Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
F O U R
Mediating the New Human
No dream experience, no ancient religion ever separated spirit from flesh more
effectively than the electronic media.
E d m u n d C a r p E n t E r
The sound of a two-way, shortwave radio transceiver is un-
like any other. It is equal parts static and voice, recognizable
utterances bracketed by blips of pure noise. When used Ay-
oreo style, it resembled a stretched echo chamber wherein
dozens of distorted voices moved and resounded all at once
in the sparsely consonanted tones of the Ayoreo language,
the words overlapping and interrupted and recombined in
a schizoid montage. Meaning was anything but stable. The
background was as richly layered as this mobile foreground,
galaxies of buzzes and crackles and moans and shrieks, the
electronic signature of aging solar panels and dried up bat-
teries and atmospheric conditions, of sunbursts and storm
clouds and seasons and winds. When you pressed the but-
ton to add your voice to the cacophony, all sound ceased
as if severed. The handset clicked into a dead weight, the
silence flat and empty and solitary. As soon as the transmit-
ter button was released, the noise burst forth again and you
were never sure exactly what your voice had conveyed. It
was a sonic surreality.
This sound defined Ayoreoland during the early 2000s.
Before 2010, I never spent a day in any village on either side
of the border without hearing it, flowing from this person's
mud house or that wooden shack or brick school. I learned
to tell time by it and by the cross-border, all-community
