christian-nold-mobile-vulgus-1.pdf

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Christian Nold

Mobile Vulgus


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Published and distributed by

Book Works, 19 Holywell Row,

London EC2A 4JB

www.bookworks.org.uk

Copyright text, photographs and audio

© Christian Nold, 2001.

Image copyright © Keith Still, Foster-

Miller, Do or Die, Robert Knight,

Charles Pycraft, Kirkland Airforce base,

US Department of Defence,Southwest

Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas

swri.org, 2001.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be

reproduced, copied or transmitted save

with written permission from the

publisher in agreement with the

copyright holders or in accordance

with the provisions of the Copyright

Designs and Patents Act, 1988.The

publishers have made every effort to

contact all copyright holders. If proper

acknowledgement has not been made,

we ask copyright holders to contact us,

so that full acknowledgement may be

given in subsequent editions.

ISBN 1 870699 56 4Mobile Vulgus is one of four

publications commissioned and edited

by Craig Martin for Warm Seas as part

of Open House/Book Works Projects

1998-2001.

Open House/Book Works Projects is

supported by the National Lottery

through the Arts Council of England

and the Henry Moore Foundation.

Book Works is funded by the Arts

Council of England and London Arts.Designed by Jason Rainbird

with Christian Nold.

Printed by Offset Colour Print Limited,

Southampton.

Christian Nold would like to thank:

Bruna Gagliardi, Inge Nold, Mike

Holmes, Jason Rainbird, Duncan

Whitley, Joe Tunmer,Keith Still, Ian

Hunt,Kameran Etebar,Dr. John

Alexander, Javier, John Drury, Do or

Die, all at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol,

Charles Pycraft and all the people on

the Mayday and Mayday White

Overalls mailing lists who have

contributed their ideas and images.

Special thanks to Craig Martin, Jane

Rolo and Maria Fusco who have not

only edited and published this book

but also organised the test events in

Bristol and London.


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% UAV - Unmanned Aerial Vehicle.

These weapons are the future of crowd

control, allowing the remote

deployment of a whole range of non-

lethal anti-personnel weapons, from

noxious odorants, caltrops, dye

markers and tear gas to electronic

noise generators.


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18


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In the weeks leading up to the event the

politicians and police had beenconspiring to intimidate people with

their ‘zero tolerance policy’ and threats

of tear gas and plastic bullets.

Surprisingly the actual day started quietly with a number of autonomous

protests occurring throughout London. The text messages I was receiving from

people at the other actions all sounded positive.We decided to go to Hyde Park

to join up with a group of people busily building cardboard hotels for the

homeless as a gesture against the expensive hotels overlooking us on all sides.

At 3:00 we broke off and walked towards Oxford Street where the turn out was

much better. In anticipation of trouble the main road had been thoroughly

cleaned for once and all loose street furniture removed to stop it being thrown

or used to build barricades. All the large corporate chains had boarded up their

main facades with chipboard not even forgetting the tiny branded signs that

stuck out into the street.


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Screenshots of the 1995 version of Legion. A shimmering stream of

steady panic pushes towards a tiny

black doorway. The movement happens

in staggered pressure-releasing waves.

In cramped spaces, units are stuck

indefinitely, unable to enter the surge.

Others skip lightly around slower ones,

moving up to three times faster.

Individuals become hard to track as

identical pixel afterimages are

immediately filled by the following

unit.One in, one out.

M E N T A L B A T T L E F I E L D S

24


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In 1998 the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department developed its own sophisticatedsimulation. Their program, the ‘Commander’s Interactive Training System’

proudly states that it has developed directly out of riot officers’ first-hand

experiences of the Rodney King LA riots. It simulates inner city disturbances as

seen through the eyes of an officer on the street in order to prepare platoon

commanders on how to deal with the crowd. Watching the simulation pan

across the streets towards the robotic crowd, pausing only to select a different

weapon, is reminiscent of a large number of computer games. The only shock

comes when we zoom towards the crowd and half of them are on their hands

and knees apparently knocked down by non-lethal weapons. Developed in

cooperation with Lt. Charles Heal, one of the pioneers of non-lethal weapons,

this no doubt explains why the program makes available such an extraordinary

arsenal of soft-kill weapons:

MK 4 & 9 OC (pepper) spray

12 gauge beanbag

12 gauge rubber fin stabilised round

12 gauge sting ball

40mm foam rubber and wood batons

40mm stinger

Hand thrown sting ballHand thrown flash bang

Commander’s Interactive Training System


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The British program CACTUS (Command And Control Training and PlanningUsing Knowledge Based Simulation) was used to train riot police officers at the

Public Order Training Centre in Hounslow in the early to mid 1990’s. CACTUS

uses a bird’s eye view of digitised ordinance survey maps to simulate disorder in

real city centres. CACTUS’ approach to the crowd is to ignore the individual and

conceptualise people as being conglomerated into large unified groups. On

screen differently coloured dots represent protesters and police units while the

outer coloured arcs signify the possible transitions between the full range of

simulated behaviours:

Dispersing, demonstrating, sitting down, standing still, standing around angrily,

demonstrating, marching, marching angrily, marching with arms, taunting crowd,

dismantling building site, vandalising and looting, volatile, very volatile, attacking

police, throwing heavy missiles

While graphically less sophisticated than the American system, CACTUS is

operationally far superior since it doesn’t just simulate but also visualises real

life crowd disorder as it happens. Simulation and real life have been merged into

one unified control interface of buttons and text boxes. CACTUS allows the

incident commander to operate remotely, hundreds of kilometres away from the

actual street disorder.All the information from the CCTV cameras in the streets

and on helicopters is fed in through fibre optic lines, collated and then filtered.

Once compiled with tactical reports from the street, the system allows the

operator to issue live commands which drip back down the command chain to

the individual police officer in the street. These officers have a special

communication system built straight into their riot helmets which only allows

them to receive commands.

CACTUS


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32


CACTUS. This flowchart forms the

central part of the behavioural

network used to simulate the actions

of each riot police officer.


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36

We were following the samba band,

whistling and dancing in the streetswhen suddenly on reaching the end of

one road we were confronted by several

lines of riot police. By the time the main

bulk of the protesters had caught upwith us, the police had managed to

reinforce their cordon with mounted

officers. Distracted by the carnival

atmosphere, nobody noticed the wayanother two lines stealthily sealed off

the road behind us. They cleverly laid a

trap for us and we walked straight into

it. Now, we are trapped here with about

a thousand people in one narrow street.


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R E A L I T Y T R A I N I N G

40

This is not Oxford Street but the Public Order Training Centre in Hounslow

where every British police officer receives military-style training for at least two

days every six months.Today roughly one hundred police officers are taking partin what they call ‘reality training’.The group is split into two, with the larger unit

of seventy, chasing the thirty ‘protesters’ around the purpose-built compound.

The training area is laid out like a peculiarly English film set with roads called

Victoria and Albert Road lined with brick facades posing as strangely familiar

shops: Floyds Bank, Stavicker Sports, Heath Pub and Burger Queen. Only one or

two of the buildings in the whole compound are constructed in three dimen-

sions to allow the riot police to practice house clearance. Behind the High Street

is an area of special obstacles all grouped together. A mass of truck tyres piled

up at the entrance of a narrow alley simulates a protester barricade just so that

it can be broken down again using a special bullet proof JCB with an extra-long

pronged scoop. On the other side of the road a single underground carriage

stands next to a solitary football stand, awaiting crowd dispersion practice.

Adjoining the main compound are a number of halls containing freestandingprison cells used for restraint scenarios as well as a shooting range for lethal and

non-lethal weapons. The floor is littered with 40mm shell casings leading to a

disconcerting row of severed headless targets lined up at the far end of the hall.

The final piece of training technology also turns out to be the most evocative.

Standing in front of me is a tall and narrow metal frame from which a mass of

blue boxing bags are hung.These sacks hang from above head height all the way

down to my calves and are arranged in offset rows of 5 wide and 10 deep block-

ing my vision. Each bag is filled with sand to weigh the same as an average

human. I am told to run through. Pushing in, I am pounded by hard dull impacts

all over my body as the bags swing towards my face.This is what it must feel like

when the command to charge comes through on the earpiece: the tinted visor

flips down and you are forced to barge into the heavy faceless mob.


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% Public Order Training CentreThe whole of the compound is covered

in CCTV cameras allowing replays of

the day’s action from a wide variety of

angles.

! A ‘brick’ thrown by ‘protestors’ at

the Public Order Training Centre.

, Public Order Training Centre

Most of the shield training occurs in

the evening and goes on into the night

in order to prepare the police for

fighting in darkness.

R E A L I T Y T R A I N I N G

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R E A L I T Y T R A I N

I N G

50

A major concern is that the presence of TV cameras may cause soldiers to hesitate in

their decision to use deadly force […] The use of non-lethal weapons, supported by

lethal weapons, can be more readily employed in marginal situations […] Given thereduced likelihood of fatalities or serious injuries, the reason for hesitation should be

eliminated. Dr. John Alexander, 1999

Alexander had finally found a logical use for his non-lethal technology. Realising

that existing crowd control weapons were inadequate he shifted his focus from

antimatériel weapons towards a revolutionary range of ‘soft-kill’ weapons. TV

cameras that would have previously recorded the bullet entering the head of theten year old in slow motion, would now only show fleeing or unconscious peo-

ple. Using non-lethal weapons, complex ethical decisions are removed, allowing

the military mind to concentrate on what it has been trained for.


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We are still trapped in Holles Street. The

double row of riot police in front of usshuffles forward and one of the officers

pushes me back with his shield. I fix my

gaze on him and notice a little CE

marking just beneath the translucent toplayer of the shield. I don’t feel reassured

by the fact that the shield conforms to

European safety standards.


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S O F T W E A P O N S

! Arwen 37. "It is meant to crack a

rib and put them in a lot of pain," said

Toronto Police Constable Bob Leighton.

Riot police are usually required to test

non-lethal weapons such as Tasers on

themselves. But Leighton states that it

would be "too dangerous" to do so

with the Arwen 37.

! The Hybrid III 50th Percentile

male dummy. Representing the

average adult male, it is used to

simulate full frontal car crashes as well

as non-lethal weapon impacts.

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S O F T W E A P O N S

58

By simulating a complete family it becomes clear that the entire population is

the target for these weapons. The thin line between life and death is a narrow

statistical band drawn on graph paper with a sizeable proportion of the popula-tion falling on the wrong side. The Human Effects Advisory Panel is a body that

produces guidelines for the non-lethal weapons industry.According to their clas-

sifications a weapon is non-lethal if it incapacitates 98% of the population, has

no effect on 1%, whilst causing permanent damage to the remaining 1% — half

of whom will die. Transposing these figures to the recent Mayday protests in

London, if all those 5,000 participants were targeted, we could expect fifty per-

manent injuries of which twenty five would die.


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S O F T W E A P

O N S

64

The crowd is self-fullfiling, you need to make them go away, break up the mass,

break up the intent of the crowd and stop them feeding off each other. Dr. John

Alexander, 2001

Since the cohesion of the crowd is seen as the breeding ground for the collective

contagion it is combated with anti-viral emergency measures. The intuitive

belief is that by containing people in small pockets the contagion will run out of

hosts to spread to and die. Or by dispersing the crowd the collective contagion

might be diluted enough to leave behind dazed but rational individuals.As well

as a military officer and weapon developer, John Alexander also possesses a PhDin the experimental branch of psychology called Thantology meaning he is liter-

ally a ‘doctor of death’. His specialist knowledge of the psychological effects of

near-death experiences has allowed him to produce a hi-tech arsenal of

acoustic, optical and holographic weapons that combine the brutality of the mil-

itary with the subtlety of psychology.The resulting hybrid gives the military the

ultimate means to fight the mental/physical crowd contagion.


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Still trapped in Holles Street and the

police have closed in tightly from bothsides. We have been here for six hours, it

is getting dark and everybody is hungry

and cold. There are little rivulets of piss

flowing from the concave corners of buildings where people have been forced

to urinate.

A small group of people have started a little bonfire by the side of the road

with a few pieces of newspaper they found lying around. People are huddling

around the small fire to shield it from the wind. I hold my hands forward but

feel no heat from the tiny flames. Suddenly six riot policemen rush forward

barging through the huddled group and stamp out the fire. It takes one officer

about three seconds to put it out with his steel-capped boots. The crowd is

astonished. Boos and slow clapping. “Well done. Congratulations.” Someone alittle further along lights another match and tries to set fire to a single sheet

of paper.Again the forces of law and order rush in and stamp it out. More boos

and mock clapping. The police’s pettiness is incredible. How sad that we are

reduced to this.


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, We need more tools of non-lethal

defence; baton grabbing jaws and giant

magnets, tennis bats for returning tear

gas, interlocking shields,i tching powder

grenades, stink bombs, cream pies laced

with stinging chemicals,poo cannons,urine holding tanks connected to hand

pumps and hoses! Anonymous

protester mailing list


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P R O T E S T T O

O L S

We march with a mission and should those in power order others to stop us, we havea right to defend our bodies as much as our message. Bodyhammer Manual, 2001

In the last couple of years shields, helmets, armour and large barriers have

started to emerge on the protester side. Made of foam, inflatable rubber,

tarpaulin and other soft materials these tools have become DIY versions of

ancient armour made for the physical contest of the modern street. Once

stacked together in a roman tortoise formation the tools create a communalbarricade that offers safety from riot batons and non-lethal projectiles. By

interlinking arms and tightly grabbing the handles of the barrier the combined

body weight of the crowd can be brought to bear against the police lines. Any

technological advantage the police may have had is neutralised as the conflict

becomes a proto-democratic scrum of pushing and shoving. Crucially the barrier

acts as a psychological tool as well as a physical blockage. Activists who have

used the tactic comment that the shield wall becomes a visual divider that

blocks the sight of individuals on both sides and thus depersonalises the conflict

into two opposing forces. Being unable to see each other all personal aggression

is nullified.As the human wall of polypropylene starts to push through the police

lines, accounts tell of individual officers becoming isolated and panicking.

Routeing, they break their own lines and try to reform in small defensive circles.

Barriers

82


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People can see images on the TV news

that can't be manipulated:a mountain

of bodies that advances,seeking the

least harm possible to itself, against theviolent defenders of an order that

produces wars and misery. And the

results are visible,people understand

this, the journalists can't invent lies that

contradict the images;last but not least,

the batons bounce off the padding.

Ya Basta – White Overall Movement.


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P R O T E S T T O O L S

90

The critical aspect to moving in any shield wall formation is unison. While demonstra-

tors would discourage any individual to marshal a march, a form of organisation is

necessary. Bodyhammer Manual, 2001

The human barrier is only effective as long as it remains unbroken, which

requires considerable coordination and organisation. The dilemma is how to

achieve this unison without adopting the kind of rigid hierarchical systems used

by the military style opposition.

Unless it is possible to prepare and practice these tactics ahead of time, the best way

is the use of simple commands that can be shouted, including warnings of what is

ahead for those who cannot see. For keeping tight in a march at any pace, the best

method is a drum near the front […] or the calling off of steps, one, two, one, two...

Bodyhammer Manual, 2001

The protest manual proposes a system where every member is forced to take

responsibility for themselves as well as the group. Command has become an

autonomous system with no overall control. This anarchic method still allows

complex coordinated manoeuvres to be carried out because the crowd is united

by a regular internal stepping rhythm. Mobile samba bands work tightly with the

crowd to provide the necessary timekeeping drums. The polyrhythmic structure

of samba consists of many rhythms played by separate parts of the band and the

‘beat’ only emerges from the way these rhythms engage and communicate with

each other. Samba offers a concrete vision of the relationship between the indi-

vidual and the group where the individual is not forced to compromise their

identity, but rather the collective only functions because of its internal counter-

Coordination


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Mayday 2001, near Oxford Street.

A riot police officer stands helpless in

front of the £50,000 Jaguar he has

failed to protect from ‘vandalism’.

When we smash a window we aim to destroy the thin veneer of legitimacy that sur


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T R A S

H I N G

100

When we smash a window, we aim to destroy the thin veneer of legitimacy that sur-

rounds private property rights. At the same time, we exorcise that set of violent and

destructive social relationships which has been imbued in almost everything around

us. We contend that property destruction is not a violent activity unless it destroys

lives or causes pain in the process. By this definition, private property – especially

corporate private property – is itself infinitely more violent than any action taken

against it. [...] By destroying private property, we convert its limited exchange value

into an expanded use value. A storefront window becomes a vent to let some fresh air

into the oppressive atmosphere of a retail outlet. ACME Collective, Seattle N30

Reaching up to grasp the golden arches feels strange. The yellow plastic is hol-

low and flimsy not like I had expected. The bottom of the M has been shaped

with just enough depth to get a proper handhold. I pull myself up and fold my

legs around the object. I am swinging free, suspended from the world’s most

famous brand. For one moment a corporate symbol solidified as a physical enti-

ty that could be grasped and ripped down. For a split second a solution appeared,

a direct way of dealing with the amorphous nature of global capital. Frustratedat the lack of corporate accountability, these destructive tactics aim to create

economic pressure, but more importantly generate a sense of personal and pub-

lic empowerment. Even these minor displays demonstrate the potential for real

transformation outside the narrow constraints of symbolic protest. Spaces,

property and institutions that previously seemed distant and inviolatable sud-

denly reveal their vulnerability. Even things written in stone can be transformed.

After N30, many people will never see a shop window or a hammer the same way

again. The potential uses of an entire cityscape have increased a thousand-fold..

ACME Collective, Seattle N30


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Antimatériel Mobilisation System Version 1


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110

A N T I M A T É R I E L W E A

P O N S

110

A bleak expanse of stone, concrete and aluminum around the recently built

riverside leisure development in Bristol became the target for our initial test.The

supposedly public space of the Millennium Square which was built to the same

dimensions as the underground car park just beneath its surface, seemed like a

fitting place to reintroduce the crowd.

The evening of the event turns out to be blustery and rainy, yet twenty to thirty

hardy people brave the weather to come out into the street and take their whistles.A man with a megaphone appears and gives some general information to

the assembled group. He finishes by pressing a button on the megaphone he is

holding and immediately the crass distorted sound of the crowd bursts out of the

cone.The talking and laughing of the people mixes with the occasional shout. The

protest crowd moves closer and closer until the audio perspective shifts towards

the samba band whose drum sounds ricochet off inner-city walls. The amplified

noise echoes sharply across the huge empty expanse of the Bristol water front.

Suddenly the sound of all the whistles joins and the edge between the real and

recorded crowd blurs. Everybody moves towards Pero’s Footbridge and starts

jumping to the rhythm of the music, unaware that it has been modified to match

the resonant frequency of the bridge.There is a good atmosphere as people smile

enjoying their own physical exertion as well as the absurdity of the whole

spectacle. The bridge reacts slowly with dull thumps. Unfortunately the majorityof people are jumping ineffectively using alternate feet which dampens the full

force of their footfalls. Despite this, the bridge is vibrating laterally and swaying.

The jumping continues for a further five minutes until it is time to move off to the

second target, the silver dome of the ‘Imaginarium’. Moving closer the xenon

strobes can be seen flashing in the distance reflecting off the dome’s metallic

surface. Once assembled in front of the flashing strobes the jumping continues


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112112

with more vigour until everybody is exhausted and the security guards arrive to

break up the event.

Conclusions

While neither of the structures fully reacted or collapsed, the amount of

vibration generated was considerable. The pre-recorded protest audio proved to

be an efficient and evocative crowd trigger that synchronised the movement of

the people to the crucial frequencies. Unfortunately the use of a handheld

megaphone placed too much emphasis on the person with the device. The next

version of the tool should offer a more anonymous, atomised way of projecting

the audio. The most problematic issue was that the participants lacked any

common vision and participated through curiosity rather a common desire to

function together. It had been naive to assume that a proto-collective could be

formed without prior group planning and training. What was needed was a split

of the tool into two parts: training and operations.


P O N S


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Modular Components


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116

The CD at the back of this book

contains audio recordings taken from

the streets of London during the

Mayday 2001 protests.The recording

have been specially modified tofunction as a calibration/training tool

as well as a crowd synchronisation

tool.

For personal training an innocuous

portable CD player is used to listen to

the mini CD on headphones. For

collective events the player is

connected to the FMtransmitter/megaphone system. A

repeat play facility allows the setting

of audio loops.

Note: Due to technical limitations of

the repeat play facility of most CD

players there is a slight delay on

looping an audio track. In order to

achieve perfect loops use a DJ CD

player or digitally transfer the audio

onto another medium that loops easi ly

(mindisk).


P O N S

116

Mini CD Portable CD player

116


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gauge is the length between two supporting joists. Using the chart on the right

th d ff ti t f th t l f Th h d d


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120


P O N S

120

we can then read off an estimate of the natural frequency. The shaded area

between 1.8Hz and 3Hz indicates the range of sustainable human movement

from slow walking all the way up to frantic pogoing. If the structure falls withinthis range then it is a possible target.The ideal target would have a span of over

25 metres and be constructed from low weight material with low dampening.

Perfect examples of this are bridges but also open plan offices, which are

particularly vulnerable due to their lack of partitions.

Collective Action

Music is not dangerous, it’s the people. Music can be as loud as you like, ok you get

blast effects but they can’t be worse than explosions, and buildings are designed to

withstand explosions. No, its the actual effect that people would be able to cause.

Kameran Etebar, engineering lecturer

Brought together through the announcement of a crowd action, the anonymousindividuals gather and recombine into the physical collective. They have

brought with them the modular components needed to construct the protest

tools. Once assembled and deployed, everything is in place. With the audio

system stuck to the ceiling and safe from any ground level interference, there is

no more need for any leaders, organisers or martyrs. The objects become the

focus of the crowd, activating the latent adrenaline and reconstructing the

mobility of the vulgus.The amorphous notion of ‘people power’becomes a hyper literal vision of kinesthetic force that empowers through concrete results. By

standing still an average person weighing around 65 kilograms exerts a force of

650 newtons straight down onto the floor.

Once mobilised into jumping with both feet that force is multiplied almost seven

times If fifty people jump simultaneously this force produces 23 tonnes of


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122


P O N S

122

times. If fifty people jump simultaneously, this force produces 23 tonnes of

pressure which is the same weight as thirty-three cars stacked one on top of the

other. With every drum beat, these tonnes of pressure piledrive into the groundat the resonant frequency. Seeing, hearing or feeling even the slightest response

from the structure initiates a feedback loop between the building and its

occupants which increases the feeling of communal action.The amount of force

required to cause a full structural collapse is between ten to one hundred times

greater than that needed to see the first surface cracking.These warning signs are

sufficient for our purposes since they force the authorities to close down thestructure. Used in this way the tactic should pose no danger to anyone.


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Mobile Vulgus CD


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M O B I L E V U L G U S C D

128 Track Name Speed Frequency

01. Intro

02. Loop A 135 BPM 2.25Hz03. Loop B 135 BPM 2.25Hz

04. Loop C 135 BPM 2.25Hz

05. Loop A 144 BPM 2.40Hz

06. Loop B 144 BPM 2.40Hz



09. Loop B 153 BPM 2.55Hz10. Loop C 153 BPM 2.55Hz


12. Loop B 162 BPM 2.70Hz


14. Loop A 171 BPM 2.85HZ

15. Loop B 171 BPM 2.85HZ16. Loop C 171 BPM 2.85HZ

17. Outro

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