Disquiet Junto Project 0406: Phoneme Home

disquiet · October 10, 2019, 4:52pm

Disquiet Junto Project 0406: Phoneme Home
The Assignment: After a visit to Yellowstone National Park, you send a sonic report back to your planet of origin.

Step 1: You’re an extraterrestrial visiting Earth from your home planet. Like many tourists, you’re in awe of the beauty of Yellowstone National Park. You make a bunch of audio recordings of the wildlife. You surreptitiously post those recordings at the following URL. Check them out:

https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/photosmultimedia/soundlibrary.htm

Step 2: Since this is your first trip to Earth, you can’t really tell one animal from another, bird or human or wolf. Create a report back to your home planet consisting of material drawn from those audio recordings. It can take whatever structure you’d like: collage, song, cut-up, analysis. Be sure to employ alien technology when constructing your report.

Thanks to @lowellgoss for mentioning the kottke.org post that brought this resource to my attention.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0406” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your track.

Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0406” (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 track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.

Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0406-phoneme-home/

Step 5: Annotate your track 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 Monday, October 14, 2019, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, October 10, 2019.

Length: The length is up to you.

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0406” 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: Consider setting 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 406th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Phoneme Home / The Assignment: After a visit to Yellowstone National Park, you send a sonic report back to your planet of origin — at:

https://disquiet.com/0406

Thanks to Lowell Goss for mentioning the kottke.org post that brought this resource to my attention.

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:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0406-phoneme-home/

There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

Audio via the United States’ National Park Service, used via:

https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/photosmultimedia/soundlibrary.htm

Image by John J. Audubon, used via the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/brooklynmuseum-o84177-white-headed-eagle

disquiet · October 11, 2019, 12:27am

The project is now live.

bassling · October 11, 2019, 3:32am

Little something I prepared earlier:

VonnaWolf · October 11, 2019, 3:50am

I used a MAX for LIVE video patch I built combined with a Particle loop with the ROLI. I then chained these to the archived movie files and created a small audio loop. I used various speeds and time signatures per track and then grouped them thru a loop chain with a limiter. I then took the loop and processed the audio and video loops and layered them back in with the original video.
I tried to use videos that had the same sound samples in the sound banks.
Amphibian(boreal chorus frogs)
Cutthroat Trout
Fountain Paint Pot
Mud Pots
Trout
Today was so twacky, I needed this!

Formant · October 11, 2019, 4:06am

Here’s my entry for the week. It’s a pretty quick creation, but wanted to get something out there.

I’ve actually used these Yellowstone recordings on a few other projects of mine, so I was happy to see them!

I used the recording of loons as my base, which also defined the length of the track. The loons were not edited - that’s the full recording. They get pretty loud and crazy!
I then added sounds of grizzly bears (the hissing, growling, etc.) and of a red squirrel (the buzzy chattering). I recently heard a red squirrel out in nature and was surprised at the chattery sound they make.

To add some kind of alien idea, I used a synth line I was working on earlier today. Then I recorded and mangled my voice “reporting” back on the strange things this alien had seen - really reading a poem about nature I wrote today while out at a large pond. I assumed these aliens could only transmit information in a musical context, so all field recordings have to be wrapped into musical form for the home planet to understand.

tristan_louth_robins · October 11, 2019, 5:46am

Looks like a fun prompt this week! I fear I wont get to do this one as I’m about to depart on a week-long hiking trip to a National Park in South Australia: Flinders Chase C.P. on the eastern fringe of Kangaroo Island. I’m certain lots of field recordings will ensue; which will no doubt be dumped en masse to my Soundcloud sometime in the near future!

Look forward to listening to the results from this Junto upon my return next weekend!

cranifom · October 11, 2019, 4:38pm

disquiet · October 11, 2019, 4:54pm

Thank you so much for having done this.

And for folks who use the audio straight from here, please be sure, per the originating website, to “credit the ‘National Park Service’ where appropriate.”

cranifom · October 11, 2019, 5:09pm

Right. I should have pointed out the crediting issue. Good catch.

howthenightcame · October 11, 2019, 7:53pm

track and video are great, looks like you had fun putting it all together!!

howthenightcame · October 11, 2019, 7:55pm

lovely track, it’s great how everything fell into place - the samples, the synth, the poem. bravo!!

disquiet · October 11, 2019, 11:11pm

The playlist is now rolling:

howthenightcame · October 12, 2019, 1:27am

We have a category five typhoon rolling in this evening, and I have my ticket to see MELVINS play in Shibuya next month. These two facts had a direct influence on my destruction of the “red winged blackbird” sample >> pitch shift, distortion, delay, reverb, glitch upon glitch. The aliens included a purer recording of the beautiful bird song at the end of their transmission. Thank you to the ‘National Park Service’ for providing the original recording. The track title is a quote from Wallace Stevens.

notrance · October 12, 2019, 1:28am

Mission Report: Pilot Pirx here. a few days after the unfortunate failure of my ship, two of the locals took me out in a small water-going vessel made of wood. They carried some bowed instruments, also of wood, and a supply of liquid made of fermented fruits. I have collected samples, They informed me that they were capable of producing a sort of quantum entanglement by resounding with the local wildlife, and would be able to send me on my way.

Once we were in the middle of the small body of water, they began to produce sounds in some inchaote rhythm that nevertheless seemed to reverberate with the local fauna.

After a sometime passed, with occasional refreshments from the local liquids, I found myself back in the sector, next to my locker. And so I present myself and my recording to you, sir:

PopGoblin · October 12, 2019, 12:26pm

Maybe aliens won’t be sure if the forests or even the geysers are living and/or intelligent? I decided to use only video bits from the geysers and edited them together through EboSuite through Ableton Live and added resonators and distortion.

I’ve added some GeoSonics sounds as well (an amazing library, btw!). Also - I just had to add a sequence from Arturias virtual ARP2600…

The resulting video available here: https://youtu.be/-4PZbcREbDQ

Thank you for yet another fun challenge. And thank you National Park Service for great material!

sevenism · October 12, 2019, 12:46pm

the following are 11 random environmental/animal sounds collected from yellowstone park on Terra (native nomenclature: earth); a boundaried and somewhat curated aspect of the landscape.
the recording follows some of the conventions of the dominant species’ music (base frequency 130.813Hz, layering, repetitive rhythm, repeated sounds, approximations of music instruments: ableton live8, protoplasm tsmpro)
the natural frequencies are very low compared to what we are used to so you’ll want to raise this considerably. the sounds are generally unadorned but some work has been done in raising frequencies so it’s slightly less unpleasant. the goal is to distinguish between sounds to produce an internal network of 11 concurrent tracks. on average it will take about 4.75 terra minutes to traverse from cacophony to concurrence.

ikjoyce · October 12, 2019, 1:58pm

I was a bit short on time, so haven’t gone overboard with this one - and some of the animals there sound amazing, more electronic than my modular synth!

I made a modular synth patch in the Radiophonic style, using processed feedback loops on a spring reverb, to serve as the alien’s report. Overlaid with this were a few recordings: Unita Ground Squirrel, with echoes, and also reversed; Wilson’s Snipe; and the bed of sounds from Singing Lake, and Geyser Hill (with birds).
A bit like an Alien postcard.

Wish You Were Here? I sure do.

notrance · October 12, 2019, 2:55pm

What I found from this process is that since each of the recordings is a different length, looping each of them and mixing all the loops produces a generative environmental soundscape.

SussMusik · October 12, 2019, 4:45pm

Synakkah Musfor is the name of a planet that appears in a series of illustrated science fiction books written by Stewart Cowley. Published in the late 1970’s, the series describes how human life on Earth expanded into neighboring galaxies via the Terran Trade Authority.

According to Cowley, Synakkah Musfor is one of four planets that circle the G5 sun of Alpha Pheonicis, some seventy-six light years away from Earth. With a surface land mass of only 14%, the planet is inhabited by water-dwelling creatures who … you know what, let’s have Cowley describe it himself:

“As might have been expected on this watery world, the dominate species was aquatic and, in fact, not unlike terrestrial lobsters. Their dependence on a substantial water supply and a lack of shortcomings in their home environment meant that they never had cause to explore the potential of space travel … They proved swift to learn [however] and industrious in applying the knowledge they had acquired, develop[ing] a remarkable artificial respiratory system which allowed them to exist outside the vast seas of Synakkah Musfor.”

For this weird piece, Suss Müsik envisioned what might occur in the event that the “terrestrial lobsters” of Synakkah Musfor happened to arrive in Yellowstone National Park. Perhaps they would concentrate their efforts in communicating with mud pools, interpreting their acidic burbling as a form of greeting. It’s not inconceivable that they’d find the Fountain Paint Pot a most unwilling conversational partner.

Suss Müsik imagines the Synakkahans then attempting to woo the stubborn mud pot with a gentle little song. The cosmic crustaceans sing and dance among the viscous slurry before growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of conversation. Having been duly ignored by a group of tourists more interested in capturing selfies with their iPhones, the disappointed and dejected Synakkahans depart Earthen soil forever. Such is our loss.

divmod · October 12, 2019, 7:28pm

Rocket science is easy, transmitting samples back from a distant planet is hard. The audio channels overlap and we got all kind of weird interferences.

I only used the samples from NPS and some FX, no synths. All played and recorded in AUM on an iPad.