Feedback emerges within a zone of sonic precarity, intensifying into the intolerable on its hither side. As anyone who’s used a microphone knows, the most obvious factor in determining this zone is space: the distance between microphone and speaker, where they’re pointed, the shape of the room, and so on. We move the mic here and there, and are haunted by whining that comes and goes, until, in a moment, it escalates into shrieking. Typically, then, we rush to escape the zone of precarity. We adjust the settings, and move the mic away, hoping never to return to that region of danger where any sound seems to lie in hiding, waiting to leap out in an instant and stab at our ears.