Goodman, Steve - Notes on the Third Ear / Phantom Lure

Two original essays scrutinize the use of acoustic camouflage and the outer limits of unsound. Phantom Lure - Angus Carlyle explores the ways in which the frequency spectrum can become a site for disguise and deception. Acoustic camouflage is deployed in the concrete curves of sound mirrors, military battlefield sensors, and snipers’ sonic concealment tactics, but also in the silent steps of the hunter and the mimicry of duck calls, antler rattles, and fox flutes. This trail of decoys leads us into forensic acoustic analysis, electronic voice phenomena, and music encrypted with secret signals. Notes on the Third Ear - Steve Goodman plunges further into the thresholds of audibility and the Janus-faced instrumentalization of vibration involved in sonic warfare. Goodman charts the outskirts of aurality with an inventory of the tones, booms, blasts, bleeps, roars, hisses, and purrs that populate the liminal space between art and war, attack and defense, destruction and healing, detection and deception, aggression and seduction, fear and delight, signal and camouflage, the ferocious and the cute. In an era marked by the auricular multiplication of machine listening, three ears is the absolute minimum.