TIDAL TONES

The connection between war, wellness, and interspecies communication is a complex entanglement that involves various fields of research. During the Cold War, the U.S. Navy deployed hydrophone arrays as part of the SOSUS (Sound Surveillance System) to detect Soviet submarines. These underwater microphones inadvertently captured humpback whale vocalizations, which engineer Frank Watlington first identified in the 1950s. Classified for over a decade, the recordings were later shared with bioacoustician Roger Payne, who recognized their cultural significance. In 1970, he released the album Songs of the Humpback Whale in collaboration with National Geographic. The album introduced these soundscapes to the general public for the first time, transforming whales from industrial commodities (whale fat used for candles, street lighting, soaps, or lubricants) into voices that could now inhabit the domestic space. Payne recognized whale songs as evidence of nonhuman culture as their linguistic patterns challenged the human-animal binary rooted in language and reason, and from then on, whale songs have become synonymous with relaxation and well-being. 

The contradiction between wellness and warfare is evident in how the same technologies used for healing can also be employed to harm. In this ambiguous space, frequencies—vibrations encoded and decoded by devices and bodies—act as a hybrid language that blurs the boundary between the biological and the technological. What appears in one context (sound therapy, neural stimulation, biofeedback) can, in another, become a silent weapon (electromagnetic warfare, cognitive manipulation). Thus, the animal body becomes a receptive and vulnerable interface, where health and control intertwine within the same vibrational spectrum.