Disquiet Junto Project 0669: Phonosynthesis

The Assignment: Make music to help a forest regenerate.

A scientific research paper this month documented evidence that sound can help fungus grow. The conclusion: “Demonstrating a tangible impact on fungal activity, our findings suggest that carefully tuned acoustic parameters might be able to enhance ecological processes.”

Record music to help a forest grow. Imagine an array of solar-powered speakers is spread through a forest-in-need. Or come up with another deployment scenario of your own imagining. What sort of music would you play for the forest to encourage its regeneration?

The research paper: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2024.0295.

Coverage in the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/04/science/fungus-sounds-growth.html

The paper is the work of four people from the College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University, in Australia.

Thanks to Michael Rhode for having shared with me the research coverage.

Deadline: Monday, October 28, 2024, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

Details: disquiet.com/0669

Disquiet Junto Project 0669: Phonosynthesis

More on the 669th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Phonosynthesis — The Assignment: Make music to help a forest regenerate — at https://disquiet.com/0669/

more halF unusuaL

halF fungaL [disquiet0669]

I’ve always had plants in my studio, and someone once told me that even if sunlight is limited, the constant presence of music playing every day helps keep the plants healthy.

I don’t know about that, , but they look great and seem to grow steadily.

“Record music to help a forest grow.”

I believe that simply having musicians play acoustic instruments in the forest would only bring good to it.

Here I just played “woody”, natural percussion instruments, bamboo drums, wood sticks and blocks, conch shells, cuica, marimba, bombo legüero, talking drum and some other toys. I recorded 3 versions, this is the “fast” one.

Rain Forrest (Fast) - disquiet0669

Phonosynthesis

Disquiet Junto | Phonosynthesis - disquiet0669

According to my research of various websites, the consensus seems to be that calmer types of music are more conducive to plant growth. This track was created using Pure Data & various plugins, etc.
More on the 669th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Phonosynthesis — The Assignment: Make music to help a forest regenerate — at https://disquiet.com/0669/

Dendrosymphonic (disquiet0669)

Regeneration(disquiet0669)

**Disquiet Junto Project 0669: Phonosynthesis**  
The Assignment: Make music to help a forest regenerate.

A scientific research paper this month documented evidence that sound can help fungus grow. The conclusion: “Demonstrating a tangible impact on fungal activity, our findings suggest that carefully tuned acoustic parameters might be able to enhance ecological processes.”

Record music to help a forest grow. Imagine an array of solar-powered speakers is spread through a forest-in-need. Or come up with another deployment scenario of your own imagining. What sort of music would you play for the forest to encourage its regeneration?

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Track notes can be found here: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0669-phonosynthesis/69154/9

[Disquiet_Junto_0669] Forest Stimuli

More on the 691st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Un-Ravel — The Assignment: Make a recording of a string quartet fall apart — at https://disquiet.com/0691/

Un-Ravel

Disquiet Junto| Un-Ravel - disquiet0691

I selected the 4th movement of the quartet, chopped it up and remixed it to a stereo track. Then, by means of many adjustments and various effects, I converted it to a modern atonal/microtonal composition.

More on the 691st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Un-Ravel — The Assignment: Make a recording of a string quartet fall apart — at https://disquiet.com/0691/

Ravel Revamped (disquiet0691)

Ravel from the 1920s, timestretched in ableton, then converted to midi and combined, fx etc

More on the 691st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Un-Ravel — The Assignment: Make a recording of a string quartet fall apart — at https://disquiet.com/0691/

un-ravel +3 mix [disquiet0691]

Following this week's Disquiet Junto project this track was created using a historic recording of the Ravel string quartet from 1928.
This is the sound of a dream, dissolved beyond recognition, but still present as the conscious cause of this unconscious music.

The audio was transformed using spectral synthesizers and effect chains to create this dreamlike rendition. No other sounds or instruments were employed.

More on the 691st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Un-Ravel — The Assignment: Make a recording of a string quartet fall apart — at https://disquiet.com/0691/

rêver  (Disquiet0691)

Edited, mixed & mastered on 28 Mar 2025 by Jim Lemanowicz at Blissville Electro-Magnetic Laboratories of Massapequa, USA. 

This piece uses a 1928 recording by the Capet String Quartet of Ravel’s string quartet (Col. D 15057-60).

The original source is the Internet Archive: 

https://archive.org/details/3-capet-sq-col-d-15057-60-ravel-1928-mov-3/

Photography - Jim Lemanowicz, 24 Apr 2009, Massapequa & NYC, NY, USA

©2025 Jim Lemanowicz

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This original version of “Chowder Spray” was submitted as part of Disquiet Junto Project 0691: Un-Ravel. The Assignment: Make a recording of a string quartet fall apart.

More on the Disquiet Junto at: disquiet.com/junto/

More on the 691st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Un-Ravel — The 
Assignment: Make a recording of a string quartet fall apart — at https://disquiet.com/0691/

Chowder Spray (disquiet0691)

“Unraveling a revealing Ravel” takes the final twelve seconds of Ravel’s Capet string quartet in F Major (1903) as the material to apply the idea proposed in Disquiet Junto 0691: “it should make the Ravel sound like it is falling apart — that is, like it is unraveling, or un-Ravel-ing”. 
The tripartite microstructure of those final measures has been mapped into the three sections of the track: the first one starts with the clean original audio and quickly derives into a vivacious sequence of micro-editions, gating and spectral smearing; the second section transitions from energico to adagio until the chords seem to be suspended for a while, just to be submitted to different kinds of decimation, downsampling, aliasing, vacuum tube distortion, vinylic noisification, and bitcrushing; the piece closes with an exagerated ritardando, and wild filtering and cutting of excerpts that maybe expose some microfeatures of the final chord before leaving it totally unravelled. 
More on the 691st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Un-Ravel — The Assignment: Make a recording of a string quartet fall apart — at https://disquiet.com/0691/

This piece uses a 1928 recording by the Capet String Quartet of Ravel’s string quartet (Col. D 15057-60).
The original audio source can be found here:
https://archive.org/details/3-capet-sq-col-d-15057-60-ravel-1928-mov-3/

Unraveling a revealing Ravel [disquiet0691]

I was a bit lazy with this one and also pressed for time. I basically ran the original file through a number of granular plug ins, fading and mixing them against each other and towards the end rendering the mix into an ambient wash. Hints of Ravel remain, moving in and out, here and there....

disquiet0691

Disquiet Junto Project 0691: Un-Ravel
The Assignment: Make a recording of a string quartet fall apart.

Step 1: Download the first movement of the Ravel string quartet at this URL: https://bit.ly/un-ravel

The original source is the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/3-capet-sq-col-d-15057-60-ravel-1928-mov-3/

Step 2: Listen to the track closely.

Step 3: Create a new piece of music by employing the provided recording as source material. The goal for your piece is that it should make the Ravel sound like it is falling apart — that is, like it is unraveling, or un-Ravel-ing.

More on the 691st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Un-Ravel — The Assignment: Make a recording of a string quartet fall apart — at https://disquiet.com/0691/

unravelling [disquiet0691]

Un-Ravel [disquiet0691]

the end result is not so much a string quartet falling apart as it is a resonator-granular garble, but that's how it is sometimes

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More on the 691st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Un-Ravel — The Assignment: Make a recording of a string quartet fall apart — at https://disquiet.com/0691/



disquiet0691 - gravel

Tristan Louth-Robins is a South Australian artist working principally in the medium of sound art and field recording. Ideas of sound and its signification are key elements in Louth-Robins' practice, traversing the space between the visual and aural his work is realised through the mediums of recordings, installation, visual art and performance. He is interested in sound and its associative implications - including its relationship to objects, technology, urban space, memory and the natural world. 


Since 2005, Louth-Robins has presented work in Australia and internationally as a solo artist, whilst also collaborating with artists, writers, researchers, musicians and performers. 

Working across a vast array of activities encompassing composition, sound design, installation art, field recording and workshops, his work has been featured in events such as the Adelaide Festival of Arts (2006), The National Regional Arts Festival (2012), Mildura-Wentworth Arts Festival (2013), Fairfax Festival (2013) and Adelaide Fringe Festival (2014); and selected works exhibited at galleries including The Australian Experimental Art Foundation (2009), SASA Gallery (2012, 2015), Light Square Gallery (2012) and FELT Space (2015). His audio works have been broadcast on radio including Radio National, Classic FM, The BBC (UK), Acoustic Frontiers (USA) and RBB (Germany).

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.

[Disquiet_Junto_0669] Forest Stimuli

Tristan Louth-Robins

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