Disquiet Junto Project 0492: Kintsugi Rework

The Assignment: Employ the Japanese technique of mending broken ceramics as a metaphor for remixing.

Step 1: This week’s project explores the ceramic method called “kintsugi.” If the term is unfamiliar, read up on it a bit. Here’s a description from an article in the Washington Post: “That means ‘golden joinery’ in Japanese, and it refers to the art of fixing broken ceramics with a lacquer resin made to look like solid gold. Chances are, a vessel fixed by kintsugi will look more gorgeous, and more precious, than before it was fractured.”

Step 2: Consider how kintsugi can be employed, through metaphor, as a means to rework/remix an existing piece of music.

Step 3: Take an existing track, perhaps one of your own, and by some means “break” it.

Step 4: Take the “broken” piece of music from step 3 and make it whole by employing a musical adoption of kintsugi.

Source for above quote, from art critic Blake Gopnik: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/02/AR2009030202723.html

. . .

More on this 492nd weekly Disquiet Junto project — Kintsugi Rework (The Assignment: Employ the Japanese technique of mending broken ceramics as a metaphor for remixing) — at: https://disquiet.com/0492/

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-0492-kintsugi-rework/

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

https://flic.kr/p/jEFjbJ

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0492: Kintsugi Rework

More on this 492nd weekly Disquiet Junto project — Kintsugi Rework (The Assignment: Employ the Japanese technique of mending broken ceramics as a metaphor for remixing) — at: https://disquiet.com/0492/

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-0492-kintsugi-rework/

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

https://flic.kr/p/jEFjbJ

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

Kintsugi Rework - disquiet0492

sulking faith

halF kintsugI [disquiet0492]

Hey, I decided to rework a all-percussion track I finished two days ago and posted for the weekly haiku challenge [here](https://soundcloud.com/daniel-diaz/the-serpent-pulse-3-naviarhaiku387)
I added a layer of an orchestral track and broke the percussion master to create holes where the orchestral score pops up. Then , on some places I played with filters to make the orchestral layer "leak" through the percussive parts. It was fun.

Kintsugi on a broken serpent (disquiet0492)

release date: 04-06- 2021
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-0492-kintsugi-rework/

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

https://flic.kr/p/jEFjbJ

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

Kintsugi Interior (disquiet0492)

This is the polka (disquiet0492)

[disquiet0492] Pumpkin Patch

Synthesisers, electric bass, instrumental jam.

A quick experiment built from a pair of Oblique Strategies cards:

“Honour thy error as a hidden intention” / “Just carry on”

This track started as an improvised bass demo over a simple low-note loop meant to replace a click track. I accidentally recorded four mismatched fingerboard-taps while trying to sketch a candombe-style groove — and instead of deleting them, I looped them across the whole piece. The synth layers were added later to make the odd bass/percussion hybrid loop actually work.

Loose playing, strange chord ideas, and all the imperfections left in on purpose. A fun morning session that I may revisit later.

for this challenge:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0727-polar-strategies/

Candombecito Improvisado (disquiet0727)

Oblique Mix (Yoshi , Tired of Poop and Drunk Yoshi) disquiet0727  (STBB#979)

This track was written in response to pulling the following two cards from Oblique Strategies:

Don't avoid what is easy.
What would your closest friend do?

In response to the first prompt I did the easy thing of quickly getting an acid house groove going with percussion from B Drum Kastle, bass from Softpop2, and a kick from Kickall. 0-ctrl is used to trigger the kick and do some light pitch sequencing of Kastle and Softpop. The lead is a Minibrute2 played live along with the drums and bass. 

When I thought about what my closest friend would do, I thought he'd probably just vibe, do a fun jam and not worry too much about being clever in the composing of it. So after jamming with the patch for a little while, I recorded a take to three tracks: drums, bass, lead. Then I  spent several hours editing the take, adding additional effects, and mixing.

More on the 727th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Polar Strategies — The Assignment: Celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Oblique Strategies card deck — at https://disquiet.com/0727/.

disquiet0727 - polar strategies

Disquiet Junto Project 0727: Chord of Omnis
The Assignment: Celebrate the 50th anniverary of the Oblique Strategies card deck.

Step 1: Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt published the first edition of their Oblique Strategies card deck in 1975, which makes 2025 the deck’s 50th anniversary. Note the milestone — and if you’re not familiar with the deck, read up a bit.

Step 2: Select at random two cards from the deck. If you don’t have a deck, there are various free web and mobile apps that reproduce it.  [Cards I got: Embrace repititions + simple subtractions]

Step 3: Record a piece of music that somehow combines or reconciles the two directions that resulted from Step 2.

More on the 727th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Polar Strategies — The Assignment: Celebrate the 50th anniverary of the Oblique Strategies card deck — at https://disquiet.com/0727/.

longitude [disquiet0727]

only a part (disquiet0727)

Track created for disquiet challenge  0727.  This track started out on my ipad and was finished on the PC DAW, Studio One. The piece consists of 4 tracks improvised straight through with no edits. 

The inspiration started with drawing two random prompts from Oblique Strategies; 
1. Breath Deeply
2. Don't avoid what is easy

I focused on my breath while performing and adjusting the track parameters. The rhythm comes from two sequences , 8 step and 5 step. The easy part was finishing a piece I've been working on in my ipad for a couple of weeks.

ios synths used in AUM:  Dixie, Bleass Monolit, House Mark 1, J6 Synth One
Sequencer used:  Polybud

As I listened to the piece, I had images of dancing at night with the butterflies in the glitchgarden.

More on the 727th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Polar Strategies — The Assignment: Celebrate the 50th anniverary of the Oblique Strategies card deck — at https://disquiet.com/0727/

night garden dance_disquiet0727

Using the Oblique Strategies card deck app (based on Eno and Schmidt, 1975), I drew "humility of intentions" and "organic machinery."
I used my Orba 2 (pictured, at right) , which is a handheld synth, but it is really a bit of a toy. (I also have an orba 1, which only uses factory settings- but like the Orba 2 can also be a midi controller. I don't have an Orba 3, which also has a microphone onboard). The Orba 2 allows me to use my own files create an 8-part set in the drum track, plus takeovers in the bass, lead and chorus tracks. It has a litte speaker on the bottom which is not bad at all. Organic machinery: my voice.

Humble: silly improv. But it is a portable toy that I have used in performance and I like it.

More on the 727th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Polar Strategies — The Assignment: Celebrate the 50th anniverary of the Oblique Strategies card deck — at https://disquiet.com/0727/.

disquiet0727 Orba and me

This week's #disquietjunto prompt was to pick 2 cards from Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies and use the results to inform what you create.  I am working on some chiptune-adjacent tracks, so I took the most minimal of those ideas - a short drum loop - and decided to expand it using the oblique strategies. Good idea, right?
Amusingly, the cards I got absolutely wanted to go in the other direction: "Is it done?" and "Resist change." Go figure!
I decided the song would be a short drum loop, happy to chug along, periodically disturbed by other song elements (pesky melodies! loitering chord changes!) that tried to intrude, and the drum loop would try to shake them off (resist change!)
This encouraged me to get more glitchy and effects-driven than I usually am.
I like the result! I think I will come back to this and try to make the effects a little more extreme and representative of the idea.

* * * * *
More on the 727th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Polar Strategies — The Assignment: Celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Oblique Strategies card deck — at https://disquiet.com/0727/.


Gravity Wants You Back (disquiet0727)

Corrupted Save [disquiet0727]

More on the 727th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Polar Strategies — The Assignment: Celebrate the 50th anniverary of the Oblique Strategies card deck — at https://disquiet.com/0727/.

Lava Labs (disquiet0727)

My 33 1/3 series book about the Aphex Twin album <i>Selected Ambient Works Volume II</i> was published in 2014. The book was one of the top 5 bestselling titles for the calendar year, and in 2015 was ranked by Pitchfork as one of the "33 best" of the 100-plus books in the 33 1/3 series. It has subsequently been translated into Japanese (2019) and Spanish (2018)

Since 2012 I have moderated the Disquiet Junto group, which began on SoundCloud. More at disquiet.com/junto. 

I've written for Nature, Pitchfork, The Wire, Down Beat, Boing Boing, NewMusicBox, Red Bull Music Academy, Art Practical, the website of The Atlantic, and many other publications. 

I've exhibited sound art at galleries in Los Angeles (Crewest), Manhattan (apex art), and Dubai (DUTAC), and I had a audio-visual installation at the San Jose Museum of Art as part of its 45th anniversary.

And since 1996 I've run the website Disquiet.com about the intersection of sound, art, and technology.

During the early 1990s I studied Mathematics and Computer Science. The world wide web was still largely text-based and mostly empty. Today things are obviously different, though I still thoroughly enjoy art, design, cinema and music in all its forms. I have traveled all over the world for nearly two decades, visiting just over 140 countries. Japan is my favorite. All of this I attempt to incorporate into my music and art.

[disquiet0492] Pumpkin Patch

Fake Genius

Related tracks