SOUND IN THE MACHINE

BUTTERFLY!!!!!!!!!

MacSoundhine — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:44:00 GMT

I enjoy thinking about power structures as they are conveyed and even constructed by speakers of a language. This comes down to a lot of listening not only to what people say, but how they say it and, even further, how they use their voices. It’s a bit like watching body language (I also make a pastime out of that): words only tell a part of the story.

A feature of how power is communicated is how we represent others in our own speech, as in how you use your voice in quoting someone else. You'll probably find that you have a generic female and male voice for the average person and several voices for the person closest to you. All of these voices you use in different ways for different purposes. But you probably also have a range of voices for foreigners. Often it plays innocently on the novel features of their native language. No big deal, right?

But it’s my contention that the nature of that voice may also indicate your impression of the nation / tribe /group of people that foreign would represent. And not in a good way.

Take German, for example.

It seems to be a running gag, at least among English speakers, to pronounce any word in the German language forcefully, even angrily; indeed, it’s common knowledge that German is a harsh language spoken by harsh people in harsh lands. One might even say that aggression is an inherent feature of the language via its morphemes: a blitz of mashed-up consonants thundering from the back of the throat amplified by a combative tone and obscene volume. Wrap any English word---love, beauty, humility, peace---in our rendition of the German accent and the word sounds pretty much like its opposite. Toss it in any conversation and it'll always get the laugh. Throw it in a speech about the loss of First Amendment rights and it will silence the room. Boy, howdy, imagine if we were like them fascism-loving Germans!!

Well, this is a putrid pile of horse shit. German is no less beautiful than any other language and its people no more warlike or impolite than any other people. The pretext for the gag is old-hat and constitutes to my mind a subtle form of nationalism (“we” kicked their asses, after all) and certainly an overt form of bigotry. And we've probably all done it or laughed at the jackass doing it at one time or another.

At least two reasons explain why it’s always, gosh, such a laugh to hear someone scream Schmetterling (butterfly) as if it’s a battle cry.

The first is a general concern: bad teachers of German, well, of nearly any language. They allow their students to take shortcuts on pronunciation and, in so doing, cultivate an ambivalence in the student toward the very essence of the thing they are learning:language, i.e. sounds, vocal gestures, meaning conveyed above and beyond the semantics of sentences. The students grow up and think of how difficult German was back in the day and replace their frustration of learning a foreign language with ridicule of how banal that language was to begin with.

Because making fun of something, as we all know, excuses us from having to learn or respect it.

The second, and particular for the case of German, stems from our rather sickening fascination with the Third Reich. Along with the endless variation of imagery of Nazi soldiers harassing emaciated Jews huddled in some gray setting, we hear them barking this mad and vicious tongue. Over and over and over again, the vicious German language, screaming across an innocent and ravaged Europe. A vicious language for a vicious people, a people responsible for every crime against humanity humanity has created for itself and not at all like “our” heroic dead who, with their soft consonants and demure intonation, humanely and justly liberated all of Europe from this unprecedented military and cultural aggression.

Note my sarcasm.

It’s no longer acceptable to impersonate Black people with what we may call the "slave intonation" because it is a blatant attempt to associate a Black person with impoverishment, servility, stupidity even. But it is totally cool to have a few laughs over the ole "Nazi intonation," ya know, because even if German speakers aren’t Nazis per se, there is something intrinsically Nazi about them. Same thing goes for those stuck-up and effeminate French, the low class and stuttering Latinos, the 7-11 staffing Indians, the dry cleaning owning Chinese, and the swishy and immoral gays, lisping and sing-songing our good Christian nation straight to the fires of Hell.

Note once more my sarcasm.

I’m not saying it’s necessarily the case that the standard impersonations of these foreign prosodic features (intonations and other sound features) carry with them the prejudices I note here, but use of such prosody certainly does not dispel the possibility of a speaker’s agreement with these feelings.

It’s interesting (to me, at least) how these things are structured- what's acceptable to whom in what setting, what you can get away with and what you don't have to because everyone is cool with it though it’s just as f'd up as trying to get laughs out of displaying the bigotry we all recognize as bigotry.

Tschüssi.

Frank Serafine Performs Amazing Feats with Zoom H4

MacSoundhine — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:45:00 GMT

Came across the video below featuring sound designer Frank Serafine earlier today. While I have my doubts about his claim concerning human DNA and sound (did someone say hyperbole?), I stare in amazement that he is using the same model digital recorder that I use with no concern for hand noise on the body of the machine or wind noise. Just look at how he follows the kid on the skateboard. And the train that passes?! More wind than a Republican soccer mom after 2 bowls of refried beans! And close recording in spaces full of ambient noise? I dunno folks...something seems strange for a professional sound content provider.

But hey, he makes more dough than I do doing this stuff.

So, for that reason, worth a viewing. Oh, and more vids here.

A Tim Exile Perfomance and Video

MacSoundhine — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 19:00:00 GMT

If this ain't sound in the machine, I wouldn't know what is. Check it out first. My comments are below.

Amazing as the performance is, I'm thinking of the role the video plays in suggesting the experience. Several things at work here.

The rapid hand movements heighten the affective momentum, not at all unlike watching the exaggerated movements of a conductor (who doesn't 'touch' the music, mind you). All this movement says, this thing is going somewhere and fast!

Unless you know what you're watching (Exile built a few of the controllers making that even more difficult), there is a tenuous relationship between the hardware and the resulting sound. We expect something a bit different. Faders don't increase or decrease the volume, but pull down the pitch and tempo; the keyboard makes bizarre intrusions, responsible for the least traditionally musical aspects of the performance. You're not in Kansas anymore.

The variations almost can't change fast enough- Exile's inspiration spilleth over, from mic to keyboard to drum pad. But if you only listen to the track, the variations seem more like transitions that never really get anywhere. At least that's my sense of it (and a commonplace complaint of dance music, "intelligent" or not).

Again, I think this is great stuff. Granted he's demoing a product and going for the WOW factor, even doing so somewhat outside of the context of many Reaktor users. Just the same, from a marketing point of view, the video tells us that we can do this too: just look at this guy! One guy and all this sound! That's pretty convincing, I'd say. From a production point of view, however, the video noticeably conceals the work Exile did in creating settings, mapping controls, assigning instruments, making ensembles, etc. It's almost like magic on the video. Too obvious to anyone looking to drop a few hundred $$ on a soft synth. To me, without it the video, the audience would have a greater appreciation for the production that went into the track. Unless you add in the rough edges.

And so on. This is all to say, there's more than sound going on here. As always, of course.

Silent Tools and Skepticism

MacSoundhine — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:10:00 GMT

Trimpin Documentary

MacSoundhine — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:08:00 GMT

If there are any buyers-of-my-Christmas-gifts reading this, don't over look this!

The World's Deepest Bin

MacSoundhine — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:43:00 GMT

From the same good folks who brought us the Piano Stairs. I like the idea--people will modify their behavior if we make it fun--but I have my doubts about this one. Imagine sitting in the park and hearing this sound over and over and over again. Dreadful. Also, wouldn't you also hear whatever you've thrown in hitting the other trash as this sound is going on? And what if the trashcan is visibly nearly full? Starts to be less fun and more gimmicky feeling. But hey, I'm just sayin'...overall this is an awesome idea.

SOUNDS.BUTTER

MacSoundhine — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:40:00 GMT

Digging the work of the pair of gentlemen making up the SOUNDS.BUTTER interactive design group. Though chock-full of interesting visual/3-D designs and concepts, as you might imagine, I’m especially interested in their manipulation of everyday objects to produce sound, rendering possibilities for new ways to experience sound. Here's what they've got so far.

Tape Converter is an auditory interpretation of the residue of transparent sticky tape via web cam underneath the tape dispenser. The web cam signal is run though a sound generator and output as audio. In a way, not so different from the record, magnetic tape, and CDs--data is stored on the medium, interpreted by the machine (with varying degrees of 'autonomy') and delivered as sound. I haven't found anything on what informs the sound generator, but I do like the fact that, at least in the video demonstration on the site, the designers didn't choose typical sounds to output.

The Flower Pot and Wall Piano take similar approaches but use a more recognizable (and oftentimes gloriously out-of-place) sound. Flower Pot is passively interactive, picking up information from surface vibrations and outputting that as sound. The Wall Piano requires the user to actively manipulate it and sounds like, what, a piano. But neither produce sounds that one would expect--the Wall Piano doesn't look like any piano I've ever seen and the Flower Pot doesn't fall into nature or bug sounds or whatever you'd expect (if you ever expected a flower to make sounds).

Or take “Visible Sound,” the prototype of a sewing machine with attached car CD player face that would stitch the familiar graphical representation of waves (sound) onto some material. This serves the anecdotal purpose of ‘visualizing’ sound, but more importantly, delivers it back to us in a modality we hardly ever associate sound with: touch. Although sound is by definition mechanical energy, thus, touch, this prototype gives a more direct impression of that reality.

Two otherwise lackluster accessories of life show up modified for new and improved functionality. The Ultrasonic Umbrella prototype uses ultrasonic sound to dry the umbrella. Clever as that is, my favorite is the mobility series consisting of 4 canes retrofitted with various noise-making devices.

Great stuff, awesome ideas. Keeping my eyes and ears on these guys.

Memory is the crux of the performative, the perpetual

MacSoundhine — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:00:00 GMT

The capture, storage, and reproduction of sound is the bleeding edge of technology in relation to visual text: the horses on the walls of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc cave are tens of thousands of years old; the earliest sound recordings, less than 150 years old, have disintegrated. We've barely scratched the surface.

The written word is considered immutable; sound is considered transcendent. Writing technology is easy; sound technology is fraught. Seeing is believing, though we’re often deceived; we can’t believe what we’ve just heard.

Transcription across modalities wastes and overcompensates. The aural to the visual. A calculated risk for a supposed benefit of perpetuity. Our memories are flawed, our lives short, and corruption occurs as wisdom passes to subsequent generations. We put our faith in visual texts to outlast ourselves and many generations on. Indeed, even they do not last forever.

Memory is the crux of the performative. Characterized by its ephemeral nature, sound hinges on the performing body. But we want it to stick AND be in the moment. We'd rather believe that the documentation never changes as we change than to surrender to the inconstancy of memory.

Piano Stairs

MacSoundhine — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:30:00 GMT

Check out this video! Fantastic idea: embed familiar sounds in everyday objects that just about everyone can use. Familiar interface, nothing complicated. I would love to hear what other textures its capable of. Electronic keyboards, maybe an organ. Wonder how long it will take until the kids at the local school of music stage a concert on the thing.

The New Kairos by Another Name that Won't Change the Game

MacSoundhine — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:40:00 GMT

If there’s any line in Clive Thompson’s article in last month’s Wired that jumps out at me, it’s “online media are pushing literacy into cool directions.” I like it for its reservation. Timid optimism. Thompson seems to really want to shout it on the mountain: New Literacy is Born! But he settles for a cool “cool” instead. Bugger.

The skinny:

Pitting Andrea Lunsford against the Johnny-Can’t-Reads of the world, the selling point, based on Lunsford ‘s research, is that online contexts of communication are making students more sensitive to audience and timeliness, i.e. students report that good prose “has an effect on the world.”

OK, that’s a starting point, a “cool direction,” if you will, but can we scale texts, tweets, and social media comments up, as Thompson and so many academics are wont to do, to game-changer status?

Hmmm…

Public message boards (any YouTube video comment section will do) almost instantly become cesspools of vitriol and ire, with flamers feeding trolls and trolls keeping the torches lit. The intellectually engaged (and grammatically aware) folks in these open-ended communities tend to be drowned out. And I have grave doubts that anyone is ever persuaded about anything in these spaces, unless persuasion now means writing a comment about a comment that was a comment to a video that was commentary to being with. Cicero would've been so proud. In private spheres such as Facebook, most people communicate with fewer than 10 other people, even if they have hundreds of friends. And these are folks with whom they more than likely have a real friendship. Spurring to action? Effect on the world? Sounds like a stacked deck to me.

There is one point Thompson makes that I’m all for: “thebrevity of texting and status updating” teaches kids to be poetically terser. If they do it all the time, yeah, it probably does. The only thing they need to be un-taught is that they can’t always use this approach. Not when they want to get through school or write a Victorian novel. After that, when they return to the real world, no one has time for the ink-fishing and bloating that we force upon them every chance we get. “500 grammatically correct words and appropriately punctuated sentences on the approved paper format, Johnny, or you get a lower grade.” What does Johnny do? Of course! He knows how to write for his audience!

We just won’t tell him that because we know it’ll jeopardize our authority.

Special: The Brian Dunning Interview

MacSoundhine — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 17:40:00 GMT

Listen Now!

A couple of weeks ago, I interviewed Brian Dunning, the creator and host of the Skeptoid podcast. This podcast, which answers all manners of pseudoscience and cultural myth with scientific reality, has a weekly audience of over 80,000 listeners and is a TOP 5 science podcast on iTunes. Brian has also been involved in the creation of the television pilot The Skeptologists, the critical thinking video Here Be Dragons, and has just premiered the inFact video podcast.

He’s obviously a busy guy and the whole conversation was a last minute kind of thing: I contacted him 2 days prior, jotted down some notes in the meantime, and wedged myself between his other appointments that day. We set up my gear in his hotel room and talked for about an hour. I’ve taken out most of the 25 minutes or so of the conversation concerning skepticism. I’m an avid listener of Skeptoid and had alot of questions that ended up being too much of a digression for the Sound in the Machine podcast. If anyone would like to hear this part of the discussion, e-mail me [at briansnead at gmail.com] and I’ll send it over to you. I also removed a 10 minute section on his process for producing Skeptoid episodes, but I plan to post that soon.

In this version of the interview, you’ll hear a bit about Skeptoid and his presentation entitled, Sounds from Beyond, which he describes as “weird recordings and sounds from all areas of the paranormal.”

REFERENCES

Check out Skeptoid episodes, The Rendlesham Forest UFO and When People Talk Backwards, for the entire story on the sounds discussed in this interview.

Neurosonics Audiomedical Vid

MacSoundhine — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:12:00 GMT

Fascinating stuff here. Lots 'o' space for theoretical goblety-gook. Damn fun to watch and hear!

Sampling my thoughts:

The sounds of buzzing lips and speaking, for example, are believable coming from the heads, but other sounds, such as the multiple voices coming from the one head at the very end, challenge that, leading to the next idea...
The whole exercise is set up to imply that without the heads (and their vocal mechanisms) these sounds would not be possible. This is an interesting notion: vocal sounds are recorded, manipulated, and played back everyday. Do we hear voices or some kind of recorded representation of a voice? Sticking the heads (supposed original source of sound) on the turntable gives impetus to the question. And then we think of the heads not so much severed from the body, but embodied by the turntable, embodied in the sound.
Dig the opening sequence- like the opening sequence of Back to the Future when Marty readies the amplification system and guitar. And the cases from which they take the heads: Plutonium! It's the Libyans!!!

And that's where I'll leave it for now. Enjoy!

Neurosonics Audiomedical Labs Inc. from Chris Cairns on Vimeo.

Bizarre Japanese Laughing Device

MacSoundhine — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:38:00 GMT

Folks, I have no clue. Thoughts: a lot of work for so little pay off. Most importantly, however, is the overwhelming visual / functional presence of the mechanism. Perhaps the discrepancy between work needed and sound produced is accounted for by the apparatus.

Schuhkistenaufnahmen aus Berlin

MacSoundhine — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 20:16:00 GMT

Klicken Sie hier!

“Schuhkistenaufnahmenaus Berlin” behandelt die alltäglichen Laute aus Berlin, aufgenommen währendmeines Weihnachtsurlaubs. Ich hatte bis dahin schon hier und da mit meinem digitalen Aufnahmegerät Geräuschefestgehalten, aber nur als eine Auswahl an Lauten aufbewahrt. Ich dachte, dass ich vielleicht irgendwann mal eine CD daraus machen würde und es eher als Fluchtmöglichkeit aus meinem hiesigen Leben betrachten würde. Aber als Podcast? Einfach nur Laute aneinander zu reihen schien mir langweilig; Berichterstattung schien mir nervig. Dann fand ich meine Metapher. Während eines Aufenthalts bei der Grossmutter meiner Frau schaute man sich bei Kaffee und Kuchen alte Bilder aus einer Schuhkiste an. Und da kam mir die Idee: Aufnahmen aus der Schuhkiste als Audioversion. Das war’s!

Nachdem ich mehrere Stunden mein Material redigierte, dachte ich mir: „Nichtzerdenken“. Wenn die Aufnahmen aus Omas‘Schukiste für sich selbst sprechen konnten, dann können es meine Aufnahmen auch. Natürlich sind wir prädestiniert das genaue Gegenteil von Lauten zu erwarten. Sie werden normalerweise als ein-dimensionale Elemente praesentiert. Aber bei Bildern verhält es sich so natürlich nicht. Selbst bei wichtigen Motiven, wieden Hochzeitsbildern der Grosseltern, sieht man immer noch einen Baum im Hintergrund, vielleicht auch ein rennendes Kind in der Ferne, eine Tischdecke auf dem Tisch und Wolken am Himmel. Und wir verstehen es dies als sinnvoll zu gestalten. Was ist wichtig, was ist nicht wichtig; Und dass, obwohl das Bild selbst eine Illusion ist. Aber wer hört sich schon Laute und Geräusche eben so an, sei es auf Aufnahmen oder um uns herum? Wir verlassen uns fast immer auf das Gesehene neben den Lauten, um der Geräuschkulisse Sinn zu geben. Komischerweise erscheinen uns weder Fotographie noch Phonographie als Illusion. Wir bringen unsere Augen dazu das Gehirn auszuschalten; unsere Ohren dagegen lassen sich ganz leicht überlisten.

Wenn ich schon mal dabei bin, will ich mich auch auf die Maschiene konzentrieren. Beim Redigieren des Materials, habe ich keinerlei Artifakte der Maschiene bei den Aufnahmen versteckt. Man sieht immer die Kamera, ob manes wahrnimmt oder nicht – mit Schärfentiefen und Abbildungsfehlern– und man sieht immer die Ränder der Bilder, die extreme Farbsättigung in den Aufnahmen. Alles ist kleiner und zweidimensional. Auf meinen Aufnahmen hört man also unter anderem meine Hände auf dem Aufnahmegerät, den Wind im Mikrophon, und ab und an den Kompressor. Manche Geräusche sind zu laut, andere zu leise, die Ein- und Ausblendungen sind später hinzugefügt worden, das MP3 verdünnt die originale Fülle der Laute und stopft es mit Müll wieder aus. Aber diese „extra“ Laute sind genauso Teil der Erfahrung einer Aufnahme zu lauschen wie die Bilder, die von einer Kamera erzeugt werden. Dabei darf man eben nie vergessen, dass alles eine Illusionist.

LOCATIONS

Helmholtzplatz, Prenzlauer Berg
Danziger Strasse, Prenzlauer Berg
Weihnachtsmarkt (2005)
Alexa
Parisier Platz / Brandenburger Tor
Weihnachtsmarkt, Potsdamer Platz
Kirche in Friedrichshain
Party: Palast der Republic (2005)
Bunkertour, Wuensdorf
U2, Alexanderplatz (Pankow)
Silvester, Friedrichshain, 21 Uhr
Potsdamer Platz
Wohnung, Friedrichshain
Treppe...?
Bunkertour, Wuensdorf
Wohnung, Friedrichshain
S-Bahn (Zeuthen)
Ecke Danziger Strasse / Lychener Strasse, Prenzlauer Berg
Café, Prenzlauer Berg
Silvester
Helmholtzplatz

Sleep Sound Therapy System Pseudoscience

MacSoundhine — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 15:48:00 GMT

A magic "clinically proven" sound machine to make you fall asleep in, like, 20 minutes!

See if you can spot the logical fallacies / faulty science / bullshit in this 5 minute video.

Catch 'em?

No? My lunch break analysis:

(The opening line, "it's just really hard to shut that brain down," is a little hint: shut down your brain to believe this, people!)

The set up

00:00 - 00:18 we can't sleep!
00:19 - 0:30 nothing else works and we still can't sleep!

The solution

00:33 - 00:41 the natural solution to make you sleep!! Tranquil Moments!!

Fair enough. Why not find a solution for that darned brain clattering about all night?! The departure for the legitimacy of this product into the realm of fool-you-with-sciency-sounding-stuff comes @ 00:34. Its a little rhetorical trick that goes like this:

start out with a reasonable assertion and build up to the unreasonable assertion.

No time for the audience to object. In this video it goes,

if 'sounds of nature' are relaxing and make you restful and at peace, then they will lull you to sleep.

Wrong! But they quickly tuck this into a little syllogism:

Nature sounds make you sleep. This machine produces the sounds of nature, therefore you will fall asleep.

Who can argue with that? It's logic, folks!!! You know, Aristotle! And in case you wanted to argue, you couldn't because, holy mother of Joseph, they've got SCIENCE!!!! And what better way to introduce that science than this scientist telling us that we don't know anything about science: @ 00:52 "It seems mysterious, but there's a lot of science behind it." Nothing says psuedoscience like appeals to ignorance and authority!!

The whole of Dr I-Know-More-Than-You's argument is based on manipulating brain activity through "waves." Let's go along with it for a sec here.

The functioning of the brain produces some kind of waves that we've given letter names. To get the kind of functioning we want, we just input the right letter-named waves into the brain.

Ya know, like when you want to hear your favorite song a little slower, you just tap that tempo on the CD player. Duh!

A lot of unanswered questions here, a lot of wild assertions. But check out Dr Labcoat's delivery: calm, composed, genuine. He's got white hair and a beard and likes to hang out in his studio where he can help all those baggy-eyed people by playing his Casio.

Anyway, let me just wrap this up. We don't need anything more than Dr. Douchebag's own words.

"Brainwaves exist as electromagnetic pulses."

Yeah, AKA the pattern emerging from the firing of neurons. The firing of neurons produces a pattern, but the pattern does not produce brain activity. You don't control the brain by imposing some kind of nebulous "pattern / pulse / wave" on it.

Sad to see even reputable businesses pushing this kind of garbage (found this product on Brookstone's site). And it's not whether or not there is something relaxing about pink / white noise for some individuals, but the fake-science garb they floozy it up in. Shame on Brookstone.

Special #2: Shoebox Shots from Berlin

MacSoundhine — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 21:02:00 GMT

Shoebox Shots from Berlin is all about everyday sounds from a Christmas vacation spent in Berlin. While hanging out at my wife’s grandmother’s placeover cake and coffee, out came a shoebox filled with piles of old snapshots. That’s it, I thought, why not do the same thing with audio? And here we are.

Listen Now!

Shoebox Shots from Berlin is all about everyday sounds from aChristmas vacation spent in Berlin.I’d already been recording stuff here and there with a digital handheldrecorder, but I figured I’d just use the material for a library of samples. Andmaybe I’d make a CD and put it on when I needed some escapism. But for apodcast? Stringing together a bunch of sounds seemed boorish; narrating, obnoxious.Then I got my metaphor. While hanging out at my wife’s grandmother’s place overcake and coffee, out came a shoebox filled with piles of old snapshots. That’s it, I thought, why not do the same thing with audio? Andhere we are.

Editingthrough the several hours of stuff I got, I was thinking of one thing: don’tover-think it. If those snapshots floating around in grandma’s shoebox couldspeak for themselves, why not these sound? Of course we’re conditioned toexpect the exact opposite from sounds. They’re usually presented asone-dimensional units: all figure and no ground. But pictures aren’t like that. Even if it’s something really important,like a shot from your grandparents’ wedding reception, there’s still a treebehind them and maybe a kid running around in the distance, there’s a tablecloth on the table and a cloud in the sky. And we get it, we know how to makesense of the image, what’s important, what’s not, even though it’s all of it anillusion. But who ever learns to listen to recordings and the sounds aroundthem like this? We almost always rely on some kind of image to tell us how tomake sense of the soundscape. Oddly, neither the photograph nor the phonographare illusions to us, somehow. We will oureyes to override our brains in the case of the photograph; our ears are just veryeasily duped.

WhileI’m at it, I want to draw your attention to the machine. In editing thismaterial, I’ve not hidden the artifacts of the machine I used to record thisstuff. You always see the camera,whether you realize it or not—there’s depth of field and lens aberrations—andyou always see the borders of the photos and the lack or over-saturation of color.And everything is way too small, totally out of scale and two-dimensional, toboot. So, on these recordings you hear my fingers on the recorder, the wind inthe microphones, and the compressor pumping from time to time. Sounds will betoo loud and sounds will be too soft, the slight fades are completelymanufactured, the MP3 will strip out much of the original richness and stuff junk in the holes. I could go on. But these“extra” sounds are just as much a part of the experience of listening to arecording as the camera that’s made any picture you’ve ever seen. Not toforget, however, that it’s all an illusion.

So,now my box of shots from my most beloved of all cities, Berlin.

LOCATIONS

3:33 Playground at Helmholtzplatz, Prenzlauer Berg
3:48 Exiting café on the corner of Danziger Strasse, Prenzlauer Berg, headed towards the Eberswalder Strasse train station
4:35 Christmas market (2005)- this was recorded with a camera. Used it because I could, also because there is a marked difference in the audio and I wanted listeners to notice.
4:49 Alexa (new mall at Alexanderplatz)
5:12 Parisier Platz / Brandenburg Gate
5:46 Christmas Market, Potsdamer Platz- the laughs are from people on a giant slide
6:04 Churchbells from the window of our apartment in Friedrichshain
6:25 Party at the (now demolished) Palast der Republic- last one ever (2005, also recorded with a camera)
6:42 Bunker tour, Wuensdorf
7:05 U2, entered at Alexanderplatz, headed north (Pankow)
8:21 New Year’s Eve fireworks from the window of our apartment in Friedrichshain, 9pm before things really got going
8:58 In the tunnel headed towards the trains at Potsdamer Platz
9:29 Entering our apartment building in Friedrichshain, elevator
9:50 Exiting train station (ascending stairs)…
10:04 Bunker tour, Wuensdorf (ascending stairs)
10:25 In our Friedrichshain apartment with the typical sounds- Chicken Invaders, cheesy German Christmas songs, window open
10:40 S-Bahn (direction Zeuthen), this conversation cracked me up
11:11 Danziger Strasse / Lychener Strasse in Prenzlauer Berg
11:45 Café in Prenzlauer Berg
12:17 New Years Eve/Day midnight- from the apartment. Unbelievably loud. Fireworks lighting up the sky
13:08 Same playground as first sample in Prenzlauer Berg (this little girl talking was very, very cute)

iPod v. Walkman

MacSoundhine — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:42:00 GMT

Interesting article in the BBC Magazine last week: Giving Up My iPod for a Walkman. A 13 year-old lugs the Walkman around for a few days and comes away "relieved [to] live in the digital age, with bigger choice, more functions and smaller devices."

Where to begin...(feel free to check out the SITM episode Hearing the Music and Listening to the Record)

Let's hear more about that relief as we collect our thoughts, for he's also "relieved that the majority of technological advancement happened before [he] was born, as [he] can't imagine having to use such basic equipment every day." The native naivete laid bare! LOL!! That one really takes the cake. "The majority of technological advancement"?! Are you kidding me?! "Basic equipment"?!!!

Make no mistake, I'm not ridiculing him. Not at all. For a 13 year-old I'd say this young man is dead on the money: he's just as enraptured with the momentary state of technology and dismissive of previous iterations as anyone else. The iPod is obviously better, of course (I mean come on, people...massive advertising chic can't be wrong!), but in all fairness he tries to find the good in the ole Walkman. Mentions dual headphone jacks and a wall wart, but that's about all he can muster. It's slightly painful to see him grope through it. And how does it sound, sound, "the function that matters most?" "Different...odd...and warbly."

Those are just about the same words I'd use to describe the MP3, that most hallowed demon of codecs. And the iPod? Buttons may be slim, but are not always so easy to use. Its light alright, but don't leave it in the back pocket of your jeans and throw 'em in the wash! Wanna use the hardrive, uh, as a hardrive?! Forget it! How about when the battery dies? Send it to the factory!!! Better yet, buy a new device altogether!

I could go on...

We really get ahead of ourselves, folks.

Proving Hawking Radiation with Sound Particles

MacSoundhine — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:52:00 GMT

Finally getting caught up on all of my back-issues of current events rags, I've come across an article in The Economist about the possibility of using phonons to detect Hawking radiation. Pretty heady stuff, but here's a quick run down.

The gravity of black holes is so unbelievably strong that it is supposed that nothing can escape. Au contraire, claims Steven Hawking, some stuff can escape, which is made possible by the very strength of the black hole's gravity. But the reason some stuff can escape is not intuitively obvious: in quantum mechanics, which is concerned with the extremely small pieces of the universe and how those pieces behave, pairs of not-exactly existing particles have the potential to 'exist.' Each is composed of two pieces, the virtual particle and the antiparticle. When seperated, one of the particle 'exists' for an extremely short duration of time, only to attach itself to another virtual particle and return to the realm of potential. If a black hole swallows everything, it would also swallow this potentiality. But Dr. Hawking says, based on Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, no, part of that potential particle will be swallowed, leaving the other part to flash in and out of existence.

The reason this shows up on the SITM blog is the work of Dr. Jeff Steinhauer at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology with phonons. A phonon is a unit of vibrational energy that arises from oscillating atoms within a crystal ...generat[ing] mechanical waves that carry heat and sound through the material (fuller definition here). You could think of them as very small units of sound, in other words. Dr. Steinhauer has figured out that if he can create a situation in the lab that would be analogous to a black hole and find some phonons where they shouldn't be, he can prove Dr. Hawking's idea.

So far, he's done the first step by making an analogue to the black hole in the form of a "dumb hole." Its a super-cold blob of gas that contains an area moving faster than the speed of sound, trapping 'normal' sound inside of it. Can any phonons escape, however? That will be the thing to watch for over the coming years.

Sonic Weapons

MacSoundhine — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:30:00 GMT

Whatever goes by the name of 'sonic weaponry' is both over-hyped and ineffective. But in this is a disconcerting catch. Even if sonic weapons aren’t strong enough to tear people’s guts apart in combat, they are capable of causing serious damage to the ears and psyche. Labeled ‘Non-Lethal Weapons,’ these devices are most effectively used to harass private citizens, protesters and to aid in the torture of prisoners.

Listen Now!

[TRANSCRIPT]

A sonic weapon is pretty much what it sounds like: using sound waves as weapons. And there are tons of them: the Long Range Acoustic Device, the Sonic Bullet, the Curdler (AKA People Repeller), the Shout, the Acoustic Blaster, the Hyperspike, the Acoustic Bazooka, the HyperSonic Sound System, the Aversive Audible Acoustic Device, the Gayle Blaster, the Acoustic Canon, the Sequential Arc Discharge Acoustic Generator, the Mosquito, and the Squawk Box. Basically, each of these is a take on one of two approaches: attack the hearing or attack the body.

To attack the hearing, loud, high frequencies are typically used. Imagine this sound

[sample]

as loud as a jet engine. That's seriously painful and can be permanently damaging. And not just because it’s loud or annoying as a sound, but because these sounds are engineered based on the frequencies and patterns that experimentation has revealed to be the most painful or disturbing for the human ear. But music is used, too, although not so much to attack the ears, but to strip identity, intimidate, and assert dominance (Cusick).

To target the body or other objects, extremely low frequencies, called 'infrasound,' at extremely high sound pressure levels (SPL) has been the most recent approach. Depending on who you ask, efforts were under way as early as the 1940s to build machines that could do this, but the idea’s been around for a long time- the crumbling of the walls of Jericho is an interesting early possibility, however ridiculous it is. Modern explosives are much better for blowing up walls, so the approach now is to use acoustic energy to stress someone’s internal organs to such a degree that the person will be incapacitated or killed. Yes, that really is the idea, to rip a person to pieces from the insides using sound waves.

Attack the hearing or the body; that's the basic set-up of sonic weaponry. Now, something I was debating in the writing of this was where exactly to put the part in about military-grade sonic weapons being a bunch of hype, with almost no successful results as battle-level weapons. Well, there it is. Extremely low acoustic energy does not tear people apart from the inside, try as the military might. Therefore, these things don't make very good weapons. In fact, their capabilities in that respect “have been grossly overstated” (Jauchem and Cook 182). As more and more researchers have pressed the literature for answers, it has revealed nothing more than myth. Even though people the world over have been working on infrasound technology for decades, it’s not difficult to understand why they've not been able to produce any solid results. The fundamentals of sound make such an outcome extremely unlikely and in many ways impossible. So, rather than attacking the body, more recent efforts have been directed at attacking the hearing. And because that approach only sometimes kills people, sonic weapons are usually classified as Non-Lethal Weapons (NLW), a class that also includes rubber bullets, anti-traction material (ATM), and tear gas. I say ‘only sometimes kills people’ because for an acoustic non-lethal weapon to have “value as a deterrent,” one team of researchers writes, it “must reliably produce a consistent Bioeffect in the human body…[that] would affect the function and/or physical characteristics of major organs, limbs, or central nervous system” (Applied Research Laboratories 20). That’s pretty serious stuff for something that is considered non-lethal. Luckily these kinds of weapons are slowly beginning to come under increased scrutiny in the international community because of their inhumane nature and use as instruments of torture (Phillips et al). No doubt about it, its unarmed people against whom sonic weapons are most effective. I'll return to this idea at the end, but keep in mind 'til then: using sound as a weapon is not a matter about which to be ambivalent, not for a citizen of a democratic society.

But popular conception seems to be that the sonic weapon is a success story, a modern-day breakthrough of technology and humanity. You may remember a few news spots about a device known as the “LRAD” repelling a pirate attack of the cruise ship Seabourn Spirit off the coast of Somali in 2005 (Blenford)—the event was a big deal and all that press helped to sell a lot of those units—but you probably haven't heard as much about a 2008 incident in which the LRAD did nothing at all to stop another band of pirates overtaking a merchant vessel (Osler). Here is why you should be personally concerned: the security crew on the merchant vessel had no other weapon but the LRAD—no guns, no swords, no rocks, nothing—just this obnoxious sounding thing that did nothing in the end but get the ship overrun by thugs with grenades and AK-47s.

Now, even though the LRAD and the other devices like it attack the hearing, there is an obvious defense- ear plugs, even Odysseus could have told you that. However, while the Sirens “[cried] / beauty… / [singing] the mind away / on their sweet meadow lolling” (Homer XII 48-54), sonic weaponry is painfully loud and extremely ugly. Ear plugs would be of some help, but can't completely shield the hearing from this onslaught. Further complicating the use of these weapons as acceptable weaponry is the body’s built-in defense system, called the ‘the aural reflex.’ It consists of the clamping down of middle ear muscles, reducing the amplitude of vibration in the inner ear. Because we have this mechanism doesn't mean in any way that our hearing is any safer from sonic weapons. The opposite, in fact. The clamping down of these muscles produces what is known as Temporary Threshold Shift, which just means the hearing is somewhat less sensitive for a while. It’s a bit like getting into a drunken bar brawl: you won't notice the pain until the morning, but the damage is the same and maybe even worse because you kept asking for more, so to speak. Repeated exposures to sonic weapons—even very quick exposures—can turn Temporary Threshold Shift into Permanent Threshold Shift. So these devices seem as if they are doing no harm whatsoever outside of being nerve-wracking and temporarily painful. But that's hardly the case. To be sure, sonic weapons, though they are ineffective as military weapons are not in any way toys or benign devices. They can and do inflict serious damage, even if the person attacked does not immediately realize it (Altmann 18). But before I get into how that all comes together, let me explain a little further why certain kinds of sonic weapons injure people and others don't.

I’ve already said that attacking the body with sound waves doesn’t work. Luckily, the destruction of internal organs using infrasound is a myth, at least as far as the available literature indicates . While being theoretically possible, the energy required to produce enough force is prohibitive. There's a few reasons for this. Sound waves span out like ripples on a pond and are therefore difficult to direct. Since they span out in all directions, energy is lost very quickly. Also, air is a terribly inefficient medium. But let's say that you could direct the sound, as several manufacturers of sonic weapons claim. The amount of force left over once the energy arrives to a location can hardly do anything: the mismatch of resistance between the human body and the surrounding air causes nearly all acoustic energy to be reflected away from the body and into the air. To make the journey and overcome this impedance and still have the kind of acoustic energy that could actually do harm to physical objects, you would need enormous amounts of energy. And the device would probably be massive. All this making it difficult to transport and requiring immense amounts of fuel. To really get the job done right, you would basically have to set off an explosion. But if you’re going to do that, what’s the point of the sonic weapon? Weapons like the flash-bang grenade and Vortex Ring, occasional examples of sonic weapons, are not only incredibly loud, but are explosions complete with smoke, chemicals and a flash of light. That combination would stun the hell out of anyone. And probably render permanent loss of hearing, whatever the special opps teams setting them off wouldn't get around to.

So, the infrasound thing- yes, including “the brown note”- doesn't work. Several different studies have found that if anything of this kind is possible, it's not sound below our threshold of hearing (Mohr et al; Evans; von Gierke and Nixon), but frequencies ranging from 20 - 100 Hz (von Gierke and Nixon; Parker; Ising et al.) at amplitudes of 150 dB and above. The body itself tends to resonate with frequencies, rather than individual organs. And to even get close to that theoretical potential, weapons become extremely unwieldy and indiscriminate (Coupland). And again, you are going to need a huge sound generator and massive amounts of fuel.

In spite of all that is known about acoustics and the failure of any battle-effective design to deliver, the myth of the “brown note” persists. That, of course, is whatever infrasound frequency and intensity that causes uncontrollable bowel movements. Although it may be a little annoying for this topic to crop up from time to time, I argue that it helps to cover the more dangerous attempts at sonic weapon technology, such as those devices intended to suppress the lungs or rupture other internal organs. The effects of the “brown note” are somewhat comical and, above all, not life-threatening. But the same idea moved a little higher in the body is suddenly not nearly as funny. Luckily, no one has gotten it to work yet and probably never will.

Now, to raid someone’s hearing is way easier to do and far more effective. This is the part where I start to have big problems with military and police use of these devices. But let's take a step back. Remember that sonic weapons are classified as Non-Lethal Weapons (NLW). Under such a title, the potential harm caused is rhetorically mitigated: the technology has a ring of the progressive ideals of the nations that develop and use them. In other words, we are not shooting you or smashing your shins with billy clubs, we're just playing some annoying sounds at you- what could be so bad about that? Such rhetoric is obvious in the reporting of the success stories of sonic weaponry, where we can always expect at least as much hype as fact. Examples like Norriega being driven out of the Vatican Embassy in 1990 through the use of round the clock heavy metal and that band of cruise ship pirates I mentioned earlier. Very smart, very efficient, very patriotic. But what of the Branch Dividian Complex in Waco in ’93, where the FBI blasted Tibetan chant, Christmas music, and the sounds of screaming rabbits, only exacerbating an already desperate situation (Stone)—what about the stuff blared at detainees at Abu Graib, in Afghanistan and Guantanamo (Cusick)—how about New York City cops at the 2005 Republican Convention arming themselves with LRADs (Onion) to pummel any protesters who may've ventured out of their assigned 'free speech zone'? And what happens when this technology falls into the hands of the enemy? If low frequency sound and infrasound ever worked and found their way to the battlefield, that's one thing; these other devices, the ones called ‘non-lethal’ because they quote, only attack the ears, get a free ride.

I’ll end with a comment about the use of music as a particularly nasty reality of sonic weaponry. Perhaps the most popular example would be the helicopter attack scene from Apocalypse Now.

[sample]

The use of this music in the film comments on the barbarism and hypocrisy of Western culture. An operatic retelling of a tragic and violent saga penned by an anti-Semitic composer of the highest genius, his music appropriated by the Nazis, now used to both terrify an Eastern opponent and proclaim superiority: it's a provocative and extremely pressing consideration. The Western audience is forced to ask itself why we would concretize our highest art in order to torture and intimidate?

Suzanne Cusick shares my outrage over the use of music in military operations, writing, however more eloquently, that it “wounds me in that part of my sensibility that remains residually invested in the notion that music is beautiful, even transcendent...a practice whose contemplation would always lead me to contemplation of bodies and pleasures. Not bodies in pain” (2). I couldn’t agree more. And I add, whatever science and art can deliver to affect the sublime of the human experience, the military can render despicable.

WORKS CITED

VISUAL / PRINT

Applied Research Laboratories (The University of Texas at Austin). “Non-Lethal Swimmer Neutralization Study (TECHNICAL DOCUMENT 3138).” 2002.

Altmann, Jürgen. “Acoustic Weapons—A Prospective Assessment: Sources, Propagation, and Effects of Strong Sound.” Cornell University Peace Studies Program Occasional Paper #22. 1999.

5 June 2009 <http://www.lasernegar.com/SCIENTIFIC/BOOK/OP22.pdf>

Blenford, Adam. "Cruise Lines Turn to Sonic Weapon." BBC News. 8 November 2005.

30 June 2009 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4418748.st>

Cusick, Suzanne G. “Music as torture / Music as weapon.” Transcultural Music Review.

30 June 2009 <http://www.sibetrans.com/trans/trans10/cusick_eng.htm>

Coupland, R.M. (ed.). “The SIrUS Project—Towards a Determination of Which Weapons Cause 'Superfluous

Injury or Unnecessary Suffering'.”" Geneva: International Committee of the Red Cross, 1997.

Jauchem, James R. and Michael C. Cook. “High-Intensity Acoustics for Military Nonlethal Applications: A Lack of Useful Systems.” Military Medicine. 172:2 2007.

Gierke, H.E. von Gierke and C.W. Nixon, “Effects of Intense Infrasound on Man.”

Infrasound and Low Frequency Vibration. W. Tempest ed. London and New York:

Academic Press, 1976.

Homer. “The Odyssey.” Trans. Robert Fitzgerald. New York: Knopf, 1992.

Moore, C., J.N. Cole, E. Guild and H.E. Von Gierke. “Effects of Low Frequency and Infrasonic Noise on Man.”

Aerospace Medicine 36: 9, 1965.

Onion, Amanda. “RNC to Feature Unusual Forms of Sound: Unusual Forms of Sound to Emanate From RNC.”

Aug. 25, 2004 . ABC News Science and Technology. 5 June 2009

<http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=99472&page=1>

Osler, David. “Sonic solution many not be a sound investment.” Lloyd’s List. 2 December 2008.

1 June 2009 <http://www.lloydslist.com/ll/news/sonic-solution-may-not-be-a-sound-

investment/1228132740372.htm>

Phillips, Peter, Lew Brown and Bridget Thornton. “US Electromagnetic Weapons and Human Rights.”

Media Freedom Foundation, 2006.

Stone, Alan M.D. “Report and Recommendations Concerning the Handling of Incidents Such As the Branch Davidian Standoff in Waco, Texas.” 1993. 30 June 2009

<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/waco/stonerpt.html>

AUDITORY

Apocalypse Now. Dir. Francis Ford Coppola. American Zoetrope, 1979.

“Future Weapons.” Discovery Channel. 10 May 2006. 30 June 2009. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myWxwNQfo-8>

Other Sources (not used in this podcast)

LRAD

American Technology Corporation: “LRAD Long Range Acoustic Device: The Sound of Force Protection.” 2004.

30 June 2009 <http://www.atcsd.com/pdf/LRAD_SellSht-0728-2.pdf >

Hype and spec sheet from the manufacturer.

Associated Press. “Device Fights Enemy With Sounds, Not Swords.” YouTube. 30 June 2009

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y588WH3Q-sQ&feature=fvw >

“Georgia Police Using the LRAD.” RT News. YouTube. 30 June 2009. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EUU0BpQego&feature=related >

Police use of batons, fists, kicks, water canons, rubber bullets, tear gas, riot guns, and the LRAD against unarmed people.

“Whale Wars.” Discovery Channel. YouTube. 30 June 2009 <http://animal.discovery.com/videos/whale-wars-lrads.html>

NORUSCAI. YouTube. 30 June 2009. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7r-V6rDOpA&feature=channel_page >.

Background and Somalia Pirate incident (advertisement / non sequitur-style).

Sella, Marshall. “The Sound of Things to Come.” New York Times Magazine. March 23, 2003.

7 June 2009 <http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/23/magazine/23SOUND.html?pagewanted=1>

About inventor of the LRAD and HyperSonic Sound (as well as many other devices), Woody Norris. Very interesting read, however flattering the writing may be towards the subject.

Wilson, Tracy V. How LRAD Works. How Stuff Works. 30 June 2009 <science.howstuffworks.com/lrad.htm>

An easy-to-understand / read article on acoustics and the workings of the LRAD.

General

“Acoustic Blaster LIC 2004.” Defense Update: International Online Defense Magazine. 30 June 2009

<http://www.defense-update.com/events/2004/summary/LIC041-hs-nlw.htm>

“Acoustic Weapons in Nature.” BBC. YouTube. 30 June 2009

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8wMXXaMHKs&feature=related >

Alexander, John B. Future War: Non-Lethal Weapons in Twenty-First Century Warfare. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.

Associated Press. “The Scream: New IDF Weapon Designed to Leave Victims Dizzy, Nauseous, Could Be Used on Gaza Settlers. Israel News. 10 June 2005. 30 June 2009

<http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3097486,00.html >

Grossman, Lev. “Beyond the Rubber Bullet.” Time Magazine. July 21, 2002.

Lewer, Nick. “Research Report 2.” Bradford Non-Lethal Weapons Research Project (BNLWRP). 1998.

30 June 2009 <http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/nlw/research_reports/researchreport2.php>

Moore, Harry Jr. “NDIA: Non-Lethal Defense IV, 'Aversive Audible Acoustic Devices.'” Army ARDEC.

“No Longer Science Fiction: Less Than Lethal and Directed Energy Weapons.” Defense Update: International Online Defense Magazine. November 2006. 30 June 2009 <http://www.defense-update.com/features/du-1-05/NLW-DEW.htm>

Rappert, Brian. Non-Lethal Weapons as Legitimizing Forces? Florence, Kentucky: Routledge Taylor & Francis

Group, 2003. 200X. 30 June 2009 <http://books.google.com/books?id=7aySLt6WETsC&pg=PP1&dq=Non-lethal+Weapons+as+Legitimizing+Forces%3F >

A City in Agony

MacSoundhine — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:24:00 GMT

Soundscapes, found sound objects, electronic music, videogames- what more could you ask for?! Check out this video (ref) about the making of the 'Infamous' soundscape / score.

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