Further exploring the boundary between art and weaponry, the latest project from Toby Heys and Steve Goodman saw them commission a bespoke 40-inch subwoofer from loudspeaker specialist Traction Sound.
As Audint, Heys and Goodman have a strong pedigree in sonic manipulation. Heys covered the ‘utilisation of waveforms as weapons’ in his PhD. And is a research fellow at the Manchester Institute for Research & Innovation at the Manchester School of Art. Goodman is most famous as dubstep artist Kode9 and for running Hyperdub records. He also has a PhD and has published a book on sonic warfare.
Audint use infrasound and ultrasound to investigate how we perceive soundscapes –both in the context of military and civil applications. Their hardware already included ultrasonic loudspeakers first made for the US military but what was missing was equipment to produce infrasound at military levels. They first collaborated with Traction Sound over their Delusions of the Living Dead sonic installation at Tate Britain, which saw the gallery mapped using ultrasound and infrasound with mighty sound system from Traction Sound.
‘The team at Traction Sound understand bass and what we were trying to achieve with Audint,’ Heys says. ‘They delivered an exceptional sonic landscape for us at the Tate. However, our research aims meant we needed to take this further.’
‘If you analyse even the heaviest dub or techno track they never go as low as Audint do,’ Traction Sound’s Billy Wood elaborates. ‘Generally, we design loudspeakers for music and find that there is not much need to go down below 30Hz. At this frequency you will cover everything the DJ or musicians might play. It was clear that Audint needed a custom solution.’
The custom solution took the form of a 40-inch infrasonic loudspeaker powered by an amplifier delivering 25kW peak power – some way removed from ‘standard’ technology. It is built on Powersoft’s M-Force system. ‘We have been working with Powersoft for a while now,’ Traction Sound’s Jonny Goodwillie confirms. ‘They were keen for us to experience their M-Force system so we visited them in Florence last summer. I remember it being about 40° outside but they had a nice air-conditioned demo room. On first listen, it was clear that M-Force had great potential, it was just the perfect system to push lots of air at low frequencies. We couldn’t see anything else on the market capable of getting even close.’
The first deployment of Traction Sound’s 40-inch subwoofer was at Manchester’s central library for the Unwanted project. The subwoofer could not reach it’s full potential at this venue, however, as structural damage started to occur before they achieved maximum SPL.
‘We are blown away with what Traction Sound have achieved with their 40-inch loudspeaker,’ Heys says. ‘We are playing frequencies as low as 15Hz and the sub woofer just keeps going. I just can’t wait until we can find a venue strong enough to withstand the loudspeaker’s full potential.’
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More: www.audint.net