sonic warfare

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Three thoughts:
i) surely annoying people until they're forced to leave a public place is illegal in some way?
ii) my god that sounds like something the editorial staff of the Daily Mail would come up with at closing time.
iii) Heh heh. Hey Beavis, that thing has the acronym STD.
 
D

droid

Guest
Ive still ot good Hi-Freq hearing... am I allowed to sue if Im out of the 'socially undesirable' age group?
 

bassnation

the abyss
Slothrop said:
Three thoughts:
i) surely annoying people until they're forced to leave a public place is illegal in some way?

if that was true there'd certainly be a lot less funky house nights.
 

boomnoise

♫
back up in the newcastle they've been known to pump out classical music to avoid the yoots hanging around metro stations. the idea of suburbs rammed full of these things is interesting. what about the dogs?
 

Lichen

Well-known member
boomnoise said:
back up in the newcastle they've been known to pump out classical music to avoid the yoots hanging around metro stations. the idea of suburbs rammed full of these things is interesting. what about the dogs?


Do they take the precaution of avoiding Ludwig Van?
 

boomnoise

♫
personally as a yoot i would love to have hung around listening to clasical music. but i guess i really was never an asbo waiting to happen.

the amount of classical informed grime around atm i'm not sure how well this works in london!

i'm not sure to be appauled by these devices or not. i mean similar products exist for cats and rodents.
 
D

droid

Guest
boomnoise said:
i'm not sure to be appauled by these devices or not. i mean similar products exist for cats and rodents.

I know the 'youth' can get a bit rowdy at times - but I dont know if they qualify as vermin.... ;)
 

geto.blast

snap on rims
Active Denial System

Details of US microwave-weapon tests revealed

* 22 July 2005
* NewScientist.com news service
* David Hambling

VOLUNTEERS taking part in tests of the Pentagon's "less-lethal" microwave weapon were banned from wearing glasses or contact lenses due to safety fears. The precautions raise concerns about how safe the Active Denial System (ADS) weapon would be if used in real crowd-control situations.

The ADS fires a 95-gigahertz microwave beam, which is supposed to heat skin and to cause pain but no physical damage (New Scientist, 27 October 2001, p 26). Little information about its effects has been released, but details of tests in 2003 and 2004 were revealed after Edward Hammond, director of the US Sunshine Project - an organisation campaigning against the use of biological and non-lethal weapons - requested them under the Freedom of Information Act.

The tests were carried out at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Two experiments tested pain tolerance levels, while in a third, a "limited military utility assessment", volunteers played the part of rioters or intruders and the ADS was used to drive them away.

The experimenters banned glasses and contact lenses to prevent possible eye damage to the subjects, and in the second and third tests removed any metallic objects such as coins and keys to stop hot spots being created on the skin. They also checked the volunteers' clothes for certain seams, buttons and zips which might also cause hot spots.

The ADS weapon's beam causes pain within 2 to 3 seconds and it becomes intolerable after less than 5 seconds. People's reflex responses to the pain is expected to force them to move out of the beam before their skin can be burnt.

But Neil Davison, co-ordinator of the non-lethal weapons research project at the University of Bradford in the UK, says controlling the amount of radiation received may not be that simple. "How do you ensure that the dose doesn't cross the threshold for permanent damage?" he asks. "What happens if someone in a crowd is unable, for whatever reason, to move away from the beam? Does the weapon cut out to prevent overexposure?"

During the experiments, people playing rioters put up their hands when hit and were given a 15-second cooling-down period before being targeted again. One person suffered a burn in a previous test when the beam was accidentally used on the wrong power setting.

A vehicle-mounted version of ADS called Sheriff could be in service in Iraq in 2006 according to the Department of Defense, and it is also being evaluated by the US Department of Energy for use in defending nuclear facilities. The US marines and police are both working on portable versions, and the US air force is building a system for controlling riots from the air.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18725095.600&print=true
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Reading a book called Supernature by Lyall Watson. It's pretty mindblowing, nearly every page has information that challenges common assumptions about modern scientific thought. Anyway just got to this bit, luckily someone on another site has already typed it in. Presumably this is common knowledge in the sonic warfare community.

"Professor Gavraud is an engineer who almost gave up his post at an institute in Marseilles because he always felt ill at work. He decided against leaving when discovered that the recurrent attacks of nausea only worried him when he was in his office at the top of the building. Thinking that there must be something in the room that disturbed him, he tried to track it down with devices sensitive to various chemicals, and even with a geiger counter, but he found nothing until one day, nonplused, he leaned back against the wall. The whole room was vibrating at a very low internal linkfrequency. The source of this energy turned out to be an air-conditioned plant on the roof of a building across the way, and his office was the right shape and the right distance from the machine to internal linkresonate in sympathy with it. I was this rhythm, at seven cycles per second, that made him sick."

"Fascinated by the phenomenon, Gavraud decided to build machines to produce infrasound so that he could investigate it further. In casting around for likely designs, he discovered that the whistle with a pea in it issued to all French gendarmes produced a whole range of low-frequency sounds. So he produced a police whistle six feet long and powered it with compressed air. The technician who gave the giant whistle its first trial blast fell down dead on the spot. A post-mortem revealed that all his internal organs had been mashed into an amorphous jelly by the vibrations."

"Gavraud went ahead with his work more carefully and did the next test out of doors, with all observers screened from the machine in a concrete bunker. When all was ready, they turned the air on slowly - and broke the windows of every building within half a mile of the test site. Later they learned to control the amplitude of the infrasound generator more effectively and designed a series of smaller machines for experimental work. One of the most intersting discoveries to date is that the internal linkwaves of low frequency can be aimed and that two generators internal linkfocused on a particular point even five miles away produce a resonance that can knock a building down as effectively as a major earthquake. These frequency-7 machines can be built very cheaply, and plans for them are available for three French francs from the Paten Office in Paris."
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Also this recent article from adage.com. Microwave technology to 'transmit' sound into people's craniums, or to cause damage and pain, was initially developed by the US military.

Hear Voices? It May Be an Ad
An A&E Billboard ‘Whispers’ a Spooky Message Audible Only in Your Head in Push to Promote Its New ‘Paranormal’ Program

By Andrew Hampp

Published: December 10, 2007
NEW YORK (AdAge.com)—New Yorker Alison Wilson was walking down Prince Street in SoHo last week when she heard a woman’s voice right in her ear asking, “Who’s there? Who’s there?” She looked around to find no one in her immediate surroundings. Then the voice said, “It’s not your imagination.”

Indeed it isn’t. It’s an ad for “Paranormal State,” a ghost-themed series premiering on A&E this week. The billboard uses technology manufactured by Holosonic that transmits an “audio spotlight” from a rooftop speaker so that the sound is contained within your cranium. The technology, ideal for museums and libraries or environments that require a quiet atmosphere for isolated audio slideshows, has rarely been used on such a scale before. For random passersby and residents who have to walk unwittingly through the area where the voice will penetrate their inner peace, it’s another story.

Ms. Wilson, a New York-based stylist, said she expected the voice inside her head to be some type of creative project but could see how others might perceive it differently, particularly on a late-night stroll home. “I might be a little freaked out, and I wouldn’t necessarily think it’s coming from that billboard,” she said.

Less-intrusive approach?
Joe Pompei, president and founder of Holosonics, said the creepy approach is key to drawing attention to A&E’s show. But, he noted, the technology was designed to avoid adding to noise pollution. “If you really want to annoy a lot of people, a loudspeaker is the best way to do it,” he said. “If you set up a loudspeaker on the top of a building, everybody’s going to hear that noise. But if you’re only directing that sound to a specific viewer, you’re never going to hear a neighbor complaint from street vendors or pedestrians. The whole idea is to spare other people.”

Holosonics has partnered with a cable network once before, when Court TV implemented the technology to promote its “Mystery Whisperer” in the mystery sections of select bookstores. Mr. Pompei said the company also has tested retail deployments in grocery stores with Procter & Gamble and Kraft for customized audio messaging. So a customer, for example, looking to buy laundry detergent could suddenly hear the sound of gurgling water and thus feel compelled to buy Tide as a result of the sonic experience.

Mr. Pompei contends that the technology will take time for consumers to get used to, much like the lights on digital signage and illuminated billboards did when they were first used. The website Gawker posted an item about the billboard last week with the headline “Schizophrenia is the new ad gimmick,” and asked “How soon will it be until in addition to the do-not-call list, we’ll have a ‘do not beam commercial messages into my head’ list?”

“There’s going to be a certain population sensitive to it. But once people see what it does and hear for themselves, they’ll see it’s effective for getting attention,” Mr. Pompei said.

More disruptions
A&E’s $3 million to $5 million campaign for “Paranormal” includes other more disruptive elements than just the one audio ad in New York. In Los Angeles, a mechanical face creeps out of a billboard as if it’s coming toward the viewer, and then recedes. In print, the marketing team persuaded two print players to surrender a full editorial page to their ads, flipping the gossip section in AM New York upside down and turning a page in this week’s Parade into a checkerboard of ads for “Paranormal.”

It’s not the network’s first foray into supernatural marketing, having launched a successful viral campaign for “Mind Freak” star Criss Angel earlier this year that allowed users to trick their friends into thinking Mr. Angel was reading their mind via YouTube.

“We all know what you need to do for one of these shows is get people talking about them,” said Guy Slattery, A&E’s exec VP-marketing. “It shouldn’t be pure informational advertising. When we were talking about marketing the show, nearly everyone had a connection with a paranormal experience, and that was a surprise to us. So we really tried to base the whole campaign on people’s paranormal experiences.”

So was it a ghost or just an annoyed resident who stole the speaker from the SoHo billboard twice in one day last week? Horizon Media, which helped place the billboard, had to find a new device that would prevent theft from its rooftop location. Mr. Pompei only takes it as a compliment that someone would go to the trouble of stealing his technology, but hopes consumer acceptance comes with time. “The sound isn’t rattling your skull, it’s not penetrating you, it’s not doing anything nefarious at all. It’s just like having a flashlight vs. a light bulb,” he said.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Remember reading this (and others by him) when I was at school but I gathered the impression that Watson is generally regarded as a bit of a quack - at least, that's what my physics teacher told me. When you read things like this though it's hard to disagree

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100th_Monkey
I have no doubt he is considered a quack by the scientific establishment. It does seem that he was pretty well respected before he published that book though.

OK - just had a quick look at 100th monkey, looks like it might have some relation to Sheldrake's morphogenetic field theories. I understand there is some puzzling experimental evidence that could be seen as supporting the existence of something along those lines.
 
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noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
One thing I've often wondered about is what is the general scientific consensus around the mechanisms involved in entrainment?

Mr Tea?
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
One thing I've often wondered about is what is the general scientific consensus around the mechanisms involved in entrainment?

Mr Tea?

Hmm, I don't know too much about this. In physics it's related to resonance and frequency forcing. There are eight articles on entrainment in Wikipedia though, each applied to a different area of science. No idea about the biological kind - although the one about synchronised periods in a group of women who live together is quite well known. It's even been suggested that the similarity between the average length of the human menstrual cycle and the lunar month is no coincidence, in that people in ancient hunter-gatherer societies may have timed their breeding patterns by the lunar phase, and that in time this would have become hard-wired by evolution.
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
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