“The assistant welcomed me in the tiny room on the ground floor where he himself lived, and which was bristling with a much different sort of equipment, unknown and exciting enthusiasm. Some molecules are carriers of an electric dipole; they behave in short in an electric field like minuscule compass needles: they orient themselves, some more sluggishly, others less so. Depending on conditions, they obey certain laws with greater or less respect. Well, now, these devices served to clarify those conditions and that inadequate respect. They were waiting for someone to put them to use; he was busy with other matters (astrophysics, he specified, and the information shook me to the marrow: so I had an astrophysicist right in front of me, in flesh and blood!) and besides he had no experience with certain manipulations which were considered necessary to purify the products which had to be measured, for this a chemist was necessary, and I was the welcomed chemist. He willingly handed over the field to me and the instruments. The field was two square meters of a table and desk; the instruments, a small family, but the most important of these were the Westphal balance and the heterodyne. The first I already knew; with the second I soon established a friendship. In substance it was a radio-receiving apparatus, built to reveal the slightest differences in frequency; and in fact, it went howlingly out of tune and barked like a watchdog simply if the operator shifted in his chair or moved a hand, or if someone just came into the room. Besides, at certain hours of the day, it revealed a whole intricate universe of mysterious messages. Morse tickings, modulated hisses, and deformed, mangled human voices, which pronounced sentences in incomprehensible languages, or others in Italian, but they were senseless sentences, in code. It was the radiophonic Babel of war, messages of death transmitted by ships or planes from God knows who to God knows whom, beyond the mountains and the sea.” – Primo Levi “The Periodic Table” 1975
See “Rorschach Audio” book pages 22 to 23 (and all previous “Rorschach Audio” publications and artworks etc)
Play the clips in sequence (original audio from Disinformation + Various Artists “Antiphony” 2xCD, 1997; also scroll down for a more detailed article about art, illusions of sound, and Sine-Wave Speech, published in March 2013)…
http://www.slashseconds.co.uk/disinformation/13/99/submission/contradiction/
Other contributors to Slash Seconds 13 include Paul Allsopp, Jonathan Allen, Anti-Design Festival, Myra Brooklyn, Simon Bedwell, Philippa Beale, Gail Burton, Sam Basu, Stephen Clarke, Sean Dower, Shezad Dawood, Poulomi Desai, Thomas Draschan, Véronique Janin Devoldère, Laura Emsley, Paul Eachus, Roy Exley, East End Promise, Anna Fasshauer, Nadine Feinson, Nooshin Farhid, Leo Fitzmaurice, Alison Gill, Derek Hampson, Alex Hamilton, Susie Hamilton, Michael Hampton, Paul Johnson, Susan Jahoda, Ben Judd, Arnout Killian, Daniel Kupferberg, Sue Kennington, Sharon Kivland, Katrin Lock & Tim Brotherton, Peter Lewis, Andrea Medjesi-Jones, Jo McGonigal, Simon Morse, Sadie Murdoch, Mark McGowan, Maslen & Mehra, Adam Nankervis, Makiko Nagaya, Nada Prlja, Janette Parris, David Price, Douglas Park, Clunie Reid, Hannah Roberts, Robyn Voshardt & Sven Humphrey, Hilary Koob-Sassen, Sergie Sviatchenko, Lisa Torell, Simon Tyszko, Cecilia Wee, Nathan Witt & James White. Special thanks to Peter Lewis & Makiko Nagaya.
“Portrait of Contradiction” by Disinformation, Artwork © copyright Joe Banks, November 2012 (see also earlier items posted in this on-line archive)
Many thanks to everyone who came along to (sold-out) talk at The British Library, and apologies to everyone who couldn’t get a ticket. The next “Rorschach Audio” lecture-demonstration will be for Café Scientifique in Leamington Spa…
“Rorschach Audio – EVP, Ghost Voice Recordings & Illusions of Science”
7.00pm, Monday 15 July 2013
Café Scientifique
St Patrick’s Irish Club
Riverside Walk (off Adelaide Road)
Leamington CV32 5AH
Writing in “Playback: The Bulletin of the British Library Sound Archive”, Toby Oakes observed that the archive “deals with the voices of the dead every day, but our subjects tend to have been alive at the time of recording”. “Mortality was no impediment” however, in the case of tapes recorded by parapsychologist Konstantin Raudive, who claimed that Galileo, Goethe and Hitler communicated with him through the medium of radio. Raudive was the most famous exponent of Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP), as it is known, and the British Library holds a collection of 60 of his unedited tapes. Rather than dismissing the claims of EVP researchers out-of-hand, author Joe Banks demonstrates a number of highly entertaining audio-visual illusions, which show how the mind can misinterpret recordings of sound and of stray communications chatter, in a similar way to how viewers project imaginary images onto the random visual forms of the psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach’s famous ink-blot tests. The talk stresses the important role that intelligent guesswork plays in normal perception, and discusses descriptions of sound phenomena by Leonardo da Vinci, and the work of the BBC Monitoring Service, emphasizing the influence that wartime intelligence work with sound had on one of the most important works of visual arts theory every published.
The talk starts at 12:30 (however the library is a bit of a labyrinth so arrive 10 minutes early to make sure you find the scriptorium on time). Admission is free and refreshments are provided. To attend please e-mail your name to summer-scholars@bl.uk.
“Rorschach Audio – Ghost Voices, Art, Illusions and Sonic Archives”
12:30 lunch-time, 28 June 2013
The British Library
96 Euston Road
London NW1 2DB
This talk is part of the British Library’s Summer Scholars programme. Special thanks for Stephen Cleary for the invitation, and to everyone who came along to “Circuit Blasting” in Brighton.
Nearly 10,000 people visited the first Disinformation solo exhibition at Fabrica gallery in Brighton in 2001, which included a “Rorschach Audio” lecture, among many elements, and variations on that exhibition toured to 8 different galleries up & down the UK. On the 24 May 2013, Disinformation returns… to perform at this year’s Brighton Fringe. Notwithstanding the opulent Angel House venue being a short hop from central Brighton over the border in Hove, Disinformation & Strange Attractor use antique high-voltage electro-medical equipment to show a bunch of electronic keyboards exactly what we think of learning to play the damn things properly.
“Circuit Blasting” is an auto-destructive art and noise performance, which is “a bit like Circuit Bending, but alot less subtle” – as the Brighton Fringe publicity states “mad science and musical madness collide in a one-of-a-kind performance… the circuits of musical instruments are overloaded to produce a startling, unrestrained series of notes, beats and patterns… electroshock therapy for your ears”.
Admission is free, unusually however the event is at 12.30 lunch-time
Hendrick’s Carnival of Knowledge
Angel House
1 Brunswick Terrace
Brighton & Hove
East Sussex BN3 1HN
Event curated by Mark Pilkington
Disinformation + Rorschach Audio 