Lecture/Reading by Steve Goodman, alias Kode9 (UK) 

With sound, one can uncomfortably evoke a threat or create a mood of fear - anything in order to produce a negative atmosphere. Acoustic weapons of this kind are, for example, the "psychoacoustic corrections" that the US Army used against Noriega in Panama and the FBI against Branch Davidians in Waco. Sonic booms, or sound bombs, rang out over the Gaza Strip, and high frequency transmitters originally used against rats were used to bring teenagers in shopping malls to their senses. At the same time, musicians and artists seek new aesthetic experiences and attempt new forms of body movement in the pursuit of rhythm; by doing so, they generate intense frequencies. Using sonic warfare, Steve Goodman experiments with the power of acoustics and its influence on the population.

"The majority of theoretical discussions on sound and music as related to power are missing one dimension," says Goodman, "the politics of frequency." Goodman supports his statement by drawing a speculative diagram of acoustic power, examining the modulation effects through the deployment of sound systems. In a trans-disciplinary manner, he presents a (dis)continuum of the power of vibration while taking police and military research in the field of accoustic surveillance into account. He also demonstrates the deployment of sound in the economy as part of corporate identity, and finally the progressive meeting point of sound art and music culture.

Goodman closes his speculations with the not yet heard concept of "unsound," which relates to both the periphery of auditory perception as to the liason between rhythm and frequencies in the audible bandwidth.

http://sonicwarfare.wordpress.com

* this event is part of the Elevate Lab