I’ve passed the logo for this long-ago audio company on the 101 south of San Francisco many many times, but these tapes (hand me downs from a friend) are the first time I’ve owned the product. These date from around 1994, apparently.
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
Each Thursday in the [Disquiet Junto group](https://disquiet.com/junto/), 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.
This project was posted in the late morning, California time, on Thursday, November 10, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, November 14, 2016.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at [tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto](http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto)):
Disquiet Junto Project 0254: Fog and Steam
Make music from two provided samples.
For the 254th weekly project, we’re going to revisit the second project, from back in early January 2012.
Step 1: Download these two samples:
Fog Horn: http://www.freesound.org/people/schaarsen/sounds/69663/
Train Whistle: http://www.freesound.org/people/ecodios/sounds/119963/
Step 2: Create an original piece of music utilizing just those samples from Step 1. You can only use those two samples, and you can do whatever you want with them.
Five More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Per the instructions below, be sure to include the project tag “disquiet0254”(no spaces) in the name of your track. If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to my locating the tracks and creating a playlist of them.
Step 2: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.
Step 3: In the following discussion thread at llllllll.co please consider posting your track. (Assuming you post it on SoundCloud, a search for the tag will help me construct the playlist.)
http://llllllll.co/t/music-of-fog-and-steam-disquiet-junto-project-0254/
Step 4: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 5: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Deadline: This project was posted in the late morning, California time, on Thursday, November 10, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, November 14, 2016.
Length: The length is up to you, but three minutes sounds about right.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0254”in the title of the track, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.
Upload: When participating in this project, post one finished track with the project tag, and 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 necessary, due to the licensing of the source audio, that your track is set as downloadable, and that it allows for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution).
Linking: When posting the track online, please be sure to include this information:
More on this 254th weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Fog and Steam: Make music from two provided samples”— at:
https://disquiet.com/0254/
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
https://disquiet.com/junto/
Subscribe to project announcements here:
http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
llllllll.co/t/music-of-fog-and-steam-disquiet-junto-project-0254/
There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.
Fog horn sample by Schaarsen: http://www.freesound.org/people/schaarsen/sounds/69663/
Train whistle sample by Ecodios: http://www.freesound.org/people/ecodios/sounds/119963/
Image associated with this project is by Paul Johnson and used with a Creative Commons license:
flic.kr/p/6mZQGm
I’ll likely mention this again, since today is sort of a busy day for many people, but the [meetup.com](http://www.meetup.com/futuredraft/events/235424152/) invitation has gone live for the talk I’m giving on doorbells on December 1 in Oakland. Here’s the description:
*You’re visiting someone — a friend, a colleague — and you arrive at their building. You put the tip of one of your fingers up against a tiny button that sits beside the entrance, and you push. Somewhere inside the building a bell resounds. Tied up in that tidy interaction are a host of telling cultural, historical, and technological details about the way machines mediate human interaction.*
*How long do you wait before ringing again? What does the echo of the bell tell you about the interior space? Is the doorbell paired with a camera? Does the camera make you feel suspect, or at least wish that you’d fixed your hair? Will a disembodied voice inquire about your identity? How long have you been standing there? Did the bell ever actually ring? Had you accidentally let your finger slip? Did you perhaps never really register your presence?*
*Marc Weidenbaum, a longtime critic of and community organizer in electronic music, will talk about the cultural history of that everyday pushbutton gadget, the doorbell. He will discuss the intercom’s development in Japan, the rise of the domestic surveillance apparatus, the consumer-product soundscape of everyday life — and, ultimately, what lessons the humble, ubiquitous doorbell provides in regard to the Internet of Things, the smart home, and the role of sound in user interfaces.*
*Marc is the author of the 33 1/3 book on Aphex Twin’s classic album Selected Ambient Works Volume II. His sonic consultancy has included work on GPS mobile apps and coffee-shop sound design, and he has done music supervision for two films, the documentary The Children Next Door and the science fiction movie Youth. He’s exhibited sound art in galleries in Los Angeles, Manhattan, and Dubai, as well as at the San Jose Museum of Art. December 2016 marks the 20th anniversary of his blog, Disquiet.com, which focuses on the intersection of sound, art, and technology.*
The talk will be held at the offices of Futuredraft (futuredraft.com) in Oakland at 304 12th Street Suite 4E. The talk is free, but RSVPing (via that [MeetUp URL](http://www.meetup.com/futuredraft/events/235424152/)) would be nice.
The patterns are where the match is made.
Andreas Gursky’s large-scale photos are rich with repetition. In his current show at the Gagosian gallery in Manhattan there’s a shot from an Amazon warehouse that looks like the Ellis Island of books. It has a clear interest in microscopic detail, commercial markets, and patterns that takes on a rhythmic sensation, much like his earlier photos of rainbow-colored candy shops, and ornate hotels, and massive apartment complex facades.
Richie Hawtin’s music is among the most minimal of technos. Under his own name, as well as under the Plastikman mantel, he pushes white noise and reverb, pin-prick beats and limited palettes, until they submerge the listener in an anxiously monochromatic aesthetic realm. And yet he never is far from the dance floor.
Gursky may have less interest in soft focus and muted colors than Hawtin, but they both embrace and intermingle hardened minimalism and commercial intrigue in their work. Thus it’s a welcome surprise that the musician has created an installation score for that Gagosian exhibit, titled Not Abstract II, which opens on November 10 and will run through December 23. The team-up got a brief mention in today’s [New York Times](http://nyti.ms/2e2Mlbj), following earlier mentions on [dancingastronaut.com](http://www.dancingastronaut.com/2016/11/richie-hawtin-brings-ambient-sound-installation-nyc-art-exhibition/) and [thump.vice.com](https://thump.vice.com/en_us/article/richie-hawtin-sound-installation-new-york-gagosian-gallery) that noted precedents, like Hawtin’s live Guggenheim show in 2013 and a 2012 participation in an Anish Kapoor installation at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Gagosian has posted over eight minutes of the score at its website, [gagosian.com](http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/andreas-gursky–november-10-2016/audio), and better yet it’s set to repeat. It’s little more than a dense ambient room tone serving as backdrop to slow, martial pounding, like the workings of a robotic factory floor documented in all its inhuman glory. A brief note mentions the connection between Gursky and Hawtin: “His unique hypnotic sound echoes Gursky’s exploration of the formal questions of abstraction through scale distortion and rhythmic repetition of motifs.
The combination brings to mind a recent scenario at the de Young Museum here in San Francisco, where a massive wall long inhabited by an op-art piece by Gerhard Richter made way for a video installation by Carsten Nicolai, aka electronic musician Alva Noto, who one evening took over the interior plaza and played a short concert. The connections between Richter and Noto were self-evident but where at the de Young it was a serial handing of the baton, at the Gagosian the patterning is simultaneous, layered, coincident.
From July 2 until today, November 6, there was an exhibit Not Abstract at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen Düsseldorf, where the above photo by Johannes Kraemer was shot (that’s Hawtin on the left, Gursky on the right), which also had a Hawtin score (see [kunstsammlung.de](http://www.kunstsammlung.de/en/discover/exhibitions/andreas-gursky.html)). What isn’t clear is if the Gagosian music is a sequel or a repetition.
Less than a year after the Guggenheim exhibit there was a seven-track record put out by Hawtin of the performance. Perhaps the Gursky sounds will also be released.
Each Thursday in the [Disquiet Junto group](https://disquiet.com/junto/), 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.
Tracks will be added to this playlist for the duration of the project:
This project was posted in the late morning, California time, on Thursday, November 3, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, November 7, 2016.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at [tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto](http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto)):
Disquiet Junto Project 0253: Doorbell Rehab
Record some welcome music.
Step 1: Ring your own doorbell. Consider how it sounds outside your door, to a visitor, and inside, to you, the inhabitant.
Step 2: Compose a new, personalized doorbell sound. Make a recording of how it might sound to the visitor and to the inhabitant.
Five More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Per the instructions below, be sure to include the project tag “disquiet0253”(no spaces) in the name of your track. If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to my locating the tracks and creating a playlist of them.
Step 2: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.
Step 3: In the following discussion thread at llllllll.co please consider posting your track. (Assuming you post it on SoundCloud, a search for the tag will help me construct the playlist.)
http://llllllll.co/t/make-a-doorbell-disquiet-junto-project-0253/
Step 4: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 5: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Deadline: This project was posted in the late morning, California time, on Thursday, November 3, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, November 7, 2016.
Length: The length is up to you, but presumably it’ll be brief.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0253”in the title of the track, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.
Upload: When participating in this project, post one finished track with the project tag, and 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 preferable that your track is set as downloadable, and that it allows for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution).
Linking: When posting the track online, please be sure to include this information:
More on this 253rd weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Doorbell Rehab: Record some welcome music”— at:
https://disquiet.com/0253/
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
https://disquiet.com/junto/
Subscribe to project announcements here:
http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
llllllll.co/t/make-a-doorbell-disquiet-junto-project-0253/5220
There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.
Photo by me (Marc Weidenbaum):
instagram.com/p/BKmB6_xhzMp/
