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FREE SONIC WARFARE: SOUND, AFFECT, AND THE ECOLOGY OF FEAR PDF Steve Goodman | 296 pages | 18 Sep 2012 | MIT Press Ltd | 9780262517959 | English | Cambridge, Mass., United States Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear | Ethnomusicology Review Destruction has its ready-made catalogue of images, but we rarely think about the acoustics of a mushroom cloud or falling towers. For Goodman, discussing Affect politics of sound demands that we move Sonic Warfare: Sound conventional ideas of audience and reception. Even the ugliest song is recognizable as music—good and the Ecology of Fear bad. Goodman is interested in sound as force. Is it still music when its intention is to irritate or cause physical illness? On a very basic level, the book is a chilling encyclopedia of and the Ecology of Fear sonic machines. The names alone are stunning: concrete ears, the Vortex ring generator, the Mosquito Anti-Social Device. That many modern high-tech devices were forged at the intersection of science and militarism no longer shocks us. All matter vibrates—people, buildings, plants, and everything in between. Perhaps this kind of supercharged, broad-ranging imagination offers the best defense against the coercive techniques currently being honed in the labs of militaries and corporations. Hua Hsu teaches English at Vassar College. The MIT Press. Hardcover, pages. The Wire Shop - Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear by Steve Goodman We'll come in low out of the rising sun and and the Ecology of Fear a mile out, we'll put on the music. With a Affect to war, technology, cinema, music, and entertainment, Steve Goodman begins his transdisciplinary examination of vibration in the military-entertainment complex with Sonic Warfare: Sound provocative quote. Entitled Sonic Warfarethe book offers a deeply theoretical examination of the affective dimension of sound; it is particularly concerned with "environments, Sonic Warfare: Sound ecologies, in which sound contributes to an immersive atmosphere or ambience and the Ecology of Fear fear and dread" Affect. Eschewing a broad historical survey of sonic weaponry, Goodman instead supports his thesis from the fields of acoustics, aesthetics, fiction, philosophy, psychoacoustics, popular culture, science, Sonic Warfare: Sound science fiction, to name but a few. Traversing such a large, and Affect times daunting, swath of human expression, Sonic Warfare is best understood as a work of speculative philosophy built upon an ontology of vibrational force. It is not surprising, then, that Goodman's first manuscript is a deeply philosophic examination of how sound systems are used to modulate affect, mood, and bodily behaviors. While those familiar with Goodman's work as kode9 will expect Sonic Warfare to focus on electronic dance music—in particular the dubstep genre—this is not Affect case. Instead, the liminal areas of sonic perception the infra-sonic and the ultrasonic and the associated politics thereof Sonic Warfare: Sound its primary concern; that is, Sonic Warfare is a sustained theoretical examination of the relationship between vibration and power. Central to this thesis is what Goodman calls a politics of frequency. Spanning thirty-four chapters in a mere pages, Sonic Warfare presents its argument as a " dis continuum" of thematic chapters each marked by a "singularity of a vibrational, conceptual, musical, military, social, or technological event" xvii. As such the chapters "oscillate between dense theorization…and descriptive, exemplary episodes drawn from fact Sonic Warfare: Sound fiction" ibid. The Affect structure of Sonic Warfarewhile not conducive to review, underscores the speculative methodology of its thesis. The thematic oscillation between chapters, in effect, mirrors the argument's underlying position: an ontology of vibrational force. The work spans a broad spectrum of sound system strategies ranging from overtly physical uses, such as military sound bombs or the global clubbing industry, to the less physical yet equally intrusive use, such as Muzak. Thematically, the chapter book fits into three groupings: 1 philosophy and theory, 2 fictional exemplary episodes, and 3 factual exemplary episodes, where group 1 often appears within groups 2 and the Ecology of Fear 3. Each chapter focuses on a particular event—sometimes in the historical past, Affect in a fictional future—that fall within these thematic groupings to push the overall argument forward. For example chapter 15, " Goodman brings a large number of individuals to bear on his argument—Jacques Attali, Paul Virilio, Friedrich Kittler, Gaston Bachelard, and Henri Bergson, to name a few—but the core of his philosophic thesis reveals itself in the ideas of Spinoza, Deleuze and Guattari, and Alfred North Whitehead, as well as that of "conceptual engineer" Kodwo Eshun. Through these authors' work, Goodman argues for an ontology of vibrational force that "delves below a philosophy of sound and the physics of acoustics toward the basic processes of entities affecting other entities" Within this ontology, sound is only a particular vibratory mode of perception. Upon this ontological foundation, Goodman posits a politics of frequency through which "the production, transmission, and mutation of affective tonality" can be thought. Noting a general "amnesia of vibration" in the literature regarding relations of sound and music to power Affect and political, And the Ecology of Fear posits a politics of frequency in which the relation of of vibration—both the acoustic sense and the affective sense of the word—to power is of central concern. Such a position, it is argued, goes beyond the usual oppositional dualism of "the jouissance of sonic physicality and the semiotic significance of [music's] symbolic composition or content" While this may seem abstract, Goodman's speculative methodology is always grounded in actual events. By continually drawing the reader's attention to real-world applications of sound as modulating affect—such as Jamaican sound system culture or the military's psychological sonic warfare device, "The Curdler," to give but two examples—Goodman grounds his speculative methodology in practice. Indeed, the more obvious examples provided, such as the Long Range Acoustic Device LRAD used for crowd control, demonstrate a clear relation between vibration and physical discomfort. While the more subtle Sonic Warfare: Sound, such as the corporate deployment of sonic branding and the Ecology of Fear the idea of "earworms," present the opposite side of the vibrational dis continuum: the internal, psychological dimension of vibration. The nod to Afrofuturism is the clearest link between Goodman's philosophic work and his work under the name kode9 in UK's underground electronic dance music community. For ethnomusicologists of Afro-diasporic music, these are particularly rewarding chapters; they provide a refreshing theoretical twist to the study of topics such as Jamaican sound system culture particularly dubpirate radio, and the emergence of "global ghettotech. This book is also worthy of attention for those interested in the study of music and politics. Though it maintains a thoroughly theoretical approach which Goodman wholly acknowledgesit nonetheless provides significant groundwork for real-world, ethnographic studies of music and politics. For those unfamiliar with the philosophical thought of Deleuze, Guattari, and Whitehead, or the Afrofuturism of Kodwo Eshun, the theoretical passages will be difficult. To be clear, Goodman makes no attempt to explicate the philosophic thought of those he cites, rather he folds or molds their concepts into his own and deftly moves forward. What is perhaps lost in argumentative clarity is gained in the sheer breadth of ideas presented. It is this impressive feat, I believe, that makes Goodman's philosophic contribution to the study of the sonic invaluable. View the discussion thread. Jump to Navigation. Ethnomusicology Review. Volume and the Ecology of Fear Print Email PDF. By Steve Goodman. Editorial A New Era for the Journal. By Nolan Affect et al. By Maria Guarino, University of Virginia. Music in the "Sudeten-German" Expulsion. By Rita di Ghent, York University. Woody Guthrie: American Radical. Salsa Macabra. Reviewed by Alex W. Rodriguez, UCLA. Individual articles are the copyright of their authors. Sonic Warfare | The MIT Press Goodreads Affect you keep Sonic Warfare: Sound of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other and the Ecology of Fear. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — Sonic Warfare by Steve Goodman. An exploration of the production, transmission, and mutation of affective tonality--when sound helps produce a bad vibe. Sound can be deployed to produce discomfort, express a threat, or create an ambience of fear or dread--to produce a bad vibe. Sonic weapons of this sort include the "psychoacoustic correction" aimed at Panama strongman Manuel Noriega by the U. And the Ecology of Fear and An exploration of the production, transmission, and mutation of affective tonality--when sound helps produce a bad vibe. Army and at the Branch Davidians in Waco by the FBI, sonic booms or "sound bombs" over the Gaza Strip, and high-frequency rat repellants used against teenagers in malls. At the same time, artists and musicians generate intense frequencies in the search for new aesthetic experiences and new ways of mobilizing bodies in rhythm. In Sonic WarfareSteve Goodman explores these uses of Affect force and how they affect populations. Traversing philosophy, science, fiction, aesthetics, and popular culture, he maps Affect dis continuum of vibrational force, encompassing police and military research into acoustic means of crowd control, the corporate deployment of sonic branding, and the intense sonic encounters of sound art and music culture. Goodman concludes with speculations on the not yet heard--the concept of unsound, which relates to both the peripheries of auditory perception and the unactualized nexus of rhythms and frequencies within audible bandwidths. Get A Copy.

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