Sonic Warfare ─ Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear

Sound can be deployed to produce discomfort, express a threat, or create an ambienceof fear or dread--to produce a bad vibe. Sonic weapons of this sort include the "psychoacousticcorrection" aimed at Panama strongman Manuel Noriega by the U.S. Army and at the BranchDavidians in Waco by the FBI, sonic booms (or "sound bombs") over the Gaza Strip, andhigh-frequency rat repellants used against teenagers in malls. At the same time, artists andmusicians generate intense frequencies in the search for new aesthetic experiences and new ways ofmobilizing bodies in rhythm. In Sonic Warfare, Steve Goodman explores these usesof acoustic force and how they affect populations. Traversing philosophy, science, fiction,aesthetics, and popular culture, he maps a (dis)continuum of vibrational force, encompassing policeand military research into acoustic means of crowd control, the corporate deployment of sonicbranding, and the intense sonic encounters of sound art and music culture. Goodman concludes withspeculations on the not yet heard--the concept of unsound, which relates to both the peripheries ofauditory perception and the unactualized nexus of rhythms and frequencies within audiblebandwidths