Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 189

Skateboard (Revised)

MoSt every evening in a mode aKin to this old Aussie 1970s horror flick, the Traffic of rEturning cars having suBsided, Our street is trAnsformed into this Ratty fielD of tarmac play

GGP

Note the massive Green space establishingour neighborhood Goes back 100-plus years tops having been Planned and built by man

twitter.com/disquiet: Intentionally Blank

I do this manually each Saturday, collating recent tweets I made at twitter.com/disquiet, my public notebook. Some tweets pop up (in expanded form or otherwise) on Disquiet.com sooner. It’s personally informative to revisit the previous week of thinking out loud.

▰ I’m thinking … no?

▰ Been listening to a lot of Florence Price lately. That’s my excuse for not replying to your request for coverage. Sorry.

▰ Hyperlocal news: that great pupusa place on Geary is now open Sundays (so: 7 days a week). This is the one that was initially a liquor store, then a liquor store that happened to sell pupusas, then that happened to have a full menu, and that now is almost entirely a restaurant.

▰ Benefits of late afternoon bike ride

▰ This card came with another card that was an actual card. It has a very Repo Man vibe.

In related news, I realize now that my wallet is falling apart.

▰ Have a good weekend, folks. It’s a long one here, and maybe where you are, too. See you Tuesday.

🍃 Listen to some nature.

🏡 Do some home echolocation.

🥁 Master the percussive instrument that is your dishwasher, clothes dryer, or ancient hard drive.

Tape x Pedal

This video, all abrasive industrial doom, is a tape loop experiment from Amulets, an artist for whom the tape loop is central to his work. Heard here, the loop is a prerecorded sound, a drone, that is being treated through a guitar pedal, which lends it the sense of deep delay. In addition, Amulets (aka Randall Taylor) is performing drones from the pedal itself. Note that the extended loop is playfully rotating around the guitar pedal’s pair of foot switches.

Video originally posted to youtube.com. More from Amulets at amuletsmusic.com.

Disquiet Junto Project 0491: Footsteps Sequencer

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, May 31, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, May 27, 2021.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0491: Footsteps SequencerThe Assignment: Compose a piece of music structured upon a walk through your home.

Step 1: Draw a diagram of your home’s interior as if viewed from above.

Step 2: Map a path through your home.

Step 3: Compose a piece of music that bases its structure on the map. Consider following the footsteps, giving each room its own key or sonic quality, and perhaps even using sounds from the rooms in the recording of the track.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0491” (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 “disquiet0491” (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-0491-footsteps-sequencer/

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, May 31, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, May 27, 2021.

Length: The length of your finished track is up to you. Are you pacing while on the phone, or making a quick run to the bathroom?

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0491” 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 491st weekly Disquiet Junto project — Footsteps Sequencer (The Assignment: Compose a piece of music structured upon a walk through your home) — at: https://disquiet.com/0491/

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-0491-footsteps-sequencer/

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 pyrogenic, and used thanks to Flickr and a Creative Commons license allowing editing (cropped with text added) for non-commercial purposes:

https://flic.kr/p/pinEP

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

Buzz

Besides the white noise resoUnding in my ears, and the sneeZing, spring is lovely, all aZure sky and lengthening days

FM Doom

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A post shared by Marc Weidenbaum (@dsqt)

Baby steps with scanning up and down the radio dial.

Icelandic Meow Echolocation

A housemate of mine once came home with a puppy. The little dog was so black that when its eyes were closed, which was much of the time (since it slept so much), it looked more like a silhouette than it did a live animal. However, when it was awake, the puppy was very awake. At some point, early on as a member of our multi-species household, the dog was placed in the backyard and left to explore. How it did so was fascinating to observe. On its first entry into the yard, which was quite large, the small dog started at the fence and ran, full speed, around in a circle. With each circumference, the puppy drew closer and closer in until it finally reached the center of the yard, and when it arrived there it collapsed out of utter exhaustion from the exertion.

In this video, some kittens are seen and, more to the point, heard doing their own version of exploration, in this case of an old interior space. These are the ruins of a former herring factory in Djúpavík, Iceland, perhaps best known as a spot where the band Sigur Rós has performed. Like Sigur Rós, the cats appreciate the rich echoes of the metal container. Their meows linger in the air for lengthy periods of time, measurable in multiple seconds, far longer than they’re no doubt used to. A meow generally has a quizzical quality to it. It sounds inherently interrogative: Where are you? When am I going to be fed? Here it seems to provide an echolocative utility, sounding out the three-dimensional topography of this strange structure. It isn’t only the cats who benefit from the exploration. Their meowing give us humans a sense of the space, as well: its contours, its unique qualities, its sonic potential

The video is by my friend Laura Alice Watt, who posted it at flickr.com.

Breakers

The Bay's at least a 15-minute oR so walk and yEt A few blocks down friends Know on still days andnights that thEy catch coming up an asphalt coRridor the waveS' roar, clear and fierce

twitter.com/disquiet: A Rage in Open Source Background Sound Lockscreens

I do this manually each Saturday, collating recent tweets I made at twitter.com/disquiet, my public notebook. Some tweets pop up (in expanded form or otherwise) on Disquiet.com sooner. It’s personally informative to revisit the previous week of thinking out loud.

▰ Now this is news I can use. (via Bruce Levenstein)

▰ This weekend I watched a video about how AI can make games Grand Theft Auto more photorealistic, and I saw an ad for software that makes footage more artfully pixelated. The valley between them isn’t uncanny. It’s something else. I don’t know what but it’s apparently where I am.

▰ Current status:

▰ Yes, I enjoyed Chester Himes’ A Rage in Harlem:

▰ Diggle is coming back to the Arrowverse. Sinéad O’Connor is recording a record with David Holmes. Aside from Atlanta announcing the premiere date of a new TV season, my pop culture card feels full. I’ll go back to academia.edu PDFs on experimental recording techniques.

▰ Woke with the Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy in the U.K.” in my head. This surfacing could hold some deep psychological meaning. More than likely, though, the song was probably just playing at low volume in the background of some TV show I was watching last night.

▰ Ooh, got the Kindle Paperwhite update that shows the cover of your current read when the device is in sleep mode.

▰ There are days when all I need is the instrumental version of “It’s All About the Benjamins.” Today is, apparently, such a day.