Category: field notes

News, essays, reviews, surveillance

On the Line: CSE, Lockwood, Surveillance

Some favorite recent writing

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

▰ Whale of a Time:

“You ever hear about the loneliest whale in the world? Whales have songs, right? They sing to each other, and the songs are at, like, 160 MHz, something like that. I forget the specifics, but they’re all within that range, yet there’s this one whale who sings at, like, 50 MHz. No one knows why. But none of the other whales can hear him. So he just goes around singing, and the other whales don’t even know he’s there.”

That is Agent Copano (voice: Joseph Lee Anderson) in the animated series Common Side Effects (season 1, episode 7, “Blowfish,” written by Karey Dornetto), from Joseph Bennett, one of the two creators of the fantastic Scavengers Reign, and Steve Hely. This moment occurs right after Copano’s newly assigned partner turns off the car radio and says, “I don’t like music. It’s distracting.” Copano misses his previous partner, Agent Harrington, with whom he’d often listen to music while on stakeouts. Fortunately, unlike Scavengers Reign, Common Side Effects was renewed for a second season.

. . .

▰ Locked In:

“I am seeking ways to recognize that we are part of that world, not dominant and not separate. And sound is so powerful for that. It affects our blood pressure and muscle tension. You can’t control it.”

That is composer Annea Lockwood, profiled in The New York Times by Joshua Barone.

. . .

▰ Mic Drop:

“Some of the conversations inside the embassy were picked up by bugs. The various branches of British security, sometimes unaware of one another’s activities, devoted much effort and ingenuity to inserting tiny microphones through the 22-inch-thick wall of the embassy and the 15-inch wall of the building next door. This required drilling holes by hand through granite and dense Victorian brick to avoid making a sound likely to alert the gunmen to what was going on. Fake roadworks were staged outside, to hide the noise of the drill. The aim was to come out behind an electric socket, so that the microphone would be hidden behind a piece of plastic. In the event, the field telephone which had been given to the gunmen for communications with the police, and which contained a permanently active bug, appears to have been the most useful listening device.”

That is Patrick Cockburn in the London Review of Books summarizing information from Ben Macintyre’s book The Siege: The Remarkable Story of the Greatest SAS Hostage Drama.

Sound Ledger: EVs, Noise, Clones

Audio culture by the numbers

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

3,000,000: Number of views of one TikTok video parodying EV sound.

37: Number of countries collaborating to tackle underwater noise pollution.

30: Number of seconds of recording from which someone’s voice can be cloned. 

Sources: EV (fastcompany.com; tiktok.com), underwater (nature.org), clone (saturdayeveningpost.com)

This Week in Sound

A lightly annotated clipping service

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

These sound-studies highlights of the week originally appeared in the June 20, 2025, 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.

▰ WATER LOGGED: “A fiscal watchdog is taking the city’s public art authority to task for spending tens of thousands of dollars on a phone line that allowed people to listen to recorded sounds of the Bow River. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation issued a freedom of information request to the city in 2024, revealing that the Reconnecting to the Bow public art project cost taxpayers $65,194.” You can check it out at calgaryartsdevelopment.com. Story via calgaryherald.com.

▰ BLIND BIRDING: “Shah, who lost his sight in a childhood injury, was one of 11 blind people who tracked and identified more than two dozen bird species Sunday as part of an inaugural, nationwide effort to get those who are blind or visually impaired into birding. The day-long, blind birder bird-a-thon drew more than 200 participants who counted 200 species at parks, gardens and backyards in 34 states, including California, Florida, Idaho, Texas, Montana, Pennsylvania and New York.

“‘I loved it,’ Shah, a lawyer who lives near Northwest Washington, said about his two hours of birding. ‘I’ve never done this before and to be able to differentiate the birds based on their sound and identify them was big. I always thought birding was about seeing or watching birds, but I realized it’s also about listening to birds.’” Dana Hedgpeth, in the Washington Post, profiled blind birders. 

▰ PISS TAKE: Using machine learning to find information in … urination: “One medical test significantly benefiting from AI is sound-based uroflowmetry (SU). This innovative technique seeks to estimate urinary flow patterns during bladder emptying based on the sound generated by urine striking the water surface in a toilet bowl. SU emerges as a remote and proactive alternative to uroflowmetry (UF), a standard clinical test performed by urologists to detect issues associated with urinary tract symptoms (LUTS), such as obstructions or voiding dysfunctions.” At nature.com.

▰ COLD FRONT: “Samsung’s latest smart fridges now support multi-voice recognition powered by the company’s Bixby assistant, which can be used to bring up personalized information on the built-in smart displays based upon which member of a household is speaking.” Via The Verge.

▰ AI? NAY: “Motion Picture Sound Editors (MPSE) is taking a hard stance on generative AI. Today, the organization announced that any film using generative AI would not be eligible for Outstanding Use of Sound Design at its annual Golden Reel Awards. Per TheWrap, this is the first time any professional film organization has made a move like this” Per The AV Club.

▰ GRACE NOTES: (1) Words’ Worth: Tom Gauld had a funny comic about the sound of fountain pens. ▰ (2) Whirs’ Worth: The Washington Post had a multimedia piece about the sounds of electric vehicles. ▰ (3) Bird Brain: The Shriek of the Week is the Green Warbler (“a rapid rushing warble, often from thick cover”). (4) Mama Cassian: How the sound of Andor was created (an interview with Margit Pfeiffer, the show’s supervising sound editor).

▰ Credit Due: Thanks, Mike Rhode (Gauld, EVs) and Rich Pettus (MPSE, Star Wars).