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

291 Pages·2009·1.07 MB·English

by  Steve Goodman

SONIC WARFARE
Technologies of Lived Abstraction
Brian Massumi and Erin Manning, editors
Relationscapes: Movement, Art, Philosophy, Erin Manning, 
Without Criteria: Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Aesthetics, Steven Shaviro, 
Sonic Warfare: Sound, Aff ect, and the Ecology of Fear, Steve Goodman, 
SONIC WARFARE
Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear
Steve Goodman
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
©  Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Goodman, Steve.
Sonic warfare : sound, aff ect, and the ecology of fear / Steve Goodman.
p. cm. — (Technologies of lived abstraction)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN - - - -  (hardcover : alk. paper)
. Music—Acoustics and physics. . Music—Social aspects. . Music—Philosophy and
aesthetics. I. Title.
ML.G 
'.—dc
         
Contents
Series Foreword vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xiii
1 1998: A Conceptual Event 1
2 2001: What Is Sonic Warfare? 5
3 2400–1400 B.C.: Project Jericho 15
4 1946: Sonic Dominance 27
5 1933: Abusing the M ilitary-E ntertainment Complex 31
6 403–221 B.C.: The Logistics of Deception 35
7 1944: The Ghost Army 41
8 1842: Sonic Effects 45
9 1977: A Sense of the Future 49
10 1913: The Art of War in the Art of Noise 55
11 1989: Apocalypse Then 59
12 1738: Bad Vibrations 63
13 1884: Dark Precursor 69
14 1999: Vibrational Anarchitecture 75
15 13.7 Billion B.C.: The Ontology of Vibrational Force 81
16 1931: Rhythmanalysis 85
17 1900: The Vibrational Nexus 91
18 1929: Throbs of Experience 95
vi Contents
19 1677: Ecology of Speeds 99
20 99–50 B.C.: Rhythm out of Noise 105
21 1992: The Throbbing Crowd 109
22 1993: Vorticist Rhythmachines 113
23 1946: Virtual Vibrations 117
24 2012: Artifi cial Acoustic Agencies 123
25 1877: Capitalism and Schizophonia 129
26 1976: Outbreak 133
27 1971: The Earworm 141
28 2025: Déjà Entendu 149
29 1985: Dub Virology 155
30 1928: Contagious Orality 163
31 2020: Planet of Drums 171
32 2003: Contagious Transmission 177
33 2039: Holosonic Control 183
34 Conclusion: Unsound—The (Sub)Politics of Frequency 189
Glossary 195
Notes 199
References 251
Index 265
Series Foreword
“What moves as a body, returns as the movement of thought.”
Of subjectivity (in its nascent state)
Of the social (in its mutant state)
Of the environment (at the point it can be reinvented)
“A process set up anywhere reverberates everywhere.”
The Technologies of Lived Abstraction book series is dedicated to work of trans-
disciplinary reach, inquiring critically but especially creatively into processes of
subjective, social, and ethical- political emergence abroad in the world today.
Thought and body, abstract and concrete, local and global, individual and col-
lective: the works presented are not content to rest with the habitual divisions.
They explore how these facets come formatively, reverberatively together, if only
to form the movement by which they come again to diff er.
Possible paradigms are many: autonomization, relation; emergence, complexity,
process; individuation, (auto)poiesis; direct perception, embodied perception,
perception- as- action; speculative pragmatism, speculative realism, radical em-
piricism; mediation, virtualization; ecology of practices, media ecology; tech-
nicity; micropolitics, biopolitics, ontopower. Yet there will be a common aim: to
catch new thought and action dawning, at a creative crossing. Technologies of
viii Series Foreword
Lived Abstraction orients to the creativity at this crossing, in virtue of which life
everywhere can be considered germinally aesthetic, and the aesthetic anywhere
already political.
“Concepts must be experienced. They are lived.”
Erin Manning and Brian Massumi
Acknowledgments
A special thanks to Lilian, Bernard, and Michelle for putting up with my noise
since day zero.
For the brainpower, thanks to:
Jessica Edwards, Torm, Luciana Parisi, Stephen Gordon, Kodwo Eshun, Anna
Greenspan, Nick Land, Mark Fisher, Matt Fuller, Robin Mackay, Kevin Mar-
tin, Jeremy Greenspan, Jon Wozencroft, Bill Dolan, Raz Mesinai, Simon Reyn-
olds, Dave Stelfox, Marcus Scott, Mark Pilkington, Erik Davis, Toby Heys, Matt
Fuller, Brian Massumi, Erin Manning, Steven Shaviro, Stamatia Portanova,
Eleni Ikoniadou, Cecelia Wee, Olaf Arndt, Joy Roles, James Traff ord, Jorge
Camachio, Tiziana Terranova, Jeremy Gilbert, Tim Lawrence, Haim Bresheeth,
Julian Henriques, Jasmin Jodry, Wil Bevan, Mark Lawrence, Neil Joliff e, Sarah
Lockhart, Martin Clark, Georgina Cook, Melissa Bradshaw, Marcos Boff a, Dave
Quintiliani, Paul Jasen, Cyclic Defrost, Derek Walmsley, Jason and Leon at Tran-
sition, Doug Sery at MIT.
For the ideas, collectivity, and bass, maximum respect to:
Ccru, Hyperdub, DMZ, Fwd>>, Rinse, Brainfeeder.
For the sabbatical: The School of Social Sciences, Media and Cultural Studies at
University of East London.