This Week in Sound: “A Thunderous Boom as They Worshipped a Thunder God”
These sound-studies highlights of the week originally appeared in the August 29, 2023, issue of the Disquiet.com weekly email newsletter, This Week in Sound. This Week in Sound is the best way I’ve found to process material I come across. Your support provides resources and encouragement. Most issues are free. A weekly annotated ambient-music mixtape is for paid subscribers. Thanks.
▰ MAYBE TAKE AN ANIMAL DEGREE: Researchers such as Michelle Fournet, a professor at the University of New Hampshire, are working to “decode” the language of the animal kingdom — from humpback whales to hummingbirds — so we might communicate with other species: “Fournet has shared her catalog of humpback calls with the Earth Species Project, a group of technologists and engineers who, with the help of AI, are aiming to develop a synthetic whup. And they’re not just planning to emulate a humpback’s voice. The nonprofit’s mission is to open human ears to the chatter of the entire animal kingdom. In 30 years, they say, nature documentaries won’t need soothing Attenborough-style narration, because the dialog of the animals onscreen will be subtitled. And just as engineers today don’t need to know Mandarin or Turkish to build a chatbot in those languages, it will soon be possible to build one that speaks Humpback—or Hummingbird, or Bat, or Bee.”
▰ YOU’LL SHUT ME DOWN WITH A PUSH OF YOUR BUTTON: “[M]ysterious saboteurs who have, over the past two days, disrupted Poland’s railway system — a major piece of transit infrastructure for NATO in its support of Ukraine — appear to have used a far less impressive form of technical mischief: Spoof a simple radio command to the trains that triggers their emergency stop function.” The assault, which took place on August 25th and 26th, isn’t merely infrastructural: “The saboteurs reportedly interspersed the commands they used to stop the trains with the Russian national anthem and parts of a speech by Russian president Vladimir Putin.” The system’s weakness is striking: “anyone with as little as $30 of off-the-shelf radio equipment can broadcast the command to a Polish train — sending a series of three acoustic tones at a 150.100 megahertz frequency — and trigger their emergency stop function.”
▰ DANCE OFF: “Different layers of soil, ash and guano created a floor that absorbed shocks while emitting resonant sounds when people stomped on it.” That is not a report from Burning Man. It is a summary of archeological details from a 700-year-old site in Peru called Viejo Sangayaico, where humans apparently “stomped rhythmically on a special dance floor that amplified their pounding into a thunderous boom as they worshipped a thunder god.” Per Miriam Kolar, an archaeoacoustics researcher at Stanford University: “Evidence of other sound-altering structures has also been found at Andean sites older than Viejo Sangayaico. … Conch-shell horns found in a ceremonial center at a roughly 3,000-year-old site called Chavin de Huántar could have produced a range of sounds, from nearly pure tones to loud roars, that were emphasized in ceremonially important passages and ventilation shafts.” (Thanks, Nicola Twilley!)
▰ BRAIN TEASER: “In a milestone of neuroscience and artificial intelligence, implanted electrodes decoded Mrs. Johnson’s brain signals as she silently tried to say sentences. Technology converted her brain signals into written and vocalized language, and enabled an avatar on a computer screen to speak the words and display smiles, pursed lips and other expressions.” And the results have broad applications: “The goal is to help people who cannot speak because of strokes or conditions like cerebral palsy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. … The field is moving so quickly that experts believe federally approved wireless versions might be available within the next decade.” (Gift link to nytimes.com.)
▰ USE YOUR ILLUSION: “If there is a scene of a jungle, then you will hear a classic jungle soundscape, even if it includes animals from a different continent. If you are in a more foreboding or swampy area, you will hear a loon. Doesn’t matter where the actual location is supposed to be.” That is Steven Novella — you sorta have to love that family name in the context of a stated desire for truth — weighing in on how the sounds of animal and environments in TV and movies often have no basis in reality: “Eagles, for example, do not make that cool-sounding screech that is almost always paired with a video of an eagle. That is the sound of a red-tailed hawk, which has become the standard sound movies use for any raptor. Eagles make a high-pitched chirping sound. If you have seen a bear roar in a movie, chances are the sound you heard was that of a tiger. All primates hoot like a chimp, all frogs ‘ribbit’ like that one species whose range includes Hollywood.” And Novella, a Yale University School of Medicine professor, includes human activities in his diagnosis of this widespread problem: “I do think heavy reliance on such tropes can have downsides worth discussing. One is that they can become lazy, even unnecessary. Have you noticed that every time someone steps in front of a live microphone there is a moment of feedback? Is that really necessary? Isn’t the fact of the amplified voice enough to convey to the audience that the mic is live? I get the feeling that at some point things like this are done just because they are done. It becomes a thoughtless part of the process — you have to add the feedback every time someone steps up to a live mic.” In brief, I agree with him. (Thanks, K.r. Seward!)
▰ NOISE-CANCEL CULTURE: Donna Wu thinks noise-canceling technology can only go so far, and that we’re due, culturally, for a “reckoning.” She quotes David McAlpine, academic director of Macquarie University Hearing: “‘We’ve simply outsourced our sound world in a way we’ve never outsourced our visual world,’ he says. Imagine if all civic beautification efforts were replaced by individuals putting on AR/VR goggles, then walking around in their own private, alternative realities all day. ‘And that’s problematic.’”
▰ MONSTER MASH: “Kitamura conducted an experiment in a forest where he randomly placed small speakers, played Pokemon sounds, and recorded them. This allowed him to analyze how Pokemon cries sounded in a natural environment. He also discovered that insect sounds resemble the electronic sounds of synthesizers, which are used to create Pokemon sounds. By simulating sound echoes and the diffraction caused by plants and trees, the audio team at Game Freak aimed to make Pokemon sound more realistic.” Kitamura is Kazuki Kitamura, director of Connect+Echo Audio, and he is paraphrased here from a presentation about the sound design of Pokemon games at the recent Computer Entertainment Developers Conference (CEDEC 2023), which was held in Japan from August 23-25.
▰ QUICK NOTES: Match Game: “Many animals use sounds to attract others. In this game you’ll find out what type of animal you match with!” — a program of the Yale University Music Lab (thanks, Lotta Fjelkegård!). ▰ Heart Beat: Wearable devices to detect cardiovascular disease are being developed to filter out real-world external noise that can cause mistaken data. ▰ Ear Plug: Sony PlayStation has purchased the headphone company Audeze, which specializes in a particular type of magnetic driver. ▰ Best Buds: Forthcoming AirPods Pro 2 from Apple will reportedly include features such as adaptive audio, conversation awareness, muting/unmuting, and personalized volume, among other upgrades. ▰ Stem Cells: If you notice an uptick — and upgrade — in remixes and mashups, it may have to do with the DJ software Serato adding the ability to identify and single out stems (i.e., specific elements), per Peter Kirn at cdm.link. ▰ Ear-in-the-Sky: So-called “noise cameras” in New York City can lead to fines upwards of $2,500. ▰ Electric Avenue: The new sonic logo for the Indian electric car company Tata is said to blend “electronic circuits with a powerful ripple sound, inspired by the intersection of nature and technology.” ▰ Elephant’s Memory: “Artificial intelligence could help determine the verdicts of future court cases involving musical copyright.” ▰ Down the Tubes: “new research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows that talking through a PVC tube can alter the sound of someone’s voice enough to trick [virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa].” ▰ Hum Bucker: I read about hum-to-search for songs at least as far back as late 2021, but apparently this is now a new-in-the-works YouTube feature.
