AUDINT -- Unsound: Undead
Urbanomic / Art Editions – The MIT Press
Noises. Sounds. Frequencies. Ultra-. Infra-. Audible. Inaudible.
An endlessly fascinating realm that the UK based research unit AUDINT group has been exploring, with a focus on shedding light on the outliers and the peripheries of sonic perception (unsound) and the potential that lie therein to open portals to new dimensions. An when I say “new dimensions”, I mean transitions between the dead and the undead and passing the threshold between fiction and fact.
This wonderful tome is comprised of sixty-four essays penned by luminaries of their respective fields, which investigate from different and at times never attempted angles how the inaudible can be channelled to communicate and infuse the undead with life.
The territories that are explore demand an open mind, at times a bit of technological understanding and most importantly a readiness to follow thought experiments and how they related to tangible and intangible phenomena harking back to the eight century before Christ, drawing parallels to how we have perceived and defined until now and, most interestingly, casts projections into the future, i.e. the second half of the twenty-first century when it comes to the exploration of what holosonic, directional ultrasound and haptic feedback devices can be used for.
A testament to the fact that what we might perceive to be set in stone when it comes to “vibration” and what can be accomplished through it, is actually, based on ever changing goalposts that are being re-engineered on an on-going basis and – most importantly – in areas that are no longer perceptible.
