Disquiet Junto Project 0627: Just Ice Society
The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it.

Welcome to a new year of Disquiet Junto communal music projects. This week’s project is as follows. It’s the same project we’ve begun each year with since the very first Junto project, way back in January 2012. The project is, per tradition, just this one step:

Step 1: Please record the sound of an ice cube rattling in a glass, and make something of it.

It’s great if you can record your own ice sounds, but if you want some help, the always awesome Jason (Bassling) Richardson has provided some source audio:

WAV:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/e8qpnf0i1r2xhw1/bassling_-_pindari_glasses.wav/file

MOV:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/swq09kq409qhecg/bassling_-_pindari_glasses.mov/file

Background: Longtime participants in, and observers of, the Disquiet Junto series will recognize this single-sentence assignment — “Please record the sound of an ice cube rattling in a glass, and make something of it” — as the very first Disquiet Junto project, the same one that launched the series back on the first Thursday of January 2012. Revisiting it at the start of each January ever since has provided a fitting way to begin the new year. By now, it qualifies as a tradition. A weekly project series can come to overemphasize novelty, and it’s helpful to revisit old projects as much as it is to engage with new ones. Also, by its very nature, the Disquiet Junto suggests itself as a fast pace: a four-day production window, a regular if not weekly habit. It can be beneficial to step back and see things from a longer perspective.

. . .

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, January 8, 2024, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, January 4, 2024.

. . .

More on this 627th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Just Ice Society — The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it — at: https://disquiet.com/0627/

About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0627-just-ice-society/

Disquiet Junto Project 0627: Just Ice Society

An Individual Conditional Expectation (ICE) is a type of plot that demonstrates the deviation from a predicted occurrence when some aspect of it changes. Resembling statistical visualizations popularized by Edward Tufte in the 1980’s, ICE plots represent information as a series of lines each representing a separate, unique data point.

Every new year brings a period of reflection, inevitably coupled with an optimistic array of good intentions. One might be compelled to plot these on an ICE or similar chart detailing progress toward a given milestone. For Suss Müsik, the 2024 plan includes critical objectives like “be nice, mostly” and “try to avoid hospitals.” The bar is admittedly set low around here.

For this recurrent Junto project (one of Suss Müsik’s favorites), the sound of ice in a glass was sampled and run through a sort of handmade grain synth. This weird rhythm makes its appearance later in the piece, following an organ prelude accompanied by an arpeggiated bell/harp pattern. The voices were digitally stretched to resemble nothing more than long breaths, perhaps metaphorically representing the deep exhale one emits after a challenging year.

The piece is titled 2101.06986, in tribute to the filename of a 2021 paper by three authors describing the use of slice visualization to model machine learning algorithms. (Another Suss Müsik 2024 goal is “title more pieces after numbers,” because why not).

More on this 627th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Just Ice Society — The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it — at: https://disquiet.com/0627/

About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0627-just-ice-society/

2101.06986 [Disquiet0627]

More on this 627th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Just Ice Society — The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it — at: https://disquiet.com/0627/

About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0627-just-ice-society/

Thanks to Bassling for the Ice recording see his submission here .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHp3Igh7JSg

Chilling With Ice (disquiet0627)

A response to Disquiet Junto 0627: Just Ice Society.

The vocals were created using AI-enhanced text-to-speech, using content adapted from WikiHow. 

Recorded and produced at NOSIGNAL Multimedia Labs, The Shambles, Chicago, IL USA.

About Disquiet Junto 0627: https://disquiet.com/2024/01/04/disquiet-junto-project-0627-just-ice-society/

Disquiet Junto

Making Ice at Home May Seem Overwhelming (disquiet0627)

More on this 627th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Just Ice Society — The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it — at: https://disquiet.com/0627/

About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0627-just-ice-society/

Slicing The Ice (disquiet0627)

More on this 627th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Just Ice Society — The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it — at: https://disquiet.com/0627/

About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/ 1

Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0627-just-ice-society/

Just Ice Society

Disquiet Junto | Just Ice Society - disquiet0627

Matching the “have a drink” prompt I wanted to make something positive, funky, so I added basslines, a beat (lifted from a pretty famous 1974 pop hit that has to remain unnamed) and a “chant”.

I wish everyone a positive year full of joy!

More on this 627th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Just Ice Society — The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it — at: https://disquiet.com/0627/

About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0627-just-ice-society/

Disquiet0627 - Clink clink

xhg