A(rchitectural) Megaphone
There is a common misconception that Hyde Park’s Speakers Corner exempts the speaker from
the limitations on free speech in the UK, such as inciting hatred, threatening the monarchy, or endorsing terrorism,
which can be prosecuted.
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Freedom of speech in the UK, and the rest of the EU, is protected under the Human Rights Act of 1998.
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However, in the same document, it is acknowledged that to protect these human rights restrictions on
speech might be necessary.
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The debate on what should be protected and what should be regulated within “free speech”
is very important, nuanced, and intricate, however, it is not what I will be discussing here. What I would like to point
out is that even with the rich history of Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner and even if the
speaker sets up a mini-stage and steps on it, UK law will apply to them just as it did before. Nonetheless, the speakers
that come to the Corner carry with them some sort of tool to elevate themselves. I too am setting a stage with this introduction.
A person is carrying a step stool. They put it down. They walk upwards. They are now a speaker.
On stage, they give a speech.
It is almost a rite of passage to go the beach as a child, to take a handful of mud
and let it drip down to form a pile, and, if the mud is just right, the child can make piles upon piles that resemble castles,
but each separate pile is somewhat of a cone, somewhat of a pyramid. Ancient Pyramids can be found across the globe, and they
are a well-defined shape. Why are pyramids all across the globe? I don't need to make it make sense, it already does. You
put stone on stone, and if you want to build something tall, yet stable, make the most out of the least construction materials,
the pyramid is intuitively the shape of choice.
Not only human feet can travel upstairs, not only feet at all, but sound waves also meet the rock,
and depending on the kind of rock and the type of wave it will either be absorbed or it will bounce off. The impact with the stone
will inevitably change the wave in some way. A clap at the base of the Pyramid of Kukulkan at Chichen Itza is a sound wave, it
bounces on the steps of the pyramid, traveling and changing as it does,
by the time it comes back down to the ears of the clapper it sounds like a chirp. The different parts of the sound bounce
off differently, making it so that we hear the higher frequencies first but also an overall drop in pitch.
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If the clap is executed in the right area the chirp sound can be remarkably similar to the
call of the Quetzal witch was a sacred bird, it represented the “Spirit of the Maya”.
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Kukulkan is a feathered serpent deity, a dragon if you will, worshipped by the Yucatec Maya.
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On the day of the equinoxes, the shadow cast by the big stairs combined with the sculpture at the
bottom of the human stairs creates an illusion of a snake descending from the top of the El Castillio at Chichen Itza, the same
pyramid displaying the peculiar sound characteristics, the Temple of Kukulkan.
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In a chain of emails published by Dan Shaw, more people share their experiences with the
exceptional acoustics of mesoamerican pyramids:
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↑ The Descent of Kukulkán, Chichen Itza during the equinox, March, 2008
“While working specifically at the sites of Coba, Kukikan and
Santa Rosa, Xtampak I found [...] these three sites in particular are coliseum-like complexes in which one can talk
in a normal voice at "center stage" and be heard at the edges of the complexes.”
- Date: Tue, 17 Dec 1996, From: Paul E. Pettennude.
“ I recall that when I was at Edzna, I was standing at the top
of one pyramid and my daughter on the top of another and realized that we could carry on a conversation in a perfectly
normal tone of voice, not only with each other but with others standing on the ground. ”
- Tue, 17 Dec 1996, From: Jeeni Criscenzo.
“In December 1994 I traveled to Belize, and visited a ceremonial site on the Guatemalan border which is still being excavated, called Xunantunich.[...] We could also observe that the people in the courtyard were talking, apparently quite loudly, but that their voices sounded muted and distant. Yet as we spoke to one another, our voices seemed amplified. A large recess in the wall of the pyramid behind us functioned as a resonator, and gave our sounds back to us with a bright, ringing quality. We could be heard quite clearly in the courtyard below. ”
- No information about the sender.
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The expression “on top of the pyramid” could be used interchangeably
with “on top of the world” in many contexts. At the uppermost point of the pyramid the world still exists.
When a person is on top of a physical pyramid all they see is the entirety of the world that they are physically capable
of seeing.
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Who stood on top of El Castillo? The high priest, who was one of the most powerful
men within the social hierarchy.
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The man on top of the stairs, the pyramid, the world. The power of the priest is given
by the belief of the people, by their certainty that the man on top is intrinsically righteous and deserves to be there.
The high priest is a man with an audience. When he speaks his voice is overwhelming all of those in the Ball Court, as
thunder it comes from above, but also from beyond, echoing from many directions, yet distinctly clear. The temple uses
the acoustic resonance of the stairs to create sound effects, as well as visual illusions to glorify the upper class.
One could say El Castillo is an architectural megaphone used by the person in power to address the populous.
Amplifying the sound of the human voice is necessary when addressing crowds, and
if the crowd wants to be addressed it can become the megaphone as well. To use amplified sound during a protest in NYC, a
Sound Device Permit is required.
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As a solution in 2011, the movement Occupy Wall Street (OWS) created the Human Microphone.
When a person shouts “Mic Check!” the crowd mimics: “MIC CHECK!” continuing with the next phrase
after. The experience of being there, being part of the mic is described as
“hypnotic, comic or exhilarating—often all at once.”
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That is the way the General Assembly was held, that was the way information
was delivered to the people by the human mic.
During OWS amplifying the sound was necessary to distribute information, the human microphone
became a symbol of solidarity and power. At El Castillo the sound of the speaker’s voice, aside from the voice or
the meaning of words spoken, but the enhanced sound of it was an instrument for inflicting and maintaining power, superiority,
control of the one person addressing a crowd.
In the time between the height of the Yucatec Mayan civilization and OWS movement sound
plus elevation were used and combined into tools for control repeatedly.
In between 1965 and 1975 the US Embassy in Moscow was “bombarded” with microwaves.
The radiation had no proven health effects on the people within the building, but it sparked a momentary craze about potential human
mind control using said microwaves. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA
pursued the idea, also concluding in 1967 before ever getting to human trials that microwaves did not affect organic neuro systems.
Later it was concluded that the waves were used to switch on and off the listening bugs within the walls of the building.
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While DARPA was investigating radiation as a tool to affect the human psyche, the psychological
operation “Wandering soul” was in full effect in Vietnam. Microwaves are
technically light, radiation, not soundwaves. It was the microwaves’ potential that concerned the scientists, but it was
sonic weapons that were already being used in the field to affect human minds.
In the early 1960s helicopters geared with speakers would tear the skies above Vietnamese
jungles. As documented by Sergeant Major Herbert A. Friedman of the US Military, those below would hear Buddhist funerary music,
eerie conversations, cries and wails, the Aztec death whistle, and frequencies below human hearing inducing panic.
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The Vietnam War is an example of asymmetrical warfare, the USA is a superior military power,
beyond classical weapons such as artillery and explosives, the deployment of sonic weapons and psychological warfare was an advanced
military tactic. Vietnamese people have a belief that people whose bodies aren’t buried on consecrated land, such as soldiers
dying on the battlefield, become “wandering souls”,
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spirits that can then torment the living. The US Military exploited the local belief system
through sound broadcasted from above to terrify and subjugate its opponent.
Long Range Acoustic Devices known as LRAD are classified as sonic weapons, and the stream
of vibration coming out of it is referred to as the line of fire. It can cause permanent damage to a person immediately. A
person subjected to it described it as:
“At first you just think, ‘What’s happening to me?’ Your body goes into complete pain
and panic mode. It’s the sound equivalent of looking into the sun.”
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The volume can get to 160 dB which can burst the eardrum in a matter of seconds, in fact just
one-second exposure to 140 dB can cause permanent hearing loss.
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The Pentagon deployed LRADs in Iraq to disperse gathering and keep known spots of suicide
bombings clear.
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It can be said that the guided sound of an LRAD
is used to violently, loudly impose silence, compliance on the target, like the thundering voice of a god-affiliated figure.
LRADs have been used as crowd control on US citizens during protests in the USA:
- September 2009 during the G20 Summit;
- 25 October 2011 during Occupy Oakland;
- 20 May 2012 at a NATO march in Chicago;
- October 2013 in Salisbury;
- 18 August 2014 during protests of the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson;
- 5 December 2014 in Manhattan during the protests of the police killing of Eric Garner;
- 29 April 2015 in NYC during the Baltimore Solidarity Rally;
- November 2015 in Greensboro;
- 27 May 2016 in San Diego during an Anti-Trump rally;
- 20 November 2016 in North Dakota to clear the blockade of Highway 1806;
- 21 January 2017 during the Women’s March;
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↑ The Huey helicopters with mounted loudspeakers that carried
the wailings of the Wandering Soul through the Vietnamese sky cric. 1960
↑ LRAD on 25 May 2016 in Los Angeles during an Anti-Trump rally
LRADs are used in sonic warfare, however, at the intersection of war, sound, and psychological
warfare another machine is important to discuss: the drone. In her multimedia sound installation “Uneasy Listening”
Susan Schuppli explores the toll an environment saturated with drone noise has on the residents of the area. On the pamphlet that
accompanies the piece there are statements from those affected:
“...The sound of drones has driven many villagers to insanity. [..] The sound of the drone
stays in my head. [..] I heard a sound in the sky like a lawnmower engine, a steady buzzing above us to our right. It was a Predator,
armed surely with missiles ...”
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Drones have not been reported at protests within the USA, however, the LRADs have become an
almost common occurrence. During the 2020 BLM protests in the USA alone, LRADs have been used in:
- Portland, multiple times,
- Phoenix, multiple times,
- Little Rock,
- Kenosha,
- Rochester,
- Columbus,
- Washington, multiple times,
- Cleveland, multiple times.
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Several thousands of years ago the Maya built ingenious stair structures that allowed sound to
be amplified and transmitted clearly over significant distances, it facilitated communication horizontally among people of the upper
class standing on different structures, as well as vertically, channeling power through sound carried from above towards the lower
classes. When the High Priest spoke on top of the pyramid his voice bounced off the resonating
rock wall, and with every step down the vibration increased in volume and dropped in pitch. His voice was thunder,
the crowd listened.
Modern democracies claim to not have a class system, and indeed an LRAD is most effective when
directly facing the target, the sonic breath of fire is unleashed at ground level. Nonetheless, it is a clear display of dominance,
a weapon used in war, it is a force disagreeing, directly opposing crowds of people that are the demos. It prioritizes the decisions
of a few, and enforces them top-down, using a beam of sound.
Stuck on vertical hierarchy, stairs, steps, and ladders are tools for gaining the high ground.
Below there is always an audience, whether or not they are aware of their role, they will listen due to their subordinate position.
Upstairs they give a speech, below they listen.
