Voices

Remember when we were young, oh, it seems only twenty minutes ago?

There was a book titled Subliminal Seduction, purporting to ascribe 32 different flavors of deliciously manipulative evil to Madison Avenue advertisers in the never-ending quest to separate the marks from their wallet's contents, such naughtiness to be hidden in plain sight by the stratagem of subliminally hiding 'triggers' in the contents of the ads and the product to be sold.

Much of this tome's theory and research was disputed, although methods to exploit the subjective inner workings of an individual certainly exist and can be used in myriad ways...and now we have this:

The Audio Spotlight directional sound system from Holosonic Research Labs, Inc., a pioneer in nonlinear acoustics, was recently deployed in retail outlets throughout the New York metropolitan area for a Court TV advertising campaign promoting its new television series, Murder by the Book.
Technology integrator BlueBlast Media, in conjunction with Zoom Media, designed the Court TV retail display, using Holosonics' Audio Spotlight, to deliver discrete messages directly to shoppers.
As customers perused store shelves, they passed motion sensors installed near the Court TV displays that triggered a subtle, targeted message delivered via an Audio Spotlight speaker disc.
The disc precisely beamed a recorded message to the customer, making it sound as if someone, a "Mystery Whisperer," was speaking directly to them.
Holosonics' Audio Spotlight signal is only audible to those standing directly within the acoustic beam, so when the shopper stepped out of the beam, the voice disappeared.

During the month-long campaign, targeting eleven bookstores and cafes throughout Manhattan, the Audio Spotlight directed more than 100,000 messages to shoppers asking them to tune in to the new Court TV television series.

"Because the message delivered by the Audio Spotlight system is only audible when directly in line with the narrow beam of sound, we were able to capture consumers' attention in a whole new way," said JP Freeley, owner of BlueBlast Media. "We left consumers with a message that resonated instead of one they just walked right past."

And such technology has slipped the bonds of the mall and escaped to the wild, being used in such venues as this:

Walking westward on Prince St. between Mulberry and Mott Streets, I heard a woman's voice in my head whispering, "Who's there? Who's there?"
Not like I "heard" a woman's voice like when I wear flared jeans with skinny shoes and I "hear" a woman's voice in my head say, "Wait, you've got to be kidding?" but like an actual woman's voice in my head.

Then I noticed that, above a billboard for some A&E show called Paranormal State were some speakers that looked like hypersonic sound beams, a device which uses your skull as a speaker—that is, it transmits soundwaves that resonate against whatever surface they hit.

So when they hit your head, it sounds like the call is coming from the inside the brain-house.

Mama, we're all going to be schizophrenic now.

h/t Majikthise.