Tracing the the potential of sound, infrasound, and ultrasound to access anomalous zones of transmission between the realms of the living and the dead.
For as long as recording and communications technologies have existed, operators have evoked the potential of sound, infrasound, and ultrasound to access anomalous zones of transmission between the realms of the living and the dead. In Unsound:Undead, contributors from a variety of disciplines chart these undead zones, mapping out a nonlinear timeline populated by sonic events stretching from the 8th century BC (the song of the Sirens), to 2013 (acoustic levitation), with a speculative extension into 2057 (the emergence of holographic and holosonic phenomena).
For the past seven years the AUDINT group has been researching peripheral sonic perception (unsound) and the ways in which frequencies are utilized to modulate our understanding of presence/non-presence, entertainment/torture, and ultimately life/death. Concurrently, themes of hauntology have inflected the musical zeitgeist, resonating with the notion of a general cultural malaise and a reinvestment in traces of lost futures inhabiting the present.
This undead culture has already spawned a Lazarus economy in which Tupac, ODB, and Eazy-E are digitally revivified as laser-lit holograms. The obscure otherworldly dimensions of sound have also been explored in the sonic fictions produced by the likes of Drexciya, Sun Ra, and Underground Resistance, where hauntology is virtually extended: the future appears in the cracks of the present.
The contributions to this volume reveal how the sonic nurtures new dimensions in which the real and the imagined (fictional, hyperstitional, speculative) bleed into one another, where actual sonic events collide with spatiotemporal anomalies and time-travelling entities, and where the unsound serves to summon the undead.
Contributors Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Lendl Barcelos, Charlie Blake, Lisa Blanning, Brooker Buckingham, Al Cameron, Erik Davis, Kodwo Eshun, Matthew Fuller, Kristen Gallerneaux, Lee Gamble, Agnès Gayraud, Steve Goodman, Anna Greenspan, Olga Gurionova, S. Ayesha Hameed, Tim Hecker, Julian Henriques, Toby Heys, Eleni Ikoniadou, Amy Ireland, Nicola Masciandaro, Ramona Naddaff, Anthony Nine, The Occulture, Luciana Parisi, Alina Popa, Paul Purgas, Georgina Rochefort, Steven Shaviro, Jonathan Sterne, Jenna Sutela, Eugene Thacker, Dave Tompkins, Shelley Trower, and Souzana Zamfe.
Author(s): Steve Goodman, Toby Heys, Eleni Ikoniadou
Publisher: Urbanomic
Year: 2019
Language: english
Pages: 305
Title Page......Page 2
Dedication......Page 3
Colophon......Page 4
Intra-AUDINT Email Communication — IREX2 to the Editors......Page 5
Declassified Report to IIRIS: Excerpts from Report on The Research Unit AUDINT......Page 7
Introduction: From Martial Hauntology to Xenosonics......Page 11
SOMA: NEW ANATOMIES AND BODIES IN VIBRATION......Page 14
Olga Gurionova — The Bodily Sounds of the Abyss......Page 16
Jonathan Sterne — The Ear Phonautograph......Page 20
Al Cameron — The Music of Skulls I: Bone-Instruments......Page 23
Shelley Trower — Peripheral Vibrations......Page 28
Steve Goodman — Touching Nothing......Page 31
Jonathan Sterne — The Cat Telephone......Page 34
Brooker Buckingham — The Pineal Ear......Page 37
Steve Goodman — DRNE Cartography......Page 40
VOX : VOICES AND VOCALOIDS......Page 47
Matthew Fuller — Screaming......Page 49
Lawrence Abu Hamdan — The Mising 19db......Page 52
Luciana Parisi — Machine Sirens and Vocal Intelligence......Page 58
Eleni Ikoniadou — Falling......Page 62
Agnès Gayraud — Glossolalia......Page 65
Shelley Trower — Libraries of Voices......Page 71
Toby Heys — The HyperSonic Sound System......Page 75
Eleni Ikoniadou — The Lament......Page 79
UVO : UNIDENTIFIED VIBRATORY OBJECTS......Page 82
Paul Purgas — The Jodhpur Boom......Page 84
S. Ayesha Hameed — The Bloop......Page 87
Eugene Thacker — Sound of the Abyss......Page 90
Kristen Gallerneaux — The-Hum......Page 93
Dave Tompkins — Alligators of Your Mind......Page 97
Erik Davis — Resonance......Page 103
Steve Goodman — Dossier 37: Unidentified Vibrational Objects on the Plane Of Unbelief......Page 107
The Occulture — The Auditory Hallucination......Page 110
SIG : COVERT SIGNALS, INTERCEPTS, AND OUTSIDE BROADCASTS......Page 115
Kristen Gallerneaux — The Max Headroom Signal Intrusion......Page 117
Dave Tompkins — Keep Me in the Loop......Page 121
Al Cameron — The Music of Skulls II: Osteography......Page 125
Toby Heys — Backmasking......Page 130
Anna Greenspan — China and the Wireless Wave......Page 134
Lendl Barcelos — 2014: The Visual Microphone......Page 139
Amy Ireland — The Thing......Page 142
Toby Heys — Large Hadron Collider: The Ultimate Underground Groove......Page 146
RWD : RETURNS, REPEATS, AND LOOPS......Page 150
Julian Henriques — Duppy Conquerers, Rolling Calves, and Flights to Zion......Page 152
Eugene Thacker — Days of Wrath......Page 157
Agnès Gayraud — Revival......Page 160
Toby Heys — Holojax......Page 164
Julian Henriques — Digital Immortality......Page 167
Steve Goodman — Death by Euro......Page 172
Steven Shaviro — Ancient to the Future......Page 176
Toby Heys — Rapparitions......Page 179
XFD : PASSAGE, TRANSFER, LIMBO......Page 184
Tim Hecker — The Solitary Practice of the Vanishing Concert Pianist......Page 186
Lisa Blanning — Ghost in the Machine......Page 189
Erik Davis — New Age......Page 193
Nicola Masciandro — Purgatory......Page 196
Alina Popa — VR of Void......Page 202
Toby Heys — Delusions of the Living Dead......Page 207
S. Ayesha Hameed — Jupiter......Page 215
Charlie Blake — Sonic Spectralities: Sketches for a Prolegomena to Any Future Xenosonics......Page 219
KODE : INVOCATIONS, CALL SIGNS, AND XENOPOETICS......Page 222
Anthony Nine — Blood And Fire......Page 224
Paul Purgas — Archaeoacoustics......Page 230
Jenna Sutela — nimiia vibié Log......Page 232
Georgina Rochefort — The Baton of Diabolus......Page 237
Amy Ireland — Nurlu......Page 244
Lee Gamble — They Echoic: Exquisite Corpse......Page 248
The Occulture — The Sonic Egregor......Page 251
Nicola Masciandro — Sorrow......Page 256
D+P : SONIC DISCIPLINE AND PUNITIVE WAVEFORMS......Page 258
Toby Heys — A Sonic Autopsy of the Waco Siege......Page 260
Steve Goodman, Toby Heys, Eleni Ikoniadou — Ghost Army: The Deceit of the Battle DJ......Page 264
Tim Hecker — Shocks On The Body: The End of Life by Sound......Page 269
Steve Goodman, Toby Heys, Eleni Ikoniadou — Wandering Soul / Ghost Tape No. 10......Page 272
Kodwo Eshun — ‘We Are The Gods Trapped in Cocoons’: Neural Entrainment in ‘Get Out’......Page 277
Toby Heys — Muzak and the Working Dead......Page 282
Ramona Naddoff — The Animal Whose Ear It Is......Page 287
Toby Heys — Pain C@mp Economics......Page 292
Contributors......Page 299
