Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 489

Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet

RIP, soprano Evelyn Lear (b. 1926), acclaimed interpreter of Alban Berg: http://t.co/QPq7kh1A #
Bonus: along with http://disquiet.com being newly mobile/tablet-responsive, comments will be a whole lot tidier. Likely live this weekend. #
Blogger’s Remorse: Is a separate topic-specific @tumblr necessary, or should it just be a tag on your existing site? #
Super close to mobile/tablet-optimized http://disquiet.com. (Main site looks the same. Changes are all about device-based responsiveness.) #
New @tumblr I’ve got going, collecting links re: the “Sounds of Brands / Brands of Sounds” class I’m teaching: http://t.co/Fjk1qo9m #
Filed article with British magazine on the Fourth of July. Felt vaguely traitorous. #

The 27th Disquiet Junto project instructions have gone to the email list + are live at the @soundcloud page http://t.co/IjQw7mvf #
Lesson from last night about fireworks and perception: loudness doesn’t equal proximity; detail equals proximity. #
Indeed. LED fireworks: world’s first reusable. RT @ioflow: @disquiet nah, LED fireworks are The New Thing. #
Outboard-brain side-project related to “Sounds of Brands / Brands of Sounds” class I’m teaching: http://t.co/Fjk1qo9m. #
These new CFL fireworks are cool, but I miss the incandescent ones. #
The music to the new Spider-Man makes Prometheus seem subtle. That said, the use of voices in the score is interesting, if not enjoyable. #
Fascinating site about cicada songs, the transnational anthem of electronic music: cicadasong.eu. #
Great interview (and splendidly shot) with Steve Reich on influences on his work: http://t.co/3vIGp5AH. #
The 27th weekly @djunto project will be about interpreting a text file as sound. #
Looking at Fireworks (Waveforms): http://t.co/U5DxMVOn #
Chinese Red Glare & Blare: http://t.co/hKplrUq9 #
The Music of Fireworks: http://t.co/4Ycnqc0H #
The mixture of enthusiasm and solitude that is the July 3 firework. #
History of my listening goes from what’s my favorite song to what’s my favorite album to what’s my favorite appliance. NP: washing machine. #
Looking forward to moderating panel discussion on “Alternative Musical Interfaces” @gaffta on 9/19 (7pm): http://t.co/g8Z8RMEY #
48 minutes of music made by 15 musicians in 4 days from samples of trash: https://t.co/7W9pd5rt #
Tuesday noon siren peculiarly loud on a bright, clear-sky day. #
“‘Spider-Man’ feels like one of those unnecessary software versions, more Spider-Man 1.5″ says Manohla Dargis. I agree, and I dug 500 Days. #
If my tweets are especially off later today, it may be because I saw the midnight Spider-man. #
Eight musicians now confirmed for the August 19 Disquiet Junto concert in Denver. #
More details on the class I’m teaching this autumn at @academy_of_art: http://t.co/D4D3h3zZ #
Sound-art PTSD. MT @qDot: After living between stacks of cardboard boxes while moving, gonna take a while to appreciate Zimoun again. #
1/2 hour of music by 10 musicians made of sounds sampled from items found in their garbage (and one trip to the dump): https://t.co/7W9pd5rt #
Glad the http://t.co/brhasUxl netlabel is back. Two tracks posted last month, the first since November. #
Briefly concerned when I saw unfamiliar icon in one of my backup programs. Then realized what the icon meant: done uploading. #
Excuse me, it’s with Christof Migone. http://t.co/Lqgv0GL6 #mars #soundart #bradbury #
My interview with sound artist Christoph Migone about listening to Ray Bradbury’s Mars: http://t.co/hSQu3yBf #
Looking like December 6 for the San Francisco Disquiet Junto concert. #
Not a speaker. (Older variation on sidewalk grate.) http://t.co/8hiGwuw4 #
Not a speaker. (Sidewalk grate.) http://t.co/XgQhB3Rm #
I love when Facebook reminds me of a netlabel’s birthday because of how the account was set up. (“Record labels are people.”) #
Pretty impressive that Transformers 3 couldn’t get three sentences in without a grammatical error in the narration. #
For @djunto #26 stijnh shot his garbage mid-sample: http://t.co/lIZJ6Xah #
Mostly for @artofplanning: Has Shepard Fairey done anything that looks less like he’s done it? Rolling Stones logo: http://t.co/3iEF4ihl #
Guy next to me at café is like the Keith Jarrett of writers. He’s read out loud quietly as he typed on his laptop all day. #
Now 7 musicians confirmed for the Disquiet Junto (@djunto) show in Denver on August 19. Almost certainly more to come. #
Waiting for Google++ #
Inlet went extra mile for current @djunto sonic recycling project, sampling sounds of local dump: https://t.co/kuxXSSE0. #
Concert is 8/19 in Denver. MT @vuzhmusic: Confirmed @djunto lineup so far: @c_yantis @mysterybear @falsereactions @tenandtracer and yrs trly #
For one day only 4’33″ will be 4’34″ (http://t.co/pCUGh7en) #
Looks like the mobile/tablet-optimized http://t.co/xdF1T26R should be live pretty soon. Clean, size-responsive formatting. #
Found Yegorova’s Artemiev book behind Marclay’s Shuffle box and between books by Cardiff and Kurzweil. I need to diversify my diet. #
Afternoon listening: the “Train” track from Artemiev’s score to Tarkovsky’s Stalker: http://t.co/o0y1HplR #dyer #zona #
Initial thoughts about Geoff Dyer’s engrossing book about Andrei Tarkovsky’s movie Stalker: http://t.co/2LqxmdP1 #
Remains convinced that Stalker will be remade with Jason Statham in the lead role. #
Best thing about 3rd book in Mira Grant’s great trilogy of zombie novels is moral parallel it draws between zombies & clones. #
Geoff Emerick’s memoir about recording the Beatles in the 1960s is unintentionally the best book about how manga is made today. #

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The Sound (and Sound Application) of Video Art (MP3)

The Tate Modern’s interview featuring artists Peter Campus and Douglas Gordon, as moderated by former Whitney Museum of American Art director David A. Ross, is focused on their video work, but it serves wider-ranging consideration and application (MP3). As Ross says early on, it’s almost unseemly to simply refer to them simply as video artists, because to do so seems to unintentionally but firmly subjugate their work as some sort of subset, or offshoot, instead of as artworks whose elected medium was simply defined by the projects they desired to implement, the questions they wished to probe. This is a situation not unlike that of “sound art” — it often seems like “sound arts” is a more applicable term, much as feminists rightly speak of “feminisms” lest they unintentionally feed the impression of a unified collective point of view, or better yet of “sound in art.”

Download audio file (2008_04_17DouglasGordon.mp3)

In any case, the Tate interview, which dates from April 2008 but only recently popped up in the museum’s RSS feed, is quite thought-provoking, especially Campus’ depiction of early interactive work, and Gordon’s thoughts on matters of slowing down pre-existing media (this is the artist who created 24 Hour Psycho). And those listeners hoping for a touch of the purely sonic will appreciate a moment when Gordon aims to characterize the sound of Campus’ studio, the sound inside Campus’ head; he does this by intoning a wordless hum that he modulates incrementally up and down.

Track originally posted for download at tate.org.uk. (Image up top of 24 Hour Psycho from cbc.ca.)

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sound.tumblr.com

In association with the 15-week class that I’m teaching this fall at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, “Sounds of Brands / Brands of Sounds,” I’ve started a new Tumblr side-blog project, a lightly annotated outboard brain of links associated with the topics that are core to the class: the use of sound in marketing and advertising, the marketing and advertising of sound-related brands, sound design in consumer products, and music licensing, among other things.

I may collate and/or cross-post some of those pieces here, but in the meanwhile, you can follow it all at sound.tumblr.com.

Initial posts include the presence of sound design at the London Design Festival this year (developed by Arup, with audio by Squarepusher and Jana Winderen, among others), consideration of the purchase of Mog by Dr. Dre’s Beats, the work Scanner (aka Robin Rimbaud) did on an alarm clock for Philips, and the use of Roland 808 imagery by Nokia to tease a forthcoming smartphone.

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Disquiet Junto Project 0027: Texting

Each Thursday evening at the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com 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 to the Junto is open: just join and participate.

This week’s project may blow up in my face, because it may simply prove ineffective — or unnecessarily complicated to put into effect — for some participants. The theme is turning text into sound in a specifically abstract manner. At a technological level, though, it simply may not function for everyone involved. I’m hopeful that it will work, but if nothing else, the project provides solid evidence that the Disquiet Junto is as much a place where I, as founder and moderator, experiment as it is for the musicians who respond to the projects with their own tracks. I’ve said in the past that the goal of the Junto is, at its core, to provide a place where people feel comfortable failing — and that’s as true for me as it is for the participants.

The assignment was made late in the day, California time, on Thursday, July 5, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, July 9, as the deadline. View a search return for all the entries as they are posted: disquiet0027-texting.

These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto). They appear below translated into six additional languages: French, German, Japanese, and Turkish, courtesy of Éric Legendre, Allan Brugg, Naoyuki Sasanami, and M. Emre Meydan, respectively.

Disquiet Junto Project 0027: Texting

We’re continuing the theme of “creative reuse” this week. In past Disquiet Junto projects we have reworked audio files, and in the process of interpreting a photograph as a graphic score, some participants treated the image file as abstract audio. This week, we’ll be interpreting a text file as sound.

Please copy the instructions to this project and save them as a text file. You will then open that file in one or more pieces of audio-processing software. The resulting sound will serve as the foundation of your track. You can only use the sounds resulting from the text file in the process of making your track. You can manipulate the sounds, and you can use multiple versions that result from different pieces of software, but you cannot add any other sounds.

Deadline: Monday, July 9, at 11:59pm wherever you are.

Length: Please keep your track to between 2 and 5 minutes.

Information: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, please 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.

Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0027-texting” in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.

Download: As always, you don’t have to set your track for download, but it would be preferable.

Linking: When posting the track please include this information:

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...

. . . . .

Instructions in French:

Projet Disquiet Junto 0027 : textage

Nous poursuivons cette semaine sur le thème de la « réutilisation créative ». Dans de précédents projets du Junto de Disquiet, nous avons retravaillé des fichiers audio, et dans le processus d’interprétation d’une photographie en tant que partition graphique, certains participants ont alors traité le fichier image en tant qu’audio abstraite. Cette semaine, nous allons interpréter un fichier texte comme son.

S’il vous plait, copier les instructions de ce projet et les enregistrer dans un fichier texte. Vous ouvrirez ensuite ce fichier dans un ou plusieurs éléments d’un logiciel de traitement audio. Le résultat sonore servira de base à votre piste. Vous devez utiliser uniquement les sons provenant du fichier texte dans la production de votre piste. Vous pouvez manipuler les sons, et vous pouvez utiliser plusieurs versions qui résultent des différents éléments du logiciel, mais vous ne pouvez pas ajouter aucun autre son.

Date limite : lundi 9 juillet, à 23 h 59 où que vous soyez.

Durée : Veuillez S.V.P. vous assurer de conserver la durée de votre pièce entre 2 et 5 minutes.

Information : S’il vous plait, lors du téléversement de votre piste sur SoundCloud, veillez à inclure une description de votre processus suite à la conception, la composition et l’enregistrement. Cette description est un élément essentiel du processus de communication inhérente au Junto de Disquiet.

Titre/mot-clé : Lorsque vous ajoutez votre pièce au groupe Disquiet Junto sur Soundcloud.com, veillez à y inclure l’expression « disquiet0027-texting » dans le titre de votre pièce, mais également comme mot-clé.

Téléchargement : comme à l’habitude, vous n’avez pas à permettre le téléchargement de votre pièce, mais cela serait souhaitable.

Lien : lorsque vous publiez votre pièce, S.V.P. inclure ces informations :

Plus de détails à propos Projet Disquiet Junto :

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...

. . . . .

Instructions in German:

Disquiet Junto Projekt 0027: Texten

Wir setzen das Thema der “kreativen Wiederverwertung” diese Woche fort. In vergangenen Disquiet Junto Projekten haben wir Audio Dateien überarbeitet, und im Prozess, eine Photographie als graphische Partitur zu interpretieren, haben einige Teilnehmer die Bilddatei als abstractes Audio behandelt. Diese Woche werden wir ein Text-File als Klang deuten.

Bitte kopiert die Anweisungen dieses Projekts und speichert sie als Textdatei. Ihr werdet sie dann am Stück oder in mehreren Teilen in einem Audio-Programm öffnen. Der resultierende Klang wird als Grundlage eures Tracks dienen. Ihr könnt ausschließlich die aus dem Text resultierenden Klänge verwenden. Ihr könnt die Klänge manipulieren, und ihr könnt mehrere Versionen, die aus unterschiedlicher Software hervorgehen, verwenden, aber ihr könnt keine anderen Klänge hinzufügen.

Abgabefrist: Montag, 9. Juli, um 23:59 Uhr, wo immer ihr seid.

Länge: Bitte haltet den Track zwischen 2 und 5 Minuten.

Information: Bitte fügt eurem Track, wenn ihr ihn auf Soundcloud hochladet, eine Beschreibung des Planungs-, Kompositions- und Aufnahmeprozesses hinzu. Diese Beschreibung ist essentieller Bestandteil des kommunikativen Austauschs, der Disquiet Junto eigen ist.

Titel/Tag: Wenn ihr euren Track der Disquiet Junto Gruppe auf Soundcloud.com hinzufügt, schließt bitte die Bezeichnung “disquiet0027-texting” im Titel und als Tag mit ein.

Download: Wie immer, ihr müsst eure Tracks nicht zum Download freigeben, es wäre aber wünschenswert.

Verlinkung: Wenn ihr euren Track postet, fügt bitte die folgende Information hinzu:

Mehr zu Disquiet Junto unter:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...

. . . . .

Instructions in Japanese:

Disquiet Junto Project 0027: 文字を鳴らす

　わたしたちは、引き続きクリエイティヴな再利用のテーマを続けます。過去のプロジェクトでは、一枚の写真を図形譜として解釈したり、ある参加者はイメージを抽象的な音響として処理したりしました。今週はテキストファイルをサウンドとして解釈します。

　このプロジェクトの指示をコピーして１つのテキストファイルとして保存してください。そして、そのファイルを１つまたはいくつかのサウンド加工ソフトウェアで開きます。その結果できた音素材をトラックの土台とします。テキストファイルから作られた音素材のみを使用してください。なんらかの操作を施したり、いろいろなソフトウェアから得られた異なる複数の結果を使用してもかまいませんが、そのプロセス以外の音を加えてはいけません。

〆切：7月9日月曜日11:59pm あなたの居住地にかかわらず

長さ：2分から5分の間の長さにしてください

情報：作品をサウンドクラウドのグループに投稿する際には、あなたの構想、作曲、録音の過程についての説明をつけてください。この記述がこのグループの本来の目的であるコミュニケーションに大事なものとなります

タイトル／タグ：Disquiet Juntoグループに作品を投稿する際には”disquiet0027-texting” をタグとしてタイトルに追加してください

ダウンロード：いつものように必ずしもダウンロード可能にする必要はありませんが、望ましい

リンク：投稿する際には以下の情報を追加してください 


More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...

. . . . .

Instructions in Turkish:

Disquiet Junto Projesi 0027: Texting

Talimatlar:

Bu hafta da “yaratıcı tekrar kullanım” temasıyla devam ediyoruz. Önceki Disquiet Junto projelerinde ses dosyalarını tekrar düzenlemek konusunda çalışmıştık; ve bir fotoğrafın grafiksel nota yazımı gibi kullanıldığı projede bazı katılımcılar verilen görseli soyut ses olarak yorumlamıştı. Bu hafta ise bir yazı dosyasını ses olarak yorumlayacağız.

Lütfen bu projenin talimatlarını bir yazı (text) dosyası olarak kaydedip, bu dosyayı bir (ya da birkaç) ses-düzenleme yazılımında (sanki ses dosyasıymış gibi) açın. Elde ettiğiniz ses, oluşturacağınız parçanın temelini oluşturacak. Parçanız üzerinde çalışırken sadece bu yazıdan elde ettiğiniz sesleri kullanacaksınız. Sesleri dönüştürebilirsiniz, ve farklı yazılımlar kullanarak elde edeceğiniz farklı versiyonlarını bir arada kullanabilirsiniz, ama başka ses ekleyemezsiniz.

Son Teslim Tarihi: 9 temmuz pazartesi, 23:59 (bulunduğunuz ülkenin saatine göre)

Uzunluk: Lütfen bestenizin uzunluğunu 2-5 dakika arasında tutun.

Bilgi: Yaptığınız parçayı paylaşırken, lütfen bu parçanın planlama, besteleme ve kayıt süreciyle ilgili bilgi de verin. Bu açıklama, Disquiet Junto’ya içkin iletişim sürecinin önemli bir parçasıdır.

İsim/Etiket: Parçanızı Soundcloud.com’daki Disquiet Junto grubuna eklerken, lütfen “disquiet0027-texting” kelimesini hem parçanın isminde, hem de etiket (tag) olarak kullanın.

Download: Her zamanki gibi; parçanızın indirilebilir olması gerekmiyor, ama öyle olması tercih edilir.

Linkler: Yaptığınız parçayı paylaşırken, lütfen şu satırları ekleyin:

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...

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The Bass as Violin / The String Quartet as Sequencer (MP3)

The string quartet “Ocean Body,” composed by Jason Charney, is by no particular means electronic. Heard in a rendition recorded live by the Fifth House Ensemble at the Ravinia Festival last month, however, it displays numerous elements that make it something of a sonic fellow traveler. There is its modest pace, which posits it in a meditative sphere. There is its grid-like metric system, which aligns it with step sequencers. There is the way it builds steadily, a composition-by-accrual approach that suggests a method not unlike that of the sampler. There is the attention to the texture of the instruments, the violin and viola in particular. And yes, that is violin singular. Beyond its intricate internal maneuvers, which become apparent as the work proceeds, “Ocean Body” has an additional distinguishing characteristic, which is that Charney directs the quartet to replace one of its traditional two violins with a bass, played here by Kyle Wescott. The result is a rich sense of grounding.

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/jasoncharney. More on Charney, who participated in several of the early Disquiet Junto projects and who is based in Lawrence, Kansas, at jasoncharney.com. More on Fifth House at fifth-house.com. More on the Ravinia Festival at ravinia.org.

And here, as a bonus, is video of Charney peforming his work “Compass” (for iPhone and Max/MSP) at an Apple Store:

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Filmless Film Music (MP3)

It’s difficult not to hear Slow Dancing Society‘s “I’ll Leave a Light On” as the score to an unseen film. It at once bears the hallmarks of something traditionally musical — guitar figures, a slowly progressing melodic bed — and yet employs those elements in a manner more driven by atmospheric intent than by anything approximating a song impulse. The guitar parts repeat until they take on rhythmic, percussive purpose, and that underlying bed becomes a wash of sound. As the track progresses, it doesn’t develop melodically as much as it transforms. The opening section becomes a swell that reveals a clanging, anxious, metallic climax, which then begins a slow, extended fade. The track is from the album Laterna Magica, due out August 15 from the Hidden Shoal record label.

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/hidden_shoal. More from Slow Dancing Society, aka Drew Sullivan, at slowdancingsociety.bandcamp.com.

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Listening to Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles

The Canadian art journal No More Potlucks asked me to interview Christof Mignone about his piece “The Rise and Fall of the Sounds and Silences from Mars.” The project is an act of sonic forensics applied to Ray Bradbury’s classic science fiction novel The Martian Chronicles. Migone’s work is as much an act of sound poetry as of sound art. Each page of the original Bradbury book was culled for only those words that represent sound, and then only those words were reprinted, page by page, in a series of columns. The piece has taken several forms — as a book published by Parasitic Ventures and as an outdoor installation at the Electric Eclectics festival. The latter is show above.

The full interview is online at nomorepotlucks.org. I’ll post it here after it’s been up there for a little while. Here in the meanwhile is an excerpt, focused on his decision making about what words made the cut:

Weidenbaum: There are two questions I want to ask at this juncture. The first is: When did you decide to include the word ‘said’, which seems like it would significantly increase the ratio of words?

Migone: It came late. Basically, there was a second round of going back into the book and looking at what I had culled from it and making sure I hadn’t made any mistakes. While the word ‘said’ clearly denotes dialogue, I initially feared that it would overwhelm my project; be too present. But I came to the decision of including ‘said’ during the second stage because it became obvious that it would have otherwise been a glaring omission. I had several categories in terms of selection. It could be words in a scene where sound is very clearly being engaged by the author, or words that could allude to sound but weren’t necessarily intended that way in that particular place in that book. I also wanted to up the number of words selected, and since I was already abstracting the words into a different arrangement, it seemed fitting to the project to include any words that in and of themselves had sound properties. But obviously I didn’t add any words.

Weidenbaum: And that would have been the second question: Do you include words that suggest sound but that don’t specifically mean it? Like, if someone says: “I can hear the sounds” that includes two words – ‘hear’ and ‘sounds’ – and mean sound. But if someone says: “it sounds like you’re headed north not south”, that’s different.

Migone: Yes, in that second case, I would include that. I like the fact that obviously those words had more than one usage.

Read the full piece at nomorepotlucks.org. More on Migone at christofmigone.com.

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What Does a Brand Sound Like?

Does the start-up sound of a computer have an emotional meaning to its user? Why are ringtones more popular than ringback tones? Is the commercial jingle a relic in our supposedly media-savvy age? How does a retail space decide upon its playlist? Do bars and restaurants really sell more drinks when the music is played louder? Why do some stores hide their speakers, while others make them prominent features of the interior design? Should websites have scores, or background music, the way that movies and TV shows do? Should ebooks? Should movies and TV shows, for that matter? Why are voice actors famous in some countries and largely anonymous in others? What have online MP3 retailers learned from brick’n'mortar stores — what have they unlearned, and what have they forgotten? How do darknet filesharing services promote themselves in secret? What does the relative prominence of social-network functionality say about Apple, Bandcamp, eMusic, Rhapsody, SoundCloud, and other online services? When and why did musicians stop being perceived as sell-outs when they licensed their songs to TV commercials?

What, to put it simply, does a brand sound like?

These are some of the questions we’ll explore in a course I’ll be teaching this autumn at the Academy of Art in San Francisco (academyart.edu). The official title of the class is “ADV 499-30: Special Topics: Sound Branding.” More specifically, it’s titled “Sounds of Brands / Brands of Sounds.” It’s a weekly class, running for 15 weeks straight on Wednesdays from noon until 3:00pm. The first day of class is September 12. There will be a mix of lectures (by me and by some invited guests), exercises, and assignments. Throughout we’ll look closely at — that is to say, we’ll listen closely to — how sound functions in the media landscape. The course is divided into three segments: first a focus on listening, second “Sounds of Brands, and third “Brands of Sounds.”

I’ll be posting more information in advance of the class, and throughout the class’ run. Those posts will be tagged, as has this one been: sounds-of-brands.

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The Welcome Return of Hexawe.net

The excellent abstract-beep netlabel hexawe.net produced a steady stream of releases up through November 2011, and then it went as quiet as an unplugged Tempest console. The label had long distinguished itself with tracks that had one foot in the arcade and the other in … well, where exactly was never quite clear, but it was a place that seemed to prize a certain artful sloppiness, like the avant-pop equivalent of an animated gif image. All Hexawe tracks are produced with the rudimentary Little Piggy Tracker, a simple piece of software described as having been optimized for game consoles. Over at littlegptracker.com it is downloadable for free use, and in addition to an OS X rendition, there are version for the PlayStation Portable and for the Linux GP2X system. Fortunately, Hexawe revived itself last month with a pair of tracks, one by Rhionstrich and the other by B.Leo. The latter is particularly recommended. Leo’s, “Loves and Likes,” lays a groovily modulated synth figure over a gurgling drone that, as the track proceeds, reveals its percussive core — it feels like a lo-bit version of Tron drama (MP3).

Download audio file (hex003E_loves_and_likes_by_bleo.mp3)

The source code and samples that made the Leo release possible are available as a Zip archive, as is the standard mode for Hexawe tracks; definitely of use for those interested in fiddling with Little Piggy Tracker. More on B.Leo at dummydrome.com.

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The Voice Emanates from the Next Room

The voice emanates from the next room, the one behind the bed’s headboard. This is the Sheraton in downtown Los Angeles. I’m in a room on the 12th floor, toward the end of the corridor. It’s shortly after dinner, maybe 9pm. Through the thick wall, someone is talking. Quiet as this voice is, it stands out — from the HVAC drone, from the routine rising and falling of the service elevator, from the traffic far below. It’s evidently a voice, even if it’s muffled far beyond comprehension. The pace and volume are steady. I assume it’s a man, because the tone seems on the low end — I’d guess it’s a newscaster, except that he’s been speaking too long without anything to suggest a commercial break. There’s no interlocutor, so I surmise that he’s on the phone. All there is is this sound, this low-end murmur, the shape of a voice, saying nothing. The mental image is of a single hand moving slowly from behind a thick, almost opaque scrim of plastic.

Background: I briefly employed Tumblr to maintain a collection of observations of sound in everyday life, and then decided not to pursue the project; I decided if I were to do such a thing, I’d just make it part of Disquiet.com. Most of the material was, indeed, re-collated into various entries here at Disquiet.com, but this one lingered on the Tumblr page. I’m fond of it, and decided to add it here, for archival purposes.

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