Riot Shield Sonic Attack

There's nothing like a global wave of  popular insurgency to prompt weapons manufacturers to think of new ways to hurt and kill people. Latest in the sonic warfare department is the riot shield wall of sound:

'Riot shields that project a wall of sound to disperse crowds will reduce violent clashes with police, according to a patent filed by defence firm Raytheon of Waltham, Massachusetts. The device looks similar to existing riot shields, but it incorporates an acoustic horn that generates a pressure pulse. Police in the US already use acoustic devices for crowd control purposes that emit a loud, unpleasant noise.

The new shield described by Raytheon produces a low-frequency sound which resonates with the respiratory tract, making it hard to breathe. According to the patent, the intensity could be increased from causing discomfort to the point where targets become "temporarily incapacitated". Acoustic devices haven't seen wide adoption because their range is limited to a few tens of metres. The patent gets around this by introducing a "cohort mode" in which many shields are wirelessly networked so their output covers a wide area, like Roman legionaries locking their shields together. One shield acts as a master which controls the others, so that the acoustic beams combine effectively'.

(New Scientist, 14 December 2011)

All sounds a bit like Michael Moorcock's Sonic Attack, recorded by  Hawkwind on the 1973 Space Ritual album:

'These are the first signs of Sonic Attack:
You will notice small objects, such as ornaments, oscillating.
You will notice a vibration in your diaphragm.
You will hear a distant hissing in your ears.
You will feel dizzy.
You will feel the need to vomit.
There will be bleeding from orifices.
There will be an ache in the pelvic region.
You may be subject to fits of hysterical shouting, or even laughter'.

See also: Kathy Acker - Empire of the Senseless; Sonic Cannon in Pittsburgh.

Empire of the Senseless

In my street in New Cross last week, somebody left a pile of books outside for passers-by to help themselves to. So it came to pass that over the weekend I got round to reading Kathy Acker's 1988 novel Empire of the Senseless a mere 20 odd years after it came out (though I did read her Blood and Guts in High School back in the day).

The novel is set in an alternative then-present; Reagan is US president but life is the worst aspects of that time intensified. In scenes in New York and Paris (among other places), we are shown a world of despair, addiction, disgust and violence. It is a dystopia without redemption -the interpersonal relations between characters are marked by abuse, rape and loathing. The best that its main protagonist Abhor (half woman/half robot) can achieve by the end is this realization: 'I didn't as yet know what I wanted. I now fully knew what I didn't want and what and whom I hated. That was something'.

Class war is taken for granted - at one point she describes the use of sonic weapons to kill the poor:

'In the white noise the cops arrived so that they could kill everybody. Round revolving cars emitted sonar waves. Certain sonar vibrations blinded those not in cars; other levels numbing effectively chopped off limbs; other levels caused blood to spurt out of the mouths nostrils and eyes. The buildings were pink... The cops' faces, as they killed off the poor people, as they were supposed to, were masks of human beings. And the faces of the politicians are death'.

The promises of liberty and democracy are mocked:

'New York City, my home, Liberty... Liberty, shit. The liberty to starve. The liberty to speak words to which no one listens. The liberty to get diseases no doctor treats or can cure. The liberty to live in conditions cockroaches wouldn't touch except to die in'.

And:

'These days the principal economic flow of power takes place through black-market armament and drug exchange. The trading arena, the market, is my blood. My body is open to all people: this is democratic capitalism'.

Still, it is a class war without hopeful outcome - in Paris the impoverished and oppressed Algerians stage a successful revolution, but nothing much changes, the cops still think they rule the streets.

At one point Acker seems to describe her method - an attempt to move beyond the language cut ups that she employed in her earlier work to a strategy of transgression:

'That part of our being (mentality, feeling, physicality) which is free of all control let's call our 'unconscious' Since it's free of control, it's our only defence against institutionalized meaning, institutionalized language, control, fixation, judgement, prison.

Ten years ago it seemed possible to destroy language through language: to destroy language which normalizes and controls by cutting that language. Nonsense would attack the empire-making (empirical) empire of language, the prisons of meaning. But this nonsense, since it depended on sense, simply pointed back to the normalizing institutions.

What is the language of the 'unconscious'? (If this ideal unconscious or freedom doesn't exist: pretend it does, use fiction, for the sake of survival, all of our survival.) Its primary language must be taboo, all that is forbidden. Thus, an attack on the institutions of prison via language would demand the use of a language or languages which aren't acceptable, which are forbidden. Language, on one level, constitutes a set of codes and social and historical agreements. Nonsense doesn't per se break down the codes; speaking precisely that which the codes forbid breaks the codes'.

Twenty years after this, transgression as radical strategy seems equally exhausted. Yesterday's taboos are all over the internet and the TV. Still there's no doubt that Kathy Acker's premature death in 1997 silenced a powerful and radical voice.

Kathy Acker (1947-1997)

- she dedicated Empire of the Senseless to her tattooist

Linda Rondstadt Sonic Warfare in Arizona

The use of music for sonic warfare, torture and crowd control has been a recurring theme at this site. An interesting example occurred last month in Phoenix, Arizona where the music of Linda Rondstadt was used by the authorities in attempt to drown out a crowd of demonstrators that included - Linda Rondstadt!

The occasion was a demonstration against the notorious anti-immigration policies of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, which have included immigration "sweeps" in Hispanic neighborhoods, making prisoners wear pink handcuffs and old-fashioned striped jail uniforms, and detaining arrested migrants in outdoor tent-based jails. At least 10,000 people took part in the demonstration, including singer Linda Rondstadt and Zack de La Rocha (of Rage Against the Machine). The protest was organized by the Puente movement, along with a coalition of immigrant rights groups, including the National Day Labor Organizing Network

According to a Press Association report (16 January 2010): 'the marchers walked from a west Phoenix park to the Durango Jail Complex, a collection of five jails, where officials played music, including a record by singer Linda Ronstadt, to drown out noise made by protesters'. Police also used pepper spray and horses against demonstrators.

Anyway, the protestors had their own sonic weapons of chanting, music and dancing - including these traditional dancers:

Photo by javiersoto3tvp at twitpic



More reports: People's World; Fires Never Extinguished

Loud bass music ‘killed student’

Loud bass music ‘killed student’, Metro 9th December, 2009

A student collapsed at a freshers’ party and died after complaining the loud bass music was ‘getting to his heart’, an inquest heard yesterdayTom Reid, 19, was taken ill in a crowded London club after standing close to the speakers and telling a friend: ‘The bass is affecting me.’ There was no trace of alcohol or drugs in his body and his heart was in good condition.
A coroner recorded a verdict of natural causes, saying the straight-As student was killed by sudden arrhythmic death syndrome (SADS), a heart disorder which kills 12 young people a week.

Cardiac experts said the bass could have triggered SADS if Mr Reid had underlying, yet unknown, genetic problems. On September 27, he had gone to Koko nightclub in Camden, north London, for the party, dubbed Night Of Mayhem. His friend Alisha Riseley told the inquest they were pushed towards the speakers. She added: ‘Tom said he felt like the bass was getting to his heart and we went to stand at the back.’ He told her: ‘My heart feels funny. I think the bass is affecting me. Oh God, I feel very weird. My heart is beating so fast'.

A sad story, don't think we should make too much of it - sometimes everyday things affect people in very serious ways (e.g. peanut allergies). It's not strictly true that bass killed him - a heart disorder killed him, for which the music may have been a trigger. There is some evidence that infrasound (very low bass frequencies) can cause discomfort or worse - see this Basswatch summary. These are generally too low to be used musically though, even if Throbbing Gristle apparently experimented with them using an industrial tone generator.

Sonic Cannon in Pittsburgh

During this week's anti-capitalist protests against the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, police used a 'sonic cannon' as well as CS gas to disperse demonstrators. The Long Range Acoustic Device emits an ear-splitting siren which is extremely uncomfortable to be around. Used previously against pirates off Somalia, this is the first time it has been used against civilians in the US. It is also currently being used by the military in Honduras .

The LRAD is manufactured by American Technology Corporation (ATCO), a San Diego-based company, which has also supplied it to the Chinese police. The company calls itself "a leading innovator of commercial, government, and military directed acoustics product offers" that offers "sound solutions for the commercial, government, and military markets."

There's a CrimethInc report of the Pittsburgh protests at Infoshop news

More on Sonic Torture

In the new journal Nyx - a noctournal (produced by people associated with the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College, New Cross), Mark Teare writes A Chapter in the Secret History of a Musick Yet To Be:

'Music's abilities to connect with the emotions and to alter our psychological state are being exploited and perverted in a number of ways in a variety of locations, from office or commercial spaces to clandestine interrogation cells. What we generally consider to be a harmless form of creative expression becomes a tool, coldly employed in the manipulation and control of populations, numb from the constant stimulus of programmed information'.

Teare mentions a number of uses of music as instrument of torture/warfare: in Panama 1993, when invading US forces surrounding the building where the dictator/former US client Manuel Noriega was holed up where 'troops bombarded the embassy with constant loud heavy rock music in an effort to drive Noriega out'; in the same year at the FBI siege at Waco, Texas, where the Branch Davidians 'were treated to marathon sessions of loud music in order to disturb their sleeping patterns and break morale inside the camp'; and in Iraq during the Fallujah offensive in 2004 when 'US troops engaged in psychological operations' used 'high powered speakers mounted on tanks and humvees'to play 'AC/DC, Metallica, Led Zeppelin, Eminem and Barney the Purple Dinosaur at high volume for long stretches of time to disorientate and confuse the enemy'.

See also: Against Music Torture

Sonic Attack

Back in the 1970s/early 80s the Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV nexus explored the notion of sound as control, including how particular sonic frequencies might be used to trigger particular emotional and bodily states. The 1984 film Decoder (which included Genesis P. Orridge and William Burroughs in its cast) was based on the premise that muzak was being used in this way to control the population. There is certainly evidence that the military have sought to develop sonic weapons. According to an article in yesterdays' Guardian though sonic weapons are already widely deployed across Britain - against young people

'A black box emitting a high pitched pulsing sound designed to deter loitering teenagers is being used in thousands of sites around Britain just a year after its launch, prompting warnings from civil liberties campaigners that it is a "sonic weapon" that could be illegal. The Mosquito device, whose high-frequency shriek is audible only to those under around 25, has been bought by police, local councils, shops, and even private home owners, to tackle concerns over groups of young people congregating and causing disruption.

Less than 18 months after the device, produced by Merthyr Tydfil-based firm Compound Security, went into production, 3,300 have been sold - 70% of them in the UK.
So great has been demand that the company is now working on a more powerful, 50m-range model designed to be used in larger areas such as cemeteries and hazardous building sites, and is drawing up plans for a higher volume hand grenade version requested by the United States prison service to help tackle riots.

However, while some local authorities and police forces are highly enthusiastic about the Mosquito, campaigners Liberty are raising concerns about both the machine's legality and its effectiveness in addressing antisocial behaviour. A survey by the organisation has identified the device being used in every region of England except the north east, including in Merseyside, where police have mounted it on a car to drive to trouble spots. Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti said: "At worst, the Mosquito is a low-level sonic weapon; at best, a dog-whistle for kids. Either way it has no place in a civilised society that values its children and young people and seeks to imbue them with values of dignity and respect. Degrading young people instead of providing opportunities for them is a tragic option whose long-term effect is frightening to imagine."

Liberty argues that the device is inappropriate, partly because it is indiscriminate, causing discomfort to and potentially driving away all teenagers in an area rather than specifically targeting those who may be causing trouble. Alex Gask, one of the campaign group's lawyers, said: "Our objection is that this device is clearly designed as a way of getting rid of young people as a problem and about seeing them as a problem rather than identifying specific behaviour they are engaged in and getting rid of that."

The Mosquito worked.... as an irritant, whose four-times-a-second high-pitched sounds began to affect young people only after 10 to 15 minutes'.

Source: Guardian, 17 March 2007.