mark, we did one.) You’d think that after that many attempts by a system to transcribe the same audio over and over and over, the system would have accomplished a closer approximation.

A friend who saw me post this on social media, when it was a slightly more inchoate thought, pointed out that this STT incident was like the machine had written lyrics for the band the Minutemen (an especially ironic observation, since the band’s singer was D Boon and the Minutemen recorded for a label called SST). That idea made me think about the [cut-up](http://www.languageisavirus.com/creative-writing-techniques/william-s-burroughs-cut-ups.php#.YO9iz0xlBS8) work of William S. Burroughs, and how with STT you could write rough-draft lyrics for a song by saying words along with the melody, and then have the transcription service make mincemeat gibberish of the rough draft, and then you could sing the resulting mincemeat gibberish with full conviction.

Oh, and the “Prima Newman” sentence was in Spanish, as was part of the preceding sentence. “Newman on the way day” is “número nueve” (number nine, number nine, number nine …). It is fascinating, and revealing, that the automated STT service can’t switch gears particularly well when the speaker, even an automated one, changes language so quickly. For individuals in situations (protests, authoritarian regimes, etc.) where they are trying to avoid STT surveillance (scenario: audio > STT > algorithmic filter > legal/police action), this multilingual approach seems like a potential tactic (along the lines of playing copyrighted material to avoid footage being archived publicly on YouTube, TikTok, etc.).