Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 3

Light Brown Noise (Zimoun Edition)

A new video of a new Zimoun installation is always a treat, and this large scale one from the Musée d’Arts de Nantes in France does not disappoint. At this phase in Zimoun’s expansive career, video documentation is as much a part of his work as are the installations themselves. This brief new footage, just over a minute long, is edited to display his characteristic array of inexpensive materials put to pattern-generating use, the result a gentle rainstorm rendered as a product of geometric beauty. Each of its 528 boxes contains a single cotton ball on a loose metal cable connected at the box’s base to a rudimentary motor that is held in place by a wooden plank. The cables are just long enough that the balls seem to hover over the grid, bouncing along the edges of the cardboard enclosures. Based on the close-ups in the video, this was shot early in the exhibit’s run (it has just started this past week), because the cardboard shows little to no wear from the constant motion. Presumably there will be more cumulative texture by the end of the run, on March 1, 2026 (nantesmetropole.fr).

A few months in advance of the Musée d’Arts de Nantes exhibit, Zimoun posted a video of a single one of these boxes, back when it was, presumably, still in prototype mode. The box’s closing flaps were yet to be removed. In the above video, from :39 to :41, you can see a strand of the cardboard coming loose from where the flaps were trimmed.

At first the structure of the museum installation confused me. The brief description at the start of the video lists, characteristically, its components: “528 prepared do-motors, cotton balls, cardboard boxes 40x40x60 cm, 2025.” The video’s opening wide view suggests it as a square, but there is no simple square root of 528. If the number of boxes was 529, this would be assumed to be a grid of 23 x 23 boxes. Then I noticed that from :54 to :56 in the video you can see it is laid out, in fact, as a triangle. A still image on the museum’s website shows this as well.

no / 110

Truly thought, as I approached this awning, that it said “no” — only to eventually recognize it was the address, “110”

November Summer

Getting used to be it being 73º two days in a row in November

Scratch Pad

At the end of each week, I usually collate a lightly edited collection of recent comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I find knowing I’ll revisit my posts to be a positive and mellowing influence on my social media activity. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I generally take weekends off social media.

▰ Overheard this week on the street in Manhattan, which is a living, breathing Don DeLillo novel:

“The bank really wants to know where the money is.”

“Before the solution you were spending more, and now you are spending less.”

▰ On the airplane home, I was using headphones with noise cancellation, so I was confused when I could suddenly hear the sounds of the airplane, including the voices of flight attendants. Then I recognized it was from the TV series I was watching (The Asset, originally Legenden).

▰ Something’s up with my redirect plug-in, so if short links on disquiet.com aren’t working, like the four-digit ones for Junto projects, sorry about that.

▰ One of my first jobs, while in high school, was working a slide projector at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. I’d been warned of James Watson’s temper but, frankly, putting a slide in upside down was entirely my fault.

A friend joked, in reply, on social media: “Is a double-helix different upside down?”

▰ I may, for the first time in a long time, have my MP3 scenario set. By typing these words, I’ll probably cause my Mac mini, which serves as my server, to go wonky. Until that happens, Plex is my local/remote base of operations. Apple Music (née iTunes) is useful, via USB sync, when I’m out and about and want to quickly add files to my iPhone. I spent too much time figuring out how to remotely save files to my Mac mini while away from home, and while it works, the slowness has been thankless. I’m probably doing it wrong, but that’s OK.

▰ Put different text-to-speech apps on your phone, laptop, and tablet to see how they handle the same spoken words. Go for a walk with earbuds on “transparency” and listen for what’s amplified. Play the last song on several favorite albums. And have a good weekend. See you Monday, or maybe Tuesday.

Subway Rules

“No amplification devices on platforms” — this could be read to mean “platforms” as in the devices can’t be standing on legs/rises, or “platforms” as in streaming services

“No radio playing audible to others” — this could be read as a class distinction between people who belong and, then, the “others”

Disquiet Junto Project 0723: Do the Collapse

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have five days to record and upload a track in response to the project instructions.

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. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align.

Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks also generally appear in the lllllll.co discussion thread.

Disquiet Junto Project 0723: Do the Collapse
The Assignment: Make music that falls apart repeatedly.

Step 1: Part of what makes “Happy Birthday to You” an interesting song to listen to occurs when it is sung in a public place, meaning that people sing along who actually don’t know the name of the person whose birthday is being celebrated. The song gets to the moment when the person’s name is inserted, and then the sense of ensemble entirely falls apart. People mumble, or wait, or actually know the name and sing it, but no matter — because subsets of singers proceed to sing the final “happy birthday to you” starting at different points.

Step 2: Consider the way “Happy Birthday to You” has a tendency to fall apart, as described in Step 1.

Step 3: Write a piece of music informed by your thoughts that resulted from Step 2 — a piece of music that is designed to fall apart somehow. And consider repeating the motif a few times, so it falls apart repeatedly.

Tasks Upon Completion:

Label: Include “disquiet0723” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.

Upload: A person participating in the Disquiet Junto should post only one track per weekly project (SoundCloud account preferred but not required). If on occasion you feel inspired to post more than one track (whether to a single account or across multiple accounts), you should clarify which is the “main” rendition for consideration by fellow members and (if on SoundCloud) for inclusion in the SoundCloud playlist.

Share: Post your track and a description/explanation at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0723-do-the-collapse/

Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you. How long can your fragile edifice stand?

Deadline: Monday, November 10, 2025, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

About: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Newsletter: https://juntoletter.disquiet.com/

License: It’s preferred (but not required) to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., an attribution Creative Commons license).

Please Include When Posting Your Track:

More on the 723rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Do the Collapse — The Assignment: Make music that falls apart repeatedly — at https://disquiet.com/0723/.

Volume Control

Define “loud”

Reply Guy, Eno Edition

AI as reply guy: when you’re just searching for references to a given Oblique Strategies card.

Scratch Pad: RSS, Pedals, Barbershop

At the end of each week, I usually collate a lightly edited collection of recent comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I find knowing I’ll revisit my posts to be a positive and mellowing influence on my social media activity. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I generally take weekends off social media.

▰ I’m not, by any means, planning on getting a vanity plate — but if I were to …

▰ Yeah, I played hooky this week and went to the de Young Museum for the manga exhibit, which is pretty darn great

▰ I’ve only really used modulargrid.net for Eurorack, so when I looked in the (guitar) pedals section, I was surprised to find things like an Akai MPC1000 and an Elektron Digitakt listed

▰ Was holding out for number 1 but so be it

▰ Barbershop update: The barber who usually has oldies playing was out for the day, the other barber was enjoying the silence, and who am I to argue?

▰ Read a ton, finished nothing.

Under Control

Great opening act for Rolando’s Make Noise synthesizer showcase