I Would Prefer Not To (Stay Cool)

“I Would Prefer Not To (Stay Cool),” 2022, mixed media sound installation, LRAD, riot shields, oscillating fans, ratchet straps, dimensions variable, Human Resources Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 

The installation employs Amacher’s work on “psychoacoustics” alongside “acousmaticism” (psychoacousmaticism) through the lens of Herman Melville’s short story Bartleby, The Scrivener. Considering Herbert Marcuse’s notion of the “Great Refusal” as an indictment of emergent military-cum-consumer technology being weaponized against citizen-civilian populations, it provides a quiet blueprint for protecting oneself from such phenomena. I Would Prefer Not To (Stay Cool) makes deliberate misuse of a decommissioned military-issue Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD*, (specifically, LRAD 500x), its ability to transmit sound, pre-recorded or live, is baffled by placing six inverted riot shields, mounted to oscillating fans in front of it. These inverted shields not only deflect the sound from a potential aggressee, but their inversion also refracts the sound back to its source with the same intensity. The placement of the shields on indeterminately oscillating fans also physicalizes the sentiment of cool, steely refusal put forth by Bartleby’s repeated utterance, “I Would Prefer Not To,” enacting a chance-operation in which these “refusals” go in and out of phase. The project was funded, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.

*Often referred to as “sound cannons,” LRAD’s have been deployed by police forces across the United States, including NYPD, as a “non-lethal” sonic weapon against civilian populations engaged in peaceful protest as far back as 2004.