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Rorschach Audio: Voices and Perceptual Creativity

Joe Banks ABSTRACT

The author considers re- search into allegedly “Electronic Voice Phenomena” (EVP) in light of both anecdotal re- ports and formal experimental Sometimes we see a cloud that’s dragonish; publication of his book Break- studies of related aspects of hu- A vapour sometime like a bear or lion, through in 1971 [3], Raudive be- man auditory . He of- A tower’d citadel, a pendant rock, came the leading light in an in- fers the primary hypothesis that A forked mountain, or blue promontory ternational circle of EVP an understanding of the relevant With trees upon’t, that nod unto the world, enthusiasts. Today the movement aspects of psychoacoustics pro- vides a complete explanation for And mock our eyes with air. that Jürgenson and Raudive ef- most EVP recordings, and a sec- fectively founded has evolved ondary hypothesis that an in- —Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra into a widespread activity of such formed understanding of these complexity that it would be fool- processes is as relevant to the It is the story of the signaller who misheard the urgent message emergent field of sound art as hardy for any author to attempt a “Send reinforcements, am going to advance” as “Send three studies of optical illusions have truly comprehensive survey. The and four pence, am going to a dance.” been to the study of visual art. purpose of this article is not to at- —E.H. Gombrich, “Some Axioms, Musings and tempt that daunting task but to Hints on Hearing” address the major, salient issues that recur throughout EVP research and that in fact under- The title of this article is taken from a text written for the pin the entire system. sleevenotes of a compact disc called The Ghost Orchid, sub- This article argues that EVP represents a classic example of titled An Introduction to Electronic Voice Phenomena [1]. For a supposedly “strange” phenomenon for which there is the those who may be unaware, Electronic Voice Phenomena proverbial “perfectly rational explanation” and, perhaps (EVP) are a class of allegedly mysterious vocal recordings, somewhat counterintuitively, also suggest that a critical dis- and while several explanations have been offered to explain cussion of EVP can yet be a rewarding and valuable exercise. their origin, the overwhelming majority of EVP researchers This is because despite my initial and belief that believe that their recordings constitute physical evidence of exposing the central involved in EVP is little more contact with the . In other words, most EVP research- than a statement of the obvious, I now believe that it can also ers believe that it is possible, using various radio and electri- be shown that EVP recordings evidence psychological phe- cal engineering techniques, to record the voices of . nomena that are inherently interesting and important. Simi- Edison and Marconi both believed that radio technology larly, studying how this evidence has been turned into a com- might enable contact with the afterlife—an idea that fit well plex, often entrenched belief system is of genuine within the context of Victorian enthusiasm for various forms anthropological interest, not least because the process entails of . However, the EVP movement proper began the use of electronic technology to help construct, rationalize in 1957, when Friedrich Jürgenson, an artist who had previ- and validate a fundamentally anti-scientific belief system. ously painted portraits of Pius XII, found voices The material presented will also be used to support a sec- intruding on recordings he had made of his own voice and ondary hypothesis—that an understanding of the processes then, in 1959, of birdsong. Convinced that these recordings involved in EVP may also contribute to theories of art criti- represented communications from alien life-forms and, for cism, both in general terms and with particular reference to instance, his deceased mother, Jürgenson temporarily aban- music and sound art. It has to be said that the ideas on which doned his artistic career to concentrate on these experiments these hypotheses are based are not innovative, that they are and publicize his findings. In 1960, he started recording simi- already embedded in mainstream critical theory and that lar voices with radio equipment, and published the books they trace direct descent from an individual generally recog- Rösterna Från Rymden in 1964, Sprechfunk mit Verstorbenen in nized as the most important figure in the history of Western 1967, and Radio och Mikrofonkontakt med de Döda in 1968. From art. What is most surprising about these ideas is not their ex- 1968 onwards, Jürgenson cemented an increasingly close re- istence, but the extent to which they, like sound art in gen- lationship with the Vatican, making a number of documen- eral, have previously been ignored. Many of the relevant psy- tary films about religious themes and executing portrait com- chological theories are not merely to, but were in fact missions for Pope Paul VI [2]. Jürgenson’s publications, and pioneered by, art historians and critics (several of whom have particularly the idea that he had amassed evidence proving the existence of an afterlife, attracted considerable attention. Konstantin Raudive carried on the cause of EVP research, al- Joe Banks (sound artist), 9 Cranfield House, 97 Southampton Row, London WC1B legedly making tens of thousands of recordings. With the 4HH, U.K. E-mail: .

© 2001 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 11, pp. 77–83, 2001 77

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/09611210152780728 by guest on 02 October 2021 been major contributors to Leonardo). such a degree of gullibility on behalf of ter being the subject of fascinating re- However, it still seems to be the case that their audience. I will be perfectly frank search by Vilayanur Ramachandran, di- ideas that were developed primarily to in saying that the way in which this mate- rector of the Center for Brain and Cog- explain certain aspects of visual percep- rial was interpreted would be funny nition at the University of California, San tion and enhance the appreciation of vi- were it not so tragic. However, I will ex- Diego [7]. sual art also have great relevance to is- plain why I now believe that some EVP David Wright’s faculties may sound sues of acoustic perception—and that researchers, although misguided, may extraordinary, but Celia Woolf, a speech this aspect of their interpretation seems have genuine belief in their work, and and language therapist at the Depart- to have received relatively scant atten- that many of the signals they have re- ment of Phonetics and Linguistics at tion. While a body of anecdotal and ex- corded are not consciously faked, but University College, London, has de- perimental evidence does exist connect- are instead commonplace material phe- scribed experiments suggesting that lip- ing visual art theories to ideas about nomena whose origin and nature they reading is an important part of normal acoustic perception, to the best of my have misunderstood. speech perception: knowledge this material is dispersed and The hypothesis that EVP could be de- The McGurk effect refers to the results has neither been grouped together pre- scribed as authentic phenomena, and of a study in which subjects were asked viously nor applied to practical issues that explanations exist to account for to watch video recordings of a face say- such as assessing EVP and sound art. how they arise, is drawn from a number ing monosyllables, and report what they It should be admitted that this sec- of sources. The neurologist Oliver Sacks had heard. It was found that subjects’ were strongly influenced by ondary hypothesis only became appar- discusses the subject of acoustic projec- the visual provided by the after I noticed a fairly serious mis- tion in his book Seeing Voices [5], quoting face. So when the video was dubbed take in the text of the Ghost Orchid descriptions of the so-called “eye music” (the face says “ga” but the voice says sleevenotes, a mistake that I return to and “phantasmal voices” from the poet “ba”) listeners reported hearing the syl- lable “da” which is acoustically midway below. David Wright’s autobiographical work between “ga” and “ba” [8,9]. My first exposure to examples of EVP Deafness. Having lost his of hearing was as a teenager, when I heard a in childhood, after having learned to The effect then is that when the eyes are flexidisc of voices recorded by Raudive, speak, Wright found himself able to ex- closed the sound heard is different from published in 1982 by The Unexplained perience reconstructed sound-images when they are open [10]. magazine [4]. The style of these record- projected by his into his perceived Among the wartime experiences re- ings is typical of EVP—a narrator intro- environment as an extension of visual lated in his autobiographical novel The duces “contacts” that manifest as brief cues. Lip-reading triggered actual voices Periodic Table, Primo Levi recalled a labo- bursts of distorted voice accompanied inside Wright’s mind, despite the fact ratory test apparatus called a hetero- by very high levels of radio interference that no environmental information was dyne, which, under certain conditions, and what appears to be machine noise being provided by his ears. The project- functioned as a radio receiver. He de- picked up from the recording apparatus ing effect was so strong that Wright even scribed an “intricate universe of mysteri- by a microphone. The examples are re- reported hearing ghost-sounds conjured ous messages, morse tickings, modu- peated several times, and the ambience by the motion of trees in wind. Wright lated hisses, deformed, mangled human of the recordings is menacing. My initial explained, voices which pronounced sentences in reaction to hearing this material was my deafness was made more difficult to incomprehensible languages or in code one of sheer disbelief, since, in addition perceive because from the very first my . . . messages of . . . the radio- to being instinctively skeptical about any eyes had unconsciously begun to trans- phonic Babel of war” [11]. late motion into sound. My mother It is perhaps not surprising that studies claims to the existence of the supernatu- spent most of the day beside me and I ral, I saw that outright forgery of such understood everything she said. Why of this confused miasma of impulses also material would be absolute child’s play. not? Without knowing it I had been provide useful clues to unraveling the The most primitive tape-recording and reading her mouth all my life. When enigma of EVP. Olive Renier and overdubbing techniques could easily she spoke I seemed to hear her voice. It Vladimir Rubinstein wrote in their book was an illusion which persisted even af- produce phenomena of this nature— ter I knew it was an illusion. My father, Assigned to Listen that “the mechanism of not least because the more basic the my cousin, everyone I had known re- projection plays a major part in hearing” technology used, and the lower the sig- tained phantasmal voices. That these [12]. Assigned to Listen describes the nal-to-noise ratio, the more the finished sounds were imaginary, the projections “ether war” fought by BBC foreign-lan- of habit and memory, did not come guage radio monitors, who scanned the product would resonate with an of home to me until I had left the hospi- menacing low-fidelity mystique, which tal. One day I was talking with my Second World War’s “remorseless sea of could even help impart a subjective im- cousin and he, in a moment of inspira- noises” for the broken voices, coded mes- pression of authenticity to such mate- tion, covered his mouth with his hand sages, news, propaganda, disinformation rial. Put simply, if the voices recorded as he spoke. Silence! [6] and entertainment broadcasts that had been of a quality comparable to Wright’s experiences are extreme ver- fought for bandwidth with the incessant conventional studio recordings of sions of a capacity for projection that not vagaries of ionospheric propagation and speech, then nobody would have be- only manifests in all in most the turbulence of electrical and mag- lieved such rubbish for a minute—the people, able-bodied or otherwise, but netic storms. BBC radio monitors re- fog of noise that degrades these signals that also underpins the whole process of corded often-weak impulses onto primi- still seduces some people into suspend- perception. Sacks describes similar ex- tive Ediphone wax-cylinder “transcribers” ing disbelief. It seemed amazing that, in amples involving anosmia (loss or im- (magnetic tape recorders were not intro- assuming shared in the alleged ori- pairment of the sense of smell), blind- duced until the end of World War II), gin of these recordings, the disc’s pub- ness and the “ghost” or “phantom” limbs degrading the quality of discernible intel- lishers had the confidence to expect experienced by some amputees—the lat- ligence to the point at which the prob-

78 Banks, Rorschach Audio

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/09611210152780728 by guest on 02 October 2021 lems encountered converged with issues lated a new hypothesis and tested it until centrating too hard on the minutiae of familiar to photo-reconnaissance analysts it was either discarded or proven—“the unclear sentences can effectively make and restorers of antique paintings. The whole comes before the part.” “Rather deafness worse, with psychological stress necessity of analyzing voice recordings than pressing the data of sound into our factors exacerbating what were origi- over and over to detect faint traces of in- pet projection, we must discard the pro- nally only physical problems. These ex- telligence in a dense fog of noise is virtu- jection and start again” [16]. periences tend to support the conten- ally identical to some EVP research tech- Similarly, audiologists sometimes ad- tion of Michael Handel, a historian of niques, but not surprisingly, Assigned to vise those who begin to experience con- military intelligence and deception, that Listen makes no mention of any monitor versational problems owing to partial “another piece of advice . . . based on ever ascribing any signal to ghosts. deafness not to concentrate too hard on psychological tests, is not to put too While stressing that “this crucial fact hearing individual words, but instead to much confidence in conclusions drawn of Gestalt is not easy to ex- relax and interpret the overall flow from a very small body of consistent data plain in words,” Assigned to Listen dis- rather than the component detail of . . . because conclusions drawn from cusses ambiguities of acoustic percep- conversational speech. Evidently con- very small samples are highly unreliable” tion in some detail. Projection is the mechanism by which we read familiar shapes into clouds, or Fig. 1. Image from the flyer advertising the “Rorschach Audio” lecture, Royal Society of melodies into the monotonous rattle of British Sculptors, London, 29 May 2000. (© Joe Banks) Electronic Voice Phenomena a train. In a similar way we can read (EVP) recordings can be thought of as “Rorschach Audio”—the aural equivalent of Ror- speech into a medley of noises. Leo- schach inkblot tests. Responses to EVP recordings reveal something of the role that emo- nardo da Vinci advised young painters to tional factors can play in shaping perceptions. practice their imagination by looking at cracked walls and reading fantastic scenes into strange patches [13]. Similarly, Celia Woolf describes an ex- periment indicating that “some listeners perceive time varying sinusoidal tones as speech, with some listeners even report- ing the sentence they had ‘heard’” [14]. Assigned to Listen asserts that perception is there so that we should know when to stop projecting . . . a configuration of sounds evokes some vague association of words and we start projecting them into the medley. Then we shall either find that there are other sounds which stand in the way of this projection or we shall be happy until we pass to larger contexts. . . . if then the sense does not fit we must . . . start introducing some auxiliary hypothesis to save our projection from being con- futed by the remaining signposts of sound [15]. An important lesson of the monitors’ listening experience was that monitors should not be too dogmatic about “sav- ing” a troublesome interpretation. They should instead recognize the long-term importance of admitting failure when necessary and discarding incorrect hy- potheses, even if much effort had been invested in their formation. If a monitor thought he or she had finally made sense of an utterance swathed in noise, only to find its apparent meaning contradicted by the sounds that followed, they were not to try and force a square peg into a round hole out of sheer frustration. They should instead have relaxed, staying true to the axiom that tiny bursts of informa- tion are inherently easier to misinterpret than large ones, and trusted that their inability to interpret a larger sense indi- cated that the initial hypothesis had been wrong. They should then have formu-

Banks, Rorschach Audio 79

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/09611210152780728 by guest on 02 October 2021 [17]. Assigned to Listen states that “six or sions were sometimes very clear indeed. dency to drift away from their original ten syllables may answer to all sorts of Deutsch’s recording resembles the voice broadcast frequencies and spontane- projections, but thirty or forty are less manipulation experiments of the sound ously demodulate onto amplifying cir- likely to trick you” [18]—typical EVP re- artist Z’ev and M.A. Naeser and J.C. cuits, because all audio amplifiers and cordings often involve no more than Lilly’s “Repeating Word Effect” [24]. gain stages in radio circuits can function three or four. Handel’s advice concurs To my amazement, I discovered that as broadband Very Low Frequency with the basic principles of statistics and techniques identical to those devised by (VLF) receivers. Microphone cables of- experimental science. Handel also Deutsch are established methods for elic- ten function as VLF antennas, especially quotes Richards Heuer that iting EVP, known to EVP researchers as when unshielded and used outdoors, “Speech Synthesis,” “a phenomenon with the amplifiers they are attached to as a general rule, we are more often on the side of being too wedded to our es- which,” EVP researcher Raymond Cass functioning as VLF radios. Taxi transmis- tablished views and thus too quick to re- claims, “at the present time completely sions, emergency services, airband, mari- ject information that does not fit these evades physical explanation” [25]. time, military, short-, medium- and long- views, than on the side of being too It could be argued that EVP experi- wave commercial broadcasts, TV voice quick to reverse our beliefs. Thus, most of us would do well to be more open to menters are in a sense psychologists who channels, ham radio experiments, CB ra- evidence and ideas which are at vari- have misunderstood their own work; dio, bugging devices, conferencing sys- ance with our preconceptions [19]. however, while it seems clear that many tems, intercoms, baby intercoms/alarms EVP researchers are inadvertently repro- and analog mobile phones share a ten- In a 1996 Scientific American article ducing acoustic projection experiments, dency to emerge in the same VLF [20], Shawn Carlson described an ex- it cannot conversely be argued that the waveband, frequently producing stray periment designed by Diana Deutsch, a Deutsch illusion inadvertently repro- signals. These signals are well known to professor at the University of California, duces EVP. The diverse and evolving PA operators, people who install in-car San Diego. Deutsch’s experiment dem- meanings projected into the unvarying entertainment, and wildlife recording onstrates how acoustic projections can source material of Deutsch’s illusion engineers, who employ an arsenal of be explored in controlled conditions even by single subjects demonstrates electromagnetic shielding devices and [21]. Deutsch recorded the sound of a that this phenomenon is endogenous— techniques to eliminate this interfer- person speaking two neutral words and that it comes from inside the subject— ence—Faraday cages, electrically con- created a sequence in which the voice and subjective. Conversely, the pre- ductive tents, paints, coaxial cables, samples are reproduced in alternating emptive narration characteristic of EVP earth-lines, grounding, etc., and the ra- stereo channels. Played back over stereo demonstration recordings creates a dio-frequency “chokes” or line-filters in- loudspeakers at “dizzying” speeds, fast shared illusion of entirely false exogeny, stalled in PAs, car stereos and VLF natu- enough that the sounds remain recog- the sense that the meaning comes from ral-phenomena receivers. When stray nizable voices while scrambling seman- outside listeners’ imaginations, and signals are heard, they are often very tic content, the sequence produces what hence an illusion of objectivity. The garbled and therefore ideal raw material Carlson described as “a pattern that widespread use of conventional pre-re- for acoustic projection. Some EVP re- sounds like language, but [in which] the corded audio in EVP speech synthesis searchers have attempted to exclude in- words are not quite recognisable.” firmly establishes the subjective origin of terference using metal Faraday cages, Carlson continues, the imputed meanings. This argument which surround their experimental appa- within a few seconds of listening to this could be countered by pointing to the ratus, draining the external electromag- strange cacophony, my brain started observation of shared meanings attrib- netic field into the earth. However, most imposing a shifting order over the uted to specific EVP. However Assigned to EVP techniques require not the removal chaos as I began hearing distinct words and phrases. First came “blank, blank, Listen contends that “projections have a but the addition of extraneous noise to blank.” Then “time, time, time.” Then way of sticking to sound . . . it isn’t easy the basic input in order to improve the “no time,” “long pine” and “any time.” once you hear your train rattling success and clarity of recordings. Radio I was then astonished to hear a man’s Carmen to make it change to the Blue static, deliberately mis-tuned voice trans- voice spilling out of the right speaker Danube” [26]. The process by which missions (especially in languages not un- only. In a distinct Australian accent it said “take me, take me, take me” [22]. EVP experimenters create this illusory derstood by the researchers), audio oscil- objectivity is a subject we will return to lators, microphone feedback and tape The ink-blot test invented by Swiss shortly. To be fair, some EVP researchers recordings of foreign-language courses, psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach springs are aware of the phenomenon of acous- birdsong, fountains, hissing taps, rain, to mind (Fig. 1), and it is interesting to tic projection [27] and use jumping surf and wind are all used. Deliberately note that the single Rorschach test de- lock-groove vinyl records, looped mag- adding noise to improve EVP reception scribed by Henry Gleitman induced pro- netic tapes, computer audio samples, may seem counterintuitive, but it makes jections not only of “a head blowing static and other sources of repetitive, perfect sense in the light of previous ob- smoke,” but also of a “ghost” and an “an- pseudo-random noise as raw material servations. Investigator Raymond Cass gel” [23]—the last two themes strongly for inducing projections. What seems states, amongst other wilder hypotheses, resembling the emotional agenda that absent from their discussions of these that EVP voices “may be a mutant devel- underpins many examples of EVP. In my techniques is any suggestion that projec- opment of some remote corner of the own experience, it proved necessary to tion effects might be responsible not subconscious mind, or a transient by- listen to Deutsch’s recording many times only for EVP created in these ways, but product of the electromagnetic pollution before words began to emerge with crys- in fact for all manifestations of EVP. which now rings our planet,” implying tal clarity, but when subjectively “real”- To place these lessons in the context of that these explanations are mutually ex- sounding voices did start to form, the broadcast EVP, I note that signals from clusive [28]. My belief is that both inter- experience was striking, and the illu- across the radio spectrum have a ten- pretations are simultaneously true, but

80 Banks, Rorschach Audio

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/09611210152780728 by guest on 02 October 2021 that the mental process responsible is re- techniques employed by cardsharps, sis of Beauty, published in 1753 (which was ally not that remote. stage conjurers, pickpockets, magicians, the subject of an installation in the Noise A typical EVP process involves prompt- ventriloquists and military strategists, exhibition at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, ing the imagination by asking questions some of which involve ingenious uses of U.K., 2000). Hogarth wrote, of deceased “entities” out loud—in the sounds (although the most effective mis- Experience teaches us that the eye may manner of a Spiritualist séance—and re- direction technique employed by con- be subdued and forced into forming cording and then repeatedly analyzing jurers is, of course, the presence of the and disposing of objects even quite con- any signals that have emerged. Research- “glamorous assistant”). trary to what it would naturally see them, by the prejudgment of the mind ers allege the presence of polyglot speak- Interpreting this evidence en masse, from the better authority of feeling, or ers switching languages from one word the implication is that we are usually un- some other persuasive motive. But to the next, and enthusiasts evidently mindful of the extent to which projec- surely this extraordinary perversion of scour foreign dictionaries for meanings tions take place continuously, as an inher- the sight would not have been suffr’d, that concur with the rhythms of re- ent part of normal cognitive processing, did it not tend to great and necessary purposes, in rectifying some deficien- corded sequences. EVP researchers rather than as anomalous, occasional cies which it would otherwise be subject maintain that the hypothetical ghosts in- events. For instance, it is well known how to (tho’ we must own at the same time, vent neologisms and take liberties with difficult it is to spot errors of detail when that the mind itself may be so imposed grammar. In other words, we are asked one is familiar with the overall sense and upon as to make the eye see falsely as well as truly) for example, were it not to accept that entities having the intel- structure of a text. Novice readers spell for the controul over the sight, it is well lect to acquire a grasp of many languages out individual letters before interpreting known, that we should not only see have lost the ability to speak grammati- a written word, while the eyes of experi- things double, but upside down, as they cally or confine themselves to proper enced readers glide over text in high- are painted upon the retina, and as words. These interpretive techniques speed saccadic jumps. The degree of fa- each eye has distinct sight [32]. the widest possible parameters for the miliarity that comes from having written a This capacity for projection reaches its subjective attribution of meaning, particular text oneself makes it almost ultimate aesthetic realization in the an- thereby validating and accumulating impossible for authors to switch off the amorphoses of Salvador Dalí—his Para- “data” that would otherwise be disre- projecting mechanism and detect small noiac Visage—The Postcard Transformed, garded as meaningless. By asking ques- errors isolated in text of their own com- Head of a Woman in the Form of a Battle and tions of the world, researchers tell position—hence the necessity for proof- the particularly eerie Metamorphosis of themselves and other listeners how to in- reading as a profession separate to au- Hitler’s Face into a Moonlit Landscape and terpret sounds before any signals mani- thorship. Similarly, in acoustic cognition, Portrait of my Dead Brother [33]. The simi- fest, heavily influencing subsequent we actively project sense, interpreting larities between these last two paintings analyses. When compiling EVP - data as conglomerate chunks of meaning and themes in many EVP recordings do stration recordings the is to according to reflexive pattern-recogni- not seem accidental, since they are all reinforce this process by announcing tion techniques that skip from point to representations of personalities that typi- meanings before replaying examples, point, ignoring some detail in favor of cally haunt the unconscious mind. rendering the material useless for objec- fuzzier, more cost-effective mental strate- Jürgenson and Raudive believed they had tive analysis (note that similar prompts gies. Normally projections generate in- recorded deceased relatives, and existed on the cassettes from which The terpretations that concur with the spec- Raudive, also Adolf Hitler. Raymond Cass Ghost Orchid CD was compiled, but even trum of inputs from , taste, touch, recorded what he believed to be the voice though most were removed at the CD smell and memory. Therefore, we are of Heinrich Himmler, and EVP record- mastering stage, the prompts survive in only aware of the process of projection, ings are littered with alleged contacts the form of track titles). especially its imaginary, subjective as- with deceased friends, relatives, impor- George Miller described an experi- pect, when it occasionally generates im- tant historical figures and menacing ap- ment that demonstrates the strength of ages that disagree with the broader con- paritions of evil personalities whose this prompting effect: text—errors that we perceive as memories linger in the human imagina- perceptual illusions. tion. Dalí was quite rightly kicked out of David Bruce recorded a set of ordinary sentences and played them in the pres- This theory traces its origin back to the Surrealist movement because of his ence of noise so intense that the voice Hermann Helmholtz’s Treatise on Physi- obsession with Adolf Hitler, despite the was just audible but not intelligible. He ological Optics of 1866, as discussed by Ri- fact that he was being true to at least one told his listeners that these were sen- chard Gregory. Helmholtz categorized set of Surrealist imperatives—the preoc- tences on some general topic—sports, perceptions as unconscious inductive in- cupation with the murmurings of the sub- say—and asked them to repeat what they had heard. He then told them that ferences that, despite our heavy reliance conscious mind. A common aspect of they would hear more sentences on a on memory as well as direct sensation EVP listening is the impression that when different topic, which they were also to “come about with immutable certainty, first encountered (often accidentally, as a repeat. This was done several times. lightning speed and without the slight- result of tape-recording experiments) Each time the listeners repeated sen- tences appropriate to the topic an- est meditation” [31]. Gregory traces the stray voices are interpreted as speaking nounced in advance. When at the end evolution of these ideas to the discovery directly to the person who recorded of the experiment Bruce told them of the camera obscura and the concomi- them. The great Surrealist film-maker that they had heard the same record- tant realization that the images the Jean Cocteau exploited this in Orphée, ing every time—all he had changed was brain perceives are not the same as the suggesting that coded radio messages “in- the topic they were given—most listen- ers were unable to believe it [29,30]. sensations received by the eyes. spired by the BBC broadcasts of the occu- An important precursor to Helmholtz’s pation” were messages from the spirit The process of prompting has inter- ideas can be found in the text of the en- world. Orpheus asks Heurtebise, “Where esting parallels with the misdirection graver William Hogarth’s book The Analy- could they be coming from? No other sta-

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/09611210152780728 by guest on 02 October 2021 tion broadcasts them. I feel certain they Incidentally, Popper’s ideas seem to You should look at certain walls stained are addressed to me personally” [34]. have been the same working principles as with damp, or at stones of uneven colour. If you have to invent some Writing in magazine, were embedded in the circuits of the Co- backgrounds you will be able to see in Jürgen Heinzerling described EVP as lossus machines designed by the math- these the likeness of divine landscapes, “more complex perhaps than even the ematician Alan Turing to decipher the adorned with mountains, ruins, rocks, contradictory abyss that is ” and Enigma codes of World War II. In a re- woods, plains, hills and valleys in great variety: and then again you will see wrote of “field research often hampered cent TV dramatization of his life, the Tur- there battles and strange figures in vio- by a remarkable lack of critical judge- ing character spoke of building a “ma- lent action, expressions of faces and ment.” I freely admit that my opinion of chine which senses contradiction,” of clothes and an infinity of things which EVP is deeply negatively prejudiced. how “contradiction implies the solution” you will be able to reduce to their com- However, since Heinzerling rightly ar- and of “electricity” that “flows through plete and proper forms. In such walls the same thing happens as in the gues that the scientific community’s ig- the hypotheses,” in a brief but beautiful sound of bells, in whose stroke you may norance of EVP “indirectly supports the description of this interface between phi- find every named word you can imag- spreading of this cult, as potential fol- losophy and electrical engineering. Ac- ine [38]. lowers are confronted with convincing cording to Turing’s biographer Andrew demonstrations that are only ‘ex- Hodges, the Enigma code-breaking pro- While Diana Deutsch points out that plained’ by the quasi-religious musings cess “depended on the flow of logical im- “Leonardo may have been particularly of the convinced cultists” [35], what I plications from a false hypothesis”—a susceptible to such transformations,” hope to add to this debate is evidence concept that has interesting parallels because “perhaps this facility is associ- from outside this hermetic environ- with the recommendations described in ated with extreme creativity” [39], the ment, placing EVP in the context of vi- Assigned to Listen [37]. Since important phenomena Leonardo described are able explanatory material. My explana- philosophical ideas are not necessarily acoustic projections closely related to tory model posits the evolution of a either complex or obscure, and since Deutsch’s own experiments and to EVP. positive feedback loop, in which primor- they can be embedded in abstract au- What is most surprising is that while the dial about the afterlife are tomata as well as real-world engineering influence of Leonardo’s advice with re- sufficiently powerful to inspire the ac- designs, this digression suggests that such spect to figurative and abstract painting tive creation of EVP. So created, EVP re- ideas can just as easily be embedded in is probably inestimable, from the point cordings are recycled as evidence of a sound art. Lessons about scientific meth- of view of fine-art practice his final sen- factual basis on which the belief-system odology can be, if not learned, then re- tence seems to have been almost totally feeds and grows. As a form of psycho- verse-engineered by taking a critical in- ignored. logical test consistent with a concept of terest in styles of pseudo-scientific The psychologist Georgy Kepes char- “Rorschach Audio,” EVP recordings re- thought. In this case, the entire EVP be- acterized perception as an active, inher- veal something of the role that emo- lief system is a macroscopic false hypoth- ently creative process [40]; and I draw tional factors can play in shaping per- esis condensed from a larger body of mi- this article towards its conclusion by stat- ceptions and of the psychology of their croscopic false hypotheses. Scientific ing my agreement with what I believe is individual “creators.” Furthermore, EVP method itself can be regarded as depend- an idea both developed and shared by as a belief system reveals something of ing on a flow of logical implications from Helmholtz, Gombrich, Gregory and oth- the way in which people construct, au- the history of false hypotheses. ers, that at a fundamental neurological thenticate and share beliefs and the way This argument highlights the impor- level many of the faculties exercised in in which social groups gather around tance of openly admitting to “honest” basic forms of perception, in the formu- ideas. Mental health issues associated mistake—indeed this article echoes this lation of scientific hypotheses and in the with EVP and the subject of how public point, because much of its content was appreciation of art have a great deal in ignorance of scientific psychology has inspired by just such a mistake. When common. There is much we can usefully been manipulated by fraudulent compiling the material for the original learn from improving our knowledge of, researchers, and, with respect to related Ghost Orchid sleevenotes, I attributed ad- and much we can usefully achieve by “back-masking” phenomena in rock mu- vice about psychological projection to promoting understanding of these pro- sic, also by heavy metal groups and right- authors Olive Renier and Vladimir cesses. With respect to the role that pro- wing Christian activists, are beyond the Rubinstein, who were BBC monitors in jection plays in the appreciation of art, scope of this text. WW2. The origin of this advice was a pa- one must acknowledge that this is some- The advice offered to the BBC moni- per entitled “Some Axioms, Musings and times taken to ridiculous extremes. tors, that they should formulate, test and Hints on Hearing” written by their moni- Nonetheless, the process of reading then either accept, refine or discard toring supervisor—Ernst Gombrich. It “meanings” into artworks is simply an projected interpretations is similar to was only on discovering this mistake that extension of processes that are hard- ideas formulated by the philosopher I realized the extent to which investigat- wired into everyone’s perceptual mecha- Karl Popper [36]. Popper propounded ing this subject could also provide tools nisms. Exercising this faculty is the es- the usefulness not of absolute scientific for analyzing sound art. sence of artistic appreciation, as well as truths (whose fragile, idealized perfec- Psychological projection is discussed of appreciating sound art. tion carries with it stylistic echoes of ear- in detail in Gombrich’s classic Art and Il- Finally, the style and content of this lier, more primitive beliefs) but of self- lusion, in which he also mentions his ac- article may seem a harsh appraisal of refining feedback loops in which quaintance with Karl Popper in Vienna phenomena whose creative impetus we “working hypotheses” are progressively before World War II. Gombrich cites know full well stems from an instinct formulated, tested and either discarded Leonardo da Vinci’s famous advice to that we all share—the desire to triumph or accepted according to the rules of ex- novice painters, which is particularly in- over the tragedy of human mortality and perimental evidence. teresting because of its final sentence: to retain contact with lost friends. I then

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/09611210152780728 by guest on 02 October 2021 would like to suggest that the funda- 11. Primo Levi, The Periodic Table (London: Abacus, The Oxford Companion to the Mind (Oxford, U.K.: 1986) p. 55. Oxford Univ. Press, 1987) pp. 608–611; see also the mental message of any statement under- entry on Hermann Helmholtz, pp. 308–310. mining belief in life-after-death remains, 12. Olive Renier and Vladimir Rubinstein, Assigned to Listen (BBC, 1986) pp. 75–79. 32. William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, Joseph as always, the same; it is the most roman- Burke, ed. (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford Univ. Press, tic notion that humankind has ever con- 13. Renier and Rubinstein [12] p. 76. 1955) p. 119. ceived—seize the day. 14. Remez et al., Science 212, pp. 947–950, reported 33. Descharnes and Gilles Néret, Dalí (Co- in Woolf [8]. logne: Taschen, 1997). Acknowledgments 15. Renier and Rubinstein [12] p. 76. 34. Jean Cocteau, Cocteau, Carol Martin-Sperry, trans. (New York: Viking, 1972) pp. 101–191. Many thanks to Knut Aufermann, Diana Deutsch, 16. Renier and Rubinstein [12]. Ernst Gombrich, Caroline Grigson, Mike Harding, 35. Jürgen Heinzerling, “All about EVP,” Fortean 17. Michael Handel, “Intelligence and Deception,” Chris Patten, Ed Pinsent and Celia Woolf for feed- Times No. 104 (November 1997) pp. 26–30. This ar- in John Gooch and Amos Perlmutter, eds., Military back and information, to Nic Collins, Colette Bailey ticle contains much specific information on EVP Deception and Strategic Surprise (London: Frank Cass, at the Royal Society of British Sculptors and to Phil for which space is not available here. Hallett of the Sonic Arts Network. Rorschach Audio is 1982) p. 138. 36. Popper’s ideas are discussed in this context in dedicated to Geoffrey Grigson (1905–1985), poet, 18. Renier and Rubinstein [12]. naturalist and ether warrior. E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion (London: Phaidon, 19. Richards J. Heuer, Jr., “Strategic Deception: A 1959) pp. 271–272. Psychological Perspective,” International Studies 37. Andrew Hodges, Turing (London: Phoenix, References and Notes Quarterly 25, No. 2, 294–327 (June 1981); quoted in 1997) p. 26; for a more detailed explanation of this Handel [17]. 1. Joe Banks, The Ghost Orchid, Ash International, idea see also Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The PARC CD1 (1999). 20. Shawn Carlson, “Dissecting the Brain with Enigma (London: Vintage, 1992) pp. 179–183. Sound,” Scientific American (December 1996) pp. 2. Mike Harding and C.M. von Hausswolff, “1485.0 38. Gombrich [36]. kHz,” Cabinet magazine, Issue 1 (Winter 2000) pp. 80–83. 39. Diana Deutsch, correspondence, 17 August 56–61, citing Friedrich Jürgenson, Rösterna Från 21. Diana Deutsch, Musical Illusions and Paradoxes, 2000. Rymden (Stockholm: Saxon and Linström Fürlag, Philomel Records CD 001 (La Jolla, CA, 1995) tracks 1964); Friedrich Jürgenson, Sprechfunk mit 5, 6. The CD can be ordered from Philomel Records 40. Georgy Kepes, Language of Vision (Chicago: Paul Verstorbenen (Freiburg, Germany: Hermann Bauer Inc., PO Box 12189, La Jolla, CA 92039-2189, U.S.A. Verlag, 1967); Friedrich Jürgenson, Radio och Theobald, 1947); quoted in Robert Wenger, “Visual Art, Archaeology and Gestalt,” Leonardo 30, No. 1, Mikrofonkontakt med de Döda (Uppsala, Sweden: 22. Carlson [20] p. 83. Nybloms, 1968). 35–46 (1997). 23. Henry Gleitman, “Perceptual Hypotheses,” in 3. Konstantin Raudive, Breakthrough (New York: Psychology (London: Norton, 1986) pp. 203–204. Taplinger, 1971). 24. M.A. Naeser and J.C. Lilly, “Repeating Word Ef- 4. These recordings were originally released with fect,” Journal of Speech and Hearing Research (1971). Manuscript received 31 December 2000. Breakthrough and are reproduced in full on The Ghost Orchid [1]. 25. Raymond Cass, narration transcribed from original cassettes used for compiling The Ghost Or- Joe Banks is a sound-installation and record- 5. Oliver Sacks, Seeing Voices (London: Picador, chid [1]. 1991) pp. 5–6. ing artist who works under the brand name 26. Renier and Rubinstein [12]. Disinformation. Disinformation projects have 6. David Wright, Deafness (New York: Stein and Day, involved radio noise from photographic flash 1969); quoted in Sacks [5] pp. 5–6. 27. Leonard Lander, “Audiomancy,” in Beyond the Dial (Wasa: Trapezohedron Press, 2000). guns and welding equipment, electrical and 7. Helen Phillips, “They Do It with Mirrors,” New solar-magnetic storms, alternating current, Scientist (17 June 2000). 28. Cass [25]. electromagnets, domestic appliances, indus- 8. Celia Woolf, correspondence, 8 December 2000. 29. George Miller, The Psychology of Communication trial and information technology hardware, (London: Penguin, 1967) pp. 79–80. 9. H. McGurk and J. MacDonald, “Hearing Lips visual documentation of obsolete British mili- and Seeing Voices,” Nature, No. 264 (1997) pp. 30. David Bruce, “Effects of Context on the Intelli- tary “sound mirrors” and studies of various 746–748. gibility of Heard Speech,” quoted in Colin Cherry, aspects of aesthetics, morphology and acoustic ed., Information Theory (London: Butterworths, perception. Details of his ”Disinformation” 10. Jens Bernsen, Lydd i Design (Copenhagen: 1956) pp. 245–252. Delta Akustik & Vibration/Dansk Design Centre, sound-art project can be found at .

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