Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 37

On the Line

▰ Suit Up:

Kirin said Acknowledged at the same time all the others on the strike team did, their voices blending into a single sound that the suit parsed for him — their names going from yellow to green on his display.

I’m always interested in the role of sound in user interfaces — even if those interfaces are in fiction, and especially if it’s science fiction. This bit is from the new novella Livesuit, by James S.A. Corey (also author of the Expanse series, and actually two authors — Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck — who use one shared name). 

. . .

▰ Queen’s Throat:

I’m always frustrated because my DynaVox is monotone. Because of my sass, I would like to show more emotions. When I say, "Darling it’s lovely to see you, may I please have a friendly kiss on each cheek?," my DynaVox Maestro isn’t as flamboyantly gay as I am.

That is Mark Steidl. “Steidl has cerebral palsy and speaks through an augmentative and alternative communication (or A.A.C.) device, which can make ordinary interactions painfully slow.” He is the star and co-librettist (with Katherine Skovira) of an opera, The Other Side of Silence, composed by Robert Whalen (New York Times gift link). The work involves “a generative synthetic voice taught to sing opera.” (Thanks, Rich Pettus!)

. . .

▰ House Music:

Then the wee hoursawake in bed,rocking and meditating,strangely blissful lonelinessand insomnia, the sound of my ownhumming and the house ticking,the first tears afterthe first death—

That’s a segment of the poem “Meaning of the Word ‘Never’” by Deborah Garrison. It was published on October 21, 2024, by the New Yorker. There is something beautiful about the “house ticking,” all the more so because the section preceding this one introduces a clock, which suggests a tick, which doesn’t arrive until now.

Sound Ledger: Earplugs, EPA, Snoring

40 billion: number of plastic earplugs made per year

43: number of years since Ronald Reagan, then president, defunded the EPA’s Office of Noise Abatement and Control 

45: decibel level exceeded by two-thirds of habitual snorers

Sources: earplugs (dezeen.com), EPA (fox8live.com), snoring (newscientist.com)

Ch-Ch-Chain

My friend Mahlen Morris, who proposed this past week’s Disquiet Junto project and who develops some very cool virtual synthesizer modules, recently came to recognize that when his phone records video in slow-motion, the resulting sound is, naturally, also slowed down. Here’s a short clip of a metal chain clanking, to provide an example of the effect. When recorded this slowly, the sound of the clank has a depth and detail that is unlike the almost binary on/off thunk of it in real (i.e., real-time) life. And in addition, there is a haunting background drone, perhaps just artifacts of the chain, or a passing plane, or something else entirely. No matter, it’s a splendid effect. 

Doorbel (Sic)

Where to begin? The counterclockwise — and bleached-by-the-elements — numbering? The requisite additional text information for visitors? The damage to said information — notably to the words “button” and “can”? The misspelling of the word doorbell itself (and subsequent missing apostrophe)? The odd, solitary logo on the NuTone button? The fact that of the four buttons, there seem to be three different types?

Scratch Pad: Space, Soul, Depeche Mode

I  do this manually at the end of each week: collating most of the recent little comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I also find knowing I will 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.

▰ Two seasons into For All Mankind, very much digging it, even if it’s more soap opera than space opera at times. I sure hope they start introducing pop songs that exist only in this alternate timeline (sorta like the Prince bootlegs in Counterpart).

▰ I’m about a decade and a half late to the documentary Thunder Soul (2010), about a Houston, Texas, jazz-funk band that gained much-deserved acclaim, toured the world, and then reunited 30 years later. It should come with a box of tissues, I’ll tell you that.

▰ Afternoon drone trio for idling bus, fog horn, and passing jet plane

▰ I’m definitely a sucker for a thriller in which the mark has an earbud in the whole time and they’re taking directions from someone else, be it antagonist or not. I imagine that mode doesn’t last this full movie, but I’ll be checking it out for sure.

▰ I’d swear that whoever does the voice menu for the jury duty phone line in this town was hired ’cause it sounds like he did the voiceover for the opening of Dragnet

▰ The feeling when you think that’s the ice cream truck down the road and it turns out to be the especially colorful van of a plumber

▰ My friend Matt Nish-Lapidus (@emenel) made a fantastic piece of online art, the less said about it in advance the better. Just give it a click, and then another and …

https://release.emenel.ca

▰ Dream last night: I’m in a band with Kathryn Hahn. We share a manager with Depeche Mode. The manager set up the four of us to record together. Dave Gahan is being lazy somehow. Hahn marches Gore and me to the mall, pulls Gahan out of his fitness class, and lectures him about his responsibilities.

▰ Perhaps the best thing about this Martin Gore* video about his new (and very pretty) signature Gretsch guitar is the evidence that those famous floor-to-ceiling walls of Eurorack modules in his studio weren’t sufficient, and now he has additional massive cases on the floor.

▰ A friend told a friend long ago “Don’t read books; write ’em” and that’s my main excuse for having not finished reading a book since the first week of September, when I completed The Mercy of Gods, the first in a new series by Expanse author James S.A. Corey (actually two authors writing under one pseudonym). That was my 21st novel of 2024. I’ve read a bunch of stuff since, and am nearly done with too many books, but the first thing I’ve finished since The Mercy of Gods is a novella, titled Livesuit, in the same Corey series. It’s pretty short, but I’ll count it as a novel, I think.

Please Forget (Everything)

My friend Charles Lindsay — who long ago invited me to speak at SETI, back in 2014, when he was running the artist-in-residence program there — asks: “Can AI become sentient? If AI can become sentient, can it become conscious? If AI can become conscious, can it become enlightened?” And he does so in the context of an exhibit of his art currently showing at Heron Arts here in San Francisco. It will run through October 30. In addition to a range of pieces that explore the intersection of cybernetics and enlightenment, he’s been hosting a series of events at Heron. Just this week there was an interesting conversation I attended about Art, AI, and psychedelics. There’s also this hour-long soundtrack he created, a mix of field recordings, music, voices, and other sonic effluvia. He explains that among the founds sounds heard in this flowing collage are “the persistent ‘do not forget anything’ messages delivered by synthesized voices in all manner of public transportation in Japan.” It is from those messages that he derived the name of his show, Please Forget (Everything).

Disquiet Junto Project 0668: All Right Then, Keep Your Secrets

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 0668: All Right Then, Keep Your Secrets
The Assignment: Bury a secret sound until it is no longer identifiable.

This project was proposed by Mahlen Morris.

Step 1: Record a 30-second chunk of sound from a single source. This may or may not involve a microphone. This recording shall be referred to as The Sound.

Step 2: Manipulate the Sound extensively. Stretch, break, torture, soothe, remove, heighten The Sound. Reveal subtleties of The Sound you didn’t notice when you recorded it.

Step 3: Layer the results of Step 2 in a way that pleases you. Revel in it.

Step 4: Reveal to no one the original source of The Sound. Ever. In the description when posting your finished track, you can say what you did to The Sound, but do not even hint at the source.

Step 5: Keep and carry that secret. Not all must be revealed.

Tasks Upon Completion:

Label: Include “disquiet0668” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.

Upload: Post your track to a public account (SoundCloud preferred but by no means required). It’s best to focus on one track, but if you post more than one, clarify which is the “main” rendition.

Share: Post your track and a description/explanation at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0668-all-right-then-keep-your-secrets/

Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you. How hard do you need to work to keep your secret?

Deadline: Monday, October 21, 2024, 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 668th weekly Disquiet Junto project, All Right Then, Keep Your Secrets — The Assignment: Bury a secret sound until it is no longer identifiable — at https://disquiet.com/0668/

This project was proposed by Mahlen Morris.

The image associated with this track is a detail from a photo by Chris Riebschlager, found on Flickr and used thanks to a Creative Commons license:

https://flic.kr/p/2eGb3D

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

Moran x (James + Dobson) =

Kelly Moran tapped the great Loraine James and her percussionist colleague Fyn Dobson to do a remix of the track “Superhuman,” off Moran’s recent album, Moves in the Field. The title of the track references how Moran’s instrument on the recording is a Yamaha Disklavier, a tool that allows her to compose and perform music that would be, in effect, impossible for an unaided human to accomplish on their own. In the able hands of James and Dobson, the source material is muffled, its intricacies heard as if through glass, and that sonic shape is improvised upon with drums and synthesized tones, individual bits of the piano occasionally peeking out.

And here’s the original track for comparison’s sake:

A WFMU Tribute to Steve Roden

WFMU ran a tribute to the late Steve Roden on October 14, 2024. Roden died in September 2023, and for this show, its host, Daniel Blumin, played tracks selected with Stephen Vitiello and Michael Raphael, and he interviewed them, and the show also includes interview segments featuring Roden himself. I was excited to see here the recording “Sandy,” which Roden and Vitiello collaborated on for the 44th Disquiet Junto project, way back in November 2012, following Hurricane Sandy’s assault on the East Coast. The project, and this track, utilized field recordings made by Raphael. The WFMU show opens with a recording of Roden singing as a child, and includes numerous pieces of his own work, plus 7” records from his personal collection. Roden was an instigator of what came to be called “lowercase” sound, music that emphasizes small noises and quiet gestures. He was also a visual artist, and a collector, and a wonderful human being, whom I got to spend time with over the years. This broadcast is a great introduction to Roden and his music and the way he thought about and worked with sound.

Check out the archived WFMU show at wfmu.org. More on the Disquiet Junto project that led to the track “Sandy” here at disquiet.com. Far as I can tell, the first mention of Roden on my site was back on October 29, 2000, a year and a couple weeks shy of a quarter century ago.

Literally Odd

This was the only set of doorbells at the entrance. There were none for the presumed even-numbered apartments. Also, 7 is below 5 for some reason.