Disquiet – Page 461 – Listening to culture. Playing with audio. Sounding out technology. Composing in code.

Weekend Plans

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

March 12, 2021March 12, 2021 / By Marc Weidenbaum

“Skin conductivity, what’s your function? Hookin’ up modules like VCAs and gates.” These are the AllFlesh buttons, for use with modular synthesizers and other devices that accept the sort of control voltage that makes Eurorack equipment, such as pictured here, function. Usually one would patch a cable into one of those jacks from another device that would send it directions, but with AllFlesh the human body, specifically the finger, completes the circuit and thus any input jack can, in effect, become a button. (Details at [landscape.fm/allflesh](https://www.landscape.fm/allflesh).)

Disquiet Junto Project 0480: Ongsay Aftcray

The Assignment: Record a piece of music by employing Pig Latin as a technique.

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

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0480: Ongsay Aftcray

The Assignment: Record a piece of music by employing Pig Latin as a technique.

Step 1: This project is informed by Pig Latin. From the Oxford English Dictionary: “a secret language formed from English by transferring the initial consonant or consonant cluster of each word to the end of the word and adding a vocalic syllable.” By way of example, “Pig Latin” in Pig Latin becomes “Igpay Atinlay.” “Disquiet Junto” in Pig Latin becomes “Isquietday Untojay.”

Step 2: Consider how you might apply the technique of Pig Latin to a preexisting piece of music, perhaps one of your own, or perhaps someone else’s (a remix of something from the public domain, for example). You might cut up a melodic sequence and append the starts of phrases to their ends. This needn’t by any means involve words or voice. Just use Pig Latin as a guide, one that informs how you take something that exists and then rearrange its constituent parts methodically into something else.

Step 3: Record a piece of music employing the approach you develop as a result of Step 2.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0480” (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 “disquiet0480” (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-0480-ongsay-aftcray/42680](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0480-ongsay-aftcray/42680)

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

Length: The length is up to you. Ore more to the point: Ethay engthlay isyay upyay otay ouyay.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0480” 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 480th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Ongsay Aftcray (The Assignment: Record a piece of music by employing Pig Latin as a technique) — at:

https://disquiet.com/0480/

The Miracle of Television

And the marvel of Lissajous figures

March 10, 2021 / By Marc Weidenbaum

These images are the logo of a 1949 book titled *The Miracle of Television*. I wasn’t sure if the logo was specific to the book, or was more broadly that of the publisher, Wilcox & Follett Co. Two friends (Deb Chachra and Jason Richardson) explained they are Lissajous figures, meaning they’re almost certainly specific to the book.

*The Miracle of Television* was published in 1949, or 21 years prior to Harlan Ellison’s *The Glass Teat*, which could have been titled *The Misfortune of Television* (“ours has become a society where shadow and reality intermix to the final elimination of any degree of rational selectivity on the part of those whose lives are manipulated”).

Karlehag’s “Spring”

Live modular synthesizer performance

March 9, 2021March 9, 2021 / By Marc Weidenbaum

This is a dream of a piece by Tobias Karlehag, whose “Spring” is an evershfting melodic line, supported by a shimmering sequence of ambient pads. The melody is quite brief and cyclical, and yet something about the accumulation of tones, the slight variations in permutations, the occasional appearance of what seem to be choral vocal samples, all adds up to something far more life-like than the individual parts might suggest. Throughout, Karlehag’s darts in and out of view, maintaining the balance, implementing small changes.

This is the latest video I’ve added to [my ongoing YouTube playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAgCxRbmR1MJxihgJkCPEnehAPvjoF71-) of fine live performances of ambient music. Video originally posted at [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUpKRMkLSUA). More from Karlehag at [tobiaskarlehag.tumblr.com](https://tobiaskarlehag.tumblr.com/).

Danish Turbines

As recorded by Robert Cole Rizzi

March 8, 2021 / By Marc Weidenbaum

rizzi · Windturbines recorded with LOM Audio Geofon and Usi pro

Robert Cole Rizzi files this sonic report from wind turbines near where he lives in Kolding, Denmark. The recordings employ the [Geofón](https://disquiet.com/2020/01/14/geofon-lom/) made by LOM, an instrument company in Bratislava, Slovakia. The Geofón is an especially sensitive microphone, its technology having originated for seismic measurements. In the six tracks that Rizzi posted, we hear the mechanisms and the drones, the death-ambient routinized turbulence, of the wind machines doing their thing. Some of the tracks are quite violent, notably the third, which includes a squeal that on first listen might be mistaken for that of a bird, though the subsequent repetitions makes clear it’s simply a result of the machine turning. While all the tracks have a meditative sameness once they get rolling, they aren’t immune to change. Track five in particular seems to rev up at one point, like it’s suddenly increased power. Many of the tracks have the industrial whir of those extended YouTube videos of the engine room of the Starship Enterprise. The first and fifth are my favorites. If deep gray were a sound, it would sound like these tracks, especially if it were a deep gray that’s rich with imperfections and prone to wear.

Playlist originally posted at [soundcloud.com/rizzi](https://soundcloud.com/rizzi/sets/windturbines-recorded-with-lom-audio-geofon-and-usi-pro). More from Rizzi at [twitter.com/RobertColeRizzi](https://twitter.com/RobertColeRizzi).