[-empyre-] Sound Wars - before we move on

[Ricardo Dominguez]

Hola all,

Before we move on I thought this recent use of sonic aggression was
worth considering some of the recent themes in the last line of dialogue.
Sonification-in/as-war is also bound to currents of post-contemporary
torture societies that have been blooming to a greater degree post 9/11.
To what degree these sort of the gestures (since they were used on
Noriega and number of times after that (Waco etc.,) are at play in the
themes of cinematic audio in horror films old and new.

This essay from Revista Transcultural de Música is also worth a read:

Music as torture / Music as weapon
http://www.sibetrans.com/trans/trans10/cusick_eng.htm

An echo to this post by Paul Miller:

The Long Range Acoustic Device was used for the first time on American soil:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSMyY3_dmrM

It's been used on Iraqis for the last couple of years in places like "Camp
Bucca" Iraq and are being tested in regions of Baghdad, Fallujah, along
with other regions by Coalition Forces. The LRAD device was on hand at
protests of the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City[3]
but not used; it was extensively used against protesters in Georgia
against opposition protesters in Tbilisi on November 2007
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Range_Acoustic_Device

via Paul Miller

Robocops Come to Pittsburgh
and bring the latest weaponry with them

by Mike Ferner

September 28, 2009

No longer the stuff of disturbing futuristic fantasies,
an  arsenal of "crowd control munitions," including one
that reportedly made its debut in the U.S., was
deployed with a massive, overpowering police presence
in Pittsburgh during last week's G-20 protests.

Nearly 200 arrests were made and civil liberties groups
charged the many thousands of police (most transported
on Port Authority buses displaying "PITTSBURGH WELCOMES
THE WORLD"), from as far away as Arizona and Florida
with overreactingand they had plenty of weaponry with
which to do it.

Bean bags fired from shotguns, CS (tear) gas, OC
(Oleoresin Capsicum) spray, flash-bang grenades, batons
and, according to local news reports, for the first
time on the streets of America, the Long Range Acoustic
Device (LRAD).

Mounted in the turret of an Armored Personnel Carrier
(APC), I saw the LRAD in action twice in the area of
25th, Penn and Liberty Streets of Lawrenceville, an old
Pittsburgh neighborhood.  Blasting a shrill, piercing
noise like a high-pitched police siren on steroids, it
quickly swept streets and sidewalks of pedestrians,
merchants and journalists and drove residents into
their homes, but in neither case were any demonstrators
present.  The APC, oversized and sinister for a city
street, together with lines of police in full riot gear
looking like darkly threatening Michelin Men, made for
a scene out of a movie you didnt want to be in.

As intimidating as this massive show of armed force and
technology was, the good burghers of Pittsburgh and
their fellow citizens in the Land of the Brave and Home
of the Free ain't seen nothin yet.  Tear gas and
pepper spray are nothing to sniff at and, indeed, have
proven fatal a surprising number of times, but they
have now become the old standbys compared to the list
below thats already at or coming soon to a police
station or National Guard headquarters near you.
Proving that "what goes around, comes around," some of
the new Property Protection Devices were developed by a
network of federally-funded, university-based research
institutes like one in Pittsburgh itself, Penn State's
Institute for Non-Lethal Defense Technologies.

·   Raytheon Corp.'s Active Denial System, designed for
crowd control in combat zones, uses an energy beam to
induce an intolerable heating sensation, like a hot
iron placed on the skin.  It is effective beyond the
range of small arms, in excess of 400 meters.  Company
officials have been advised they could expand the
market by selling a smaller, tripod-mounted version for
police forces.

·   M5 Modular Crowd Control Munition, with a range of
30 meters "is similar in operation to a claymore mine,
but it delivers...a strong, nonpenetrating blow to the
body with multiple sub-munitions (600 rubber balls)."

·   Long Range Acoustic Device or "The Scream," is a
powerful megaphone the size of a satellite dish that
can emit sound "50 times greater than the human
threshold for pain" at close range, causing permanent
hearing damage.  The L.A. Times wrote U.S. Marines in
Iraq used it in 2004.  It can deliver recorded warnings
in Arabic and, on command, emit a piercing
tone..."[For] most people, even if they plug their
ears, [the device] will produce the equivalent of an
instant migraine," says Woody Norris, chairman of
American Technology Corp., the San Diego firm that
produces the weapon. "It will knock [some people] on
their knees."  CBS News reported in 2005 that the
Israeli Army first used the device in the field to
break up a protest against Israel's separation wall.
"Protesters covered their ears and grabbed their heads,
overcome by dizziness and nausea, after the
vehicle-mounted device began sending out bursts of
audible, but not loud, sound at intervals of about 10
seconds...A military official said the device emits a
special frequency that targets the inner ear."

·   In "Non-lethal Technologies: An Overview," Lewer
and Davison describe a lengthy catalog of new weaponry
including the "Directed Stick Radiator," a hand-held
system based on the same technology as The Scream.  "It
fires high intensity sonic bullets' or pulses of sound
between 125-150db for a second or two.  Such a weapon
could, when fully developed, have the capacity to knock
people off their feet."

·   The Penn State facility is testing a "Distributed
Sound and Light Array Debilitator" a.k.a. the "puke
ray."  The colors and rhythm of light are absorbed by
the retina and disorient the brain, blinding the victim
for several seconds.  In conjunction with disturbing
sounds it can make the person stumble or feel
nauseated.  Foreign Policy in Focus reports that the
Department of Homeland Security, with $1 million
invested for testing the device, hopes to see it "in
the hands of thousands of policemen, border agents and
National Guardsmen" by 2010.

·   Spider silk is cited in the University of
Bradford's Non-Lethal Weapons Research Project, Report
#4 (pg. 20) as an up-and-comer.  A research
collaboration between the University of New Hampshire
and the U.S. Army Natick Research, Development and
Engineering Center is looking into the use of spider
silk as a non-lethal "entanglement" material for
disabling people. They have developed a method for
producing recombinant spider silk protein using E. coli
and are trying to develop methods to produce large
quantities of these fibres."

·   New Scientist reports that the (I'm not making this
up) Inertial Capacitive Incapacitator (ICI), developed
by the Physical Optics Corporation of Torrance,
California, uses a thin-film storage device charged
during manufacture that only discharges when it strikes
the target. It can be incorporated into a ring-shaped
aerofoil and fired from a standard grenade launcher at
low velocity, while still maintaining a flat trajectory
for maximum accuracy.

Aiming beyond Tasers, the Homeland Security
Advanced Research Projects Agency, (FY 2009 budget:
$1B) the domestic equivalent of the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA), plans to develop
wireless weapons effective over greater distances, such
as in an auditorium or sports stadium, or on a city
street.  One such device, the Piezer, uses
piezoelectric crystals that produce voltage when they
are compressed.  A 12-gauge shotgun fires the crystals,
stunning the target with an electric shock on impact.
Lynntech of College Station, Texas, is developing a
projectile Taser that can be fired from a shotgun or
40-mm grenade launcher to increase greatly the weapon's
current range of seven meters.

"Off the Rocker and On the Floor: Continued
Development of Biochemical Incapacitating Weapons," a
report by the Bradford Disarmament Research Centre
revealed that in 1992, the National Institute of
Justice contracted with Lawrence Livermore National Lab
to review clinical anesthetics for use by special ops
military forces and police.  LLNL concluded the best
option was an opioid, like fentanyl, effective at very
low doses compared to morphine.  Combined with a patch
soaked in DMSO (dimethylsufoxide, a solvent) and fired
from an air rifle, fentanyl could be delivered to the
skin even through light clothing.  Another recommended
application for the drug was mixed with fine powder and
dispersed as smoke.

After upgrades, the infamous "Puff the Magic
Dragon" gunship from the Vietnam War is now the AC-130.
"Non-Lethal Weaponry: Applications to AC-130 Gunships,"
observes that "With the increasing involvement of US
military in operations other than war..." the AC-130
"would provide commanders a full range of non-lethal
weaponry from an airborne platform which was not
previously available to them."  The paper concludes in
part that "As the use of non-lethal weapons increases
and it becomes valid and acceptable, more options will
become available."

·   Prozac and Zoloft are two of over 100
pharmaceuticals identified by the Penn State College of
Medicine and the university's Applied Research Lab for
further study as "non-lethal calmatives."  These
Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), noted
the Penn State study, "...are found to be highly
effective for numerous behavioral disturbances
encountered in situations where a deployment of a
non-lethal technique must be considered.  This class of
pharmaceutical agents also continues to be under
intense development by the pharmaceutical
industry...New compounds under development (WO
09500194) are being designed with a faster onset of
action.  Drug development is continuing at a rapid rate
in this area due to the large market for the treatment
of depression (15 million individuals in North
America)...It is likely that an SSRI agent can be
identified in the near future that will feature a rapid
rate of onset."

In Pittsburgh last week, an enormously expensive show
of police and weaponry, intended for "security" of the
G20 delegates, simultaneously shut workers out of
downtown jobs for two days, forced gasping students and
residents back into their dormitories and homes, and
turned journalists' press passes into quaint, obsolete
reminders of a bygone time.

Most significant of all, however, was what Witold
Walczak, legal director of the Pennsylvania ACLU, told
the Associated Press: "It's not just intimidation, it's
disruption and in some cases outright prevention of
peaceful protesters being able to get their message
out."

#####

Mike Ferner is a writer from Ohio and president of
Veterans For Peace
> Thanks Gabriel for thoughtful responses.
>
> I think they do get towards a discussion of what I would like to hear.
>
> I mean, from the outset, I sought to introduce a disruption, a little
> distortion, an echo of criticism in the framing... IF we were to rewind
> and start again I would like to begin less with the issue of perspective,
> than to question the very idea. I think to start with perspective again
> privileges vision as the first move - and I wonder, talking to myself no
> doubt, if the tenor of discussion might be quite different if our
> metaphors were not from the first fixed in the visual.
>
> There is often a more critical register in sound metaphors (tone, tenor,
> questioning), such that I wonder if we made the effort to re-attune the
> code in which we speak about film, then the trinket could not be so easily
> isolated and fixed, the dialectic of mediation might not be thought of in
> terms of two sides, and the cinema hall and the city would not only be a
> space. Can we hear film otherwise - the ear of the other, otobiographies
> (Derrid(a)issonance again) -, perhaps our concerns about translation could
> govern the way we speak of circuits maybe - could this 'lead' us
> 'elsewhere'? or rather would this sound us a variation, or distract us,
> via declension, into something new and distinct, if not informed by a
> diagnostic, at least argumentative and resonant? Could we then change our
> tune?
>
> I don't know. I offered it as an experiment. Maybe a haiku.
>
> So, can I add a little graffiti to make sure the city is kept 'off' topic?
>
> What if we could translate everything that has been said of the city into
> a different code - would we, like Borges' map-makers, then live elsewhere?
> Be in a different movie?
>
>
> I am first of all against translation as it is mad,
> its impossible,
> it cannot ever be true to origins,
> its a kind of violence,
> it is always political,
> it transforms,
> it is creative,
> it is heroic to try,
> it is the essence of communicability,
> it is exchange,
> it disrupts parochialism,
> it is the foundation of internationalism,
> it is what we all should be trying to do,
> it is the most revolutionary activity,
> it is social,
> it is life itself,
> I am for it.
> (November 2005)
>
> http://hutnyk.wordpress.com/2007/03/07/translation-slippage/
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 10:39 AM, Gabriel Menotti
> <gabriel.menotti at gmail.com<mailto:gabriel.menotti at gmail.com>> wrote:
> Now, on with the 'offtopics':
>
>
>>Sound recording is fraught, often forgotten – and we have become very
>>much accustomed to images, they seem easy (sure, they are not,
>>but
), well, sound is not of equal import in the discourse on film, and
>>that’s just the problem. [John Hutnyk]
>
> I still think it is a matter of perspective. Maybe the theatre
> audience doesn’t pay attention to the importance of sound, but isn’t
> that expected? Ever since earlier forms of spectacle, the role of
> sound is not to be /noticed/, but to be (for the lack of a better
> term) incorporated. If you are listening to the score, that means it
> is not working as it should. The soundtrack should not be perceived as
> a detached thing, but (on the contrary) collaborate to congruity of
> the whole audiovisual piece and its correspondence to the mediatic
> experience, creating mood, presence – producing visuality, in a way. A
> good deal of the gruesomeness of movies such as Texas Chainsaw
> Massacre and Audition is pure sound design! Sound produces stabs that
> never happened (and sometimes compensate bad montage - e.g.
> pornography).
>
> It really is a shame that critics followed the same lines of the
> spectators and “became deaf” even when they are out of the theatre.
> However, as you have pointed out, the /moviemakers/ are always very
> critical about sound. Sound may not have that much importance on the
> discourse /on/ film, but it is preponderant to the discourse /of/
> film. First and foremost, voice is, both in the form of dramatic
> dialogue and of the disembodied voice over narration - which even
> before the sonorization of film was used to give meaning (order) to
> silent images.
>
> Moreover, sound is used to foster the illusion of correspondence
> between image and abstracted space, cheating the process of
> abstraction (that is why I personally think it is complicated to bring
> sound to the discussion, when trying to understand similarities
> between different process of spatial abstraction). For instance, you
> said that the movies you made “could have been a whole lot better” if
> you had good sound recording equipment, but why is that so? Because
> they would have sounded better? Isn’t it that just a technical
> judgment, following the ideal of representational aesthetics? =)
>
>
>>Without mediation between the image and the production apparatus,
>>there are only reified fixations – on the image, on the auteur, on the
>>screen mechanics, even on the circuit. I like to call this trinketization
>> –
>>a limiting fascination with abstracted and isolated components of a
>>system that cannot be grasped without a theory of mediation. [JH]
>
> Ha, indeed! But I wonder if cinema (and media in general) has ever
> being treated as anything but a trinket (posing a problem to
> constitute a theory of mediation in the first place).
>
>
>>It appears that not much has been said about movement and sound,
>>but I felt immediately, John, when you started writing, that hearing has
>>something to do with breathing, and moving listening  (we are not
>>static, we are not still [
] [Johannes Birringer]
>
> Yes, good point. However, we can perceive in cinema precisely the
> effort to fixate bodies to a certain extent. This process is necessary
> to the representational logic – to put the audience where its gaze can
> correspond to (and henceforth be substituted by) what Anne Friedberg
> calls the machine’s “mobile virtual gaze”. But I wonder if technical
> audio (in correspondence to technical images) really escapes this
> logic. Isn’t there anything like a “mobile virtual ear” always at
> work?
>
> In cinema, at least, sound comes from a set of speakers strategically
> positioned, and the soundtrack has to be mixed and equalized
> beforehand in relation to this system, in order to reproduce the
> diegetic spatiality of sound. What I mean is that the actual
> soundtrack (the information) is different depending if you have a
> stereo or dolby system, even though they are intended to produce the
> same aural perception in the audience.
>
> Therefore, I’d say that cinema, as a system of spatial disposition,
> process image and sound in very similar ways. Of course, when you
> consider dancing for example, you have a very different situation –
> but dance music is different of soundtracks in the same way vj gigs
> are different of feature premieres.
>
>
>>It seems that an important element to consider in Denied Distances is
>>the activity of desire, what is denied and what is let in, how does the
>>denial amplify our wanting, and how does the rhetoric of the removal of
>>distance from everything in the contemporary world actually add
>>distance, when that which seems to be closest to our skin is farthest
>>away. (Micha)
>
> Definitely, if on the one hand the public is positioned to identify
> with the machine and let it fulfil its perception, it is in a place
> where it’s kept excited. Thinking through this tension using Metz’s
> idea of the double voyeurism, we might find that this excitation comes
> from the identification with the image / diegesis. So the public
> chooses to be safe within the mechanism to feel the thrills of the
> story – and that’s where the distances are denied? Is mediation always
> this double-sided process?
>
> Best!
> Menotti
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au<mailto:empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
>
> --
> Professor John Hutnyk
> http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/cultural-studies/staff/j-hutnyk.php
> http://hutnyk.wordpress.com/
>
>


-- 
Ricardo Dominguez
Associate Professor
Hellman Fellow

Visual Arts Department, UCSD
http://visarts.ucsd.edu/
Principal Investigator, CALIT2
http://calit2.net
Co-Chair gallery at calit2
http://gallery.calit2.net
CRCA Researcher
http://crca.ucsd.edu/
Ethnic Studies Affiliate
http://www.ethnicstudies.ucsd.edu/
Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies Affiliate
http://cilas.ucsd.edu


Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics,
Board Member
http://hemi.nyu.edu

University of California, San Diego,
9500 Gilman Drive Drive,
La Jolla, CA 92093-0436
Phone: (619) 322-7571
e-mail: rrdominguez at ucsd.edu

Project sites:
site: http://gallery.calit2.net
site: http://pitmm.net
site: http://bang.calit2.net
site: http://www.thing.net/~rdom
blog:http://post.thing.net/blog/rdom