Rorschach Audio: Ghost Voices and Perceptual Creativity Joe Banks ABSTRACT The author considers re- search into allegedly supernatural “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 perception. 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 belief 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 skepticism and belief that believe that their recordings constitute physical evidence of exposing the central fallacy involved in EVP is little more contact with the afterlife. 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 ghosts. 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 Spiritualism. 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 Pope Pius XII, found human 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 familiar 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: <[email protected]>. © 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’ perceptions were strongly influenced by ondary hypothesis only became appar- discusses the subject of acoustic projec- the visual information provided by the ent 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 sense 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 mind 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.