Rorschach Audio: Ghost Voices and Perceptual Creativity by Joe Banks

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Sometimes we see a cloud that’s dragonish; A vapour sometime like a bear or lion,A tower’d citadel, a pendant rock,A forked mountain, or blue promontory With trees upon’t, that nod unto the world,And mock our eyes with air.

—Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

It is the story of the signaller who misheard the urgent message “Send reinforcements, am going to advance” as “Send three and four pence, am going to a dance.”

—E.H. Gombrich, “Some Axioms, Musings andHints on Hearing”

The title of this article is taken from a text written for thesleevenotes of a compact disc called The Ghost Orchid , sub-titled An Introduction to Electronic Voice Phenomena [1]. Forthose who may be unaware, Electronic Voice Phenomena

(EVP) are a class of allegedly mysterious vocal recordings,and while several explanations have been offered to explaintheir origin, the overwhelming majority of EVP researchersbelieve that their recordings constitute physical evidence of contact with the afterlife. In other words, most EVP research-ers believe that it is possible, using various radio and electri-cal engineering techniques, to record the voices of ghosts.

Edison and Marconi both believed that radio technology might enable contact with the afterlife—an idea that fit wellwithin the context of Victorian enthusiasm for various formsof Spiritualism. However, the EVP movement proper beganin 1957, when Friedrich Jürgenson, an artist who had previ-ously painted portraits of Pope Pius XII, found human voices

intruding on recordings he had made of his own voice andthen, in 1959, of birdsong. Convinced that these recordingsrepresented communications from alien life-forms and, forinstance, his deceased mother, Jürgenson temporarily aban-doned his artistic career to concentrate on these experimentsand publicize his findings. In 1960, he started recording simi-lar voices with radio equipment, and published the booksRösterna Från Rymden in 1964, Sprechfunk mit Verstorbenen in1967, and Radio och Mikrofonkontakt med de Döda in 1968. From1968 onwards, Jürgenson cemented an increasingly close re-lationship with the Vatican, making a number of documen-tary films about religious themes and executing portrait com-missions for Pope Paul VI [2]. Jürgenson’s publications, and

particularly the idea that he had amassed evidence provingthe existence of an afterlife, attracted considerable attention.Konstantin Raudive carried on the cause of EVP research, al-

publication of his book Break- through in 1971 [3], Raudive be-came the leading light in an in-ternational circle of EVPenthusiasts. Today the movement that Jürgenson and Raudive ef-fectively founded has evolvedinto a widespread activity of suchcomplexity that it would be fool-hardy for any author to attempt atruly comprehensive survey. Thepurpose of this article is not to at-tempt that daunting task but toaddress the major, salient issuesthat recur throughout EVP research and that in fact under-pin the entire belief system.

This article argues that EVP represents a classic example of a supposedly “strange” phenomenon for which there is theproverbial “perfectly rational explanation” and, perhaps

somewhat counterintuitively, also suggest that a critical dis-cussion of EVP can yet be a rewarding and valuable exercise.This is because despite my initial skepticism and belief that exposing the central fallacy involved in EVP is little morethan a statement of the obvious, I now believe that it can alsobe shown that EVP recordings evidence psychological phe-nomena that are inherently interesting and important. Simi-larly, studying how this evidence has been turned into a com-plex, often entrenched belief system is of genuineanthropological interest, not least because the process entailsthe use of electronic technology to help construct, rationalizeand validate a fundamentally anti-scientific belief system.

The material presented will also be used to support a sec-

ondary hypothesis—that an understanding of the processesinvolved in EVP may also contribute to theories of art criti-cism, both in general terms and with particular reference tomusic and sound art. It has to be said that the ideas on whichthese hypotheses are based are not innovative, that they arealready embedded in mainstream critical theory and that they trace direct descent from an individual generally recog-nized as the most important figure in the history of Westernart. What is most surprising about these ideas is not their ex-istence, but the extent to which they, like sound art in gen-eral, have previously been ignored. Many of the relevant psy-chological theories are not merely familiar to, but were in fact pioneered by, art historians and critics (several of whom have

Rorschach Audio: Ghost Voicesand Perceptual Creativity

Joe Banks

Joe Banks (sound artist), 9 Cranfield House, 97 Southampton Row, London WC1B4HH U K E il <j 2b k @ h k>

A B S T R A C T

The author considers re-search into allegedly supernatural“Electronic Voice Phenomena”(EVP) in light of both anecdotal re-ports and formal experimentalstudies of related aspects of hu-man auditory perception. He of-fers the primary hypothesis thatan understanding of the relevantaspects of psychoacoustics pro-vides a complete explanation formost EVP recordings, and a sec-ondary hypothesis that an in-formed understanding of theseprocesses is as relevant to theemergent field of sound art asstudies of optical illusions havebeen to the study of visual art.



been major contributors to Leonardo ).However, it still seems to be the case that ideas that were developed primarily toexplain certain aspects of visual percep-tion and enhance the appreciation of vi-sual art also have great relevance to is-sues of acoustic perception—and that

this aspect of their interpretation seemsto have received relatively scant atten-tion. While a body of anecdotal and ex-perimental evidence does exist connect-ing visual art theories to ideas about acoustic perception, to the best of my knowledge this material is dispersed andhas neither been grouped together pre-

viously nor applied to practical issuessuch as assessing EVP and sound art.

It should be admitted that this sec-ondary hypothesis only became appar-ent after I noticed a fairly serious mis-take in the text of the Ghost Orchid sleevenotes, a mistake that I return tobelow.

My first exposure to examples of EVP was as a teenager, when I heard aflexidisc of voices recorded by Raudive,published in 1982 by The Unexplained magazine [4]. The style of these record-ings is typical of EVP—a narrator intro-duces “contacts” that manifest as brief bursts of distorted voice accompaniedby very high levels of radio interference

and what appears to be machine noisepicked up from the recording apparatusby a microphone. The examples are re-peated several times, and the ambienceof the recordings is menacing. My initialreaction to hearing this material wasone of sheer disbelief, since, in additionto being instinctively skeptical about any claims to the existence of the supernatu-ral, I saw that outright forgery of suchmaterial would be absolute child’s play.The most primitive tape-recording andoverdubbing techniques could easily

produce phenomena of this nature—not least because the more basic thetechnology used, and the lower the sig-nal-to-noise ratio, the more the finishedproduct would resonate with an aura of menacing low-fidelity mystique, whichcould even help impart a subjective im-pression of authenticity to such mate-rial. Put simply, if the voices recordedhad been of a quality comparable toconventional studio recordings of speech, then nobody would have be-lieved such rubbish for a minute—thefog of noise that degrades these signalsstill seduces some people into suspend-i g di b li f It d i g th t i

such a degree of gullibility on behalf of their audience. I will be perfectly frankin saying that the way in which this mate-rial was interpreted would be funny

were it not so tragic. However, I will ex-plain why I now believe that some EVPresearchers, although misguided, may

have genuine belief in their work, andthat many of the signals they have re-corded are not consciously faked, but are instead commonplace material phe-nomena whose origin and nature they have misunderstood.

The hypothesis that EVP could be de-scribed as authentic phenomena, andthat explanations exist to account forhow they arise, is drawn from a numberof sources. The neurologist Oliver Sacksdiscusses the subject of acoustic projec-tion in his book Seeing Voices [5], quotingdescriptions of the so-called “eye music”and “phantasmal voices” from the poet David Wright’s autobiographical work

Deafness . Having lost his sense of hearingin childhood, after having l earned tospeak, Wright found himself able to ex-perience r econstructed sound-imagesprojected by his mind into his perceivedenvironment as an extension of visualcues. Lip-reading triggered actual voicesinside Wright’s mind, despite the fact that no environmental information was

being provided by his ears. The project-ing effect was so strong that Wright evenreported hearing ghost-sounds conjuredby the motion of trees in wind. Wright explained,

my deafness was made more difficult toperceive because from the very first my eyes had unconsciously begun to trans-late motion into sound. My motherspent most of the day beside me and Iunderstood everything she said. Why not? Without knowing it I had beenreading her mouth all my life. Whenshe spoke I seemed to hear her voice. It

was an illusion which persisted even af-ter I knew i t was an illusion. My father,my cousin, everyone I had known re-tained phantasmal voices. That thesesounds were imaginary, the projectionsof habit and memory, did not comehome to me until I had left the hospi-tal. One day I was talking with my cousin and he, in a moment of inspira-tion, covered his mouth with his handas he spoke. Silence! [6]

Wright’s experiences are extreme ver-sions of a capacity for projection that not only manifests in all senses in most people, able-bodied or otherwise, but that also underpins the whole process of perception. Sacks describes similar ex-amples involving anosmia (loss or im

ter being the subject of fascinating re-search by Vilayanur Ramachandran, di-rector of the Center for Brain and Cog-nition at the University of California, SanDiego [7].

David Wright’s faculties may soundextraordinary, but Celia Woolf, a speech

and language therapist at the Depart-ment of Phonetics and Linguistics at University College, London, has de-scribed experiments suggesting that lip-reading is an important part of normalspeech perception:

The McGurk effect refers to the resultsof a study in which subjects were askedto watch video recordings of a face say-ing monosyllables, and report what they had heard. It was found that subjects’perceptions were strongly influenced by the visual information provided by theface. So when the video was dubbed(the face says “ga” but the voice says“ba”) listeners reported hearing the syl-lable “da” which is acoustically midway between “ga” and “ba” [8,9].

The effect then is that when the eyes areclosed the sound heard is different from

when they are open [10]. Among the wartime experiences re-

lated in his autobiographical novel ThePeriodic Table, Primo Levi recalled a labo-ratory test apparatus called a hetero-dyne, which, under certain conditions,functioned as a radio receiver. He de-scribed an “intricate universe of mysteri-ous messages, morse tickings, modu-lated hisses, deformed, mangled human

voices which pronounced sentences inincomprehensible languages or in code. . . messages of death . . . the radio-phonic Babel of war” [11].

It is perhaps not surprising that studiesof this confused miasma of impulses alsoprovide useful clues to unraveling theenigma of EVP. Olive Renier and

Vladimir Rubinstein wrote in their book

Assigned to Listen that “the mechanism of projection plays a major part in hearing”[12]. Assigned to Listen describes the“ether war” fought by BBC foreign-lan-guage radio monitors, who scanned theSecond World War’s “remorseless sea of noises” for the broken voices, coded mes-sages, news, propaganda, disinformationand entertainment broadcasts that fought for bandwidth with the incessant

vagaries of ionospheric propagation andthe turbulence of electrical and mag-netic storms. BBC radio monitors re-corded often-weak impulses onto primi-tive Ediphone wax-cylinder “transcribers”(magnetic tape recorders were not intro



lems encountered converged with issuesfamiliar to photo-reconnaissance analystsand restorers of antique paintings. Thenecessity of analyzing voice recordingsover and over to detect faint traces of in-telligence in a dense fog of noise is virtu-ally identical to some EVP research tech-

niques, but not surprisingly, Assigned to Listen makes no mention of any monitorever ascribing any signal to ghosts.

While stressing that “this crucial fact of Gestalt psychology is not easy to ex-plain in words,” Assigned to Listen dis-cusses ambiguities of acoustic percep-tion in some detail.

Projection is the mechanism by which weread familiar shapes into clouds, ormelodies into the monotonous rattle of a train. In a similar way we can readspeech into a medley of noises. Leo-

nardo da Vinci advised young painters topractice their imagination by looking at cracked walls and reading fantasticscenes into strange patches [13].

Similarly, Celia Woolf describes an ex-periment indicating that “some listenersperceive time varying sinusoidal tones asspeech, with some listeners even report-ing the sentence they had ‘heard’” [14].Assigned to Listen asserts that

perception is there so that we shouldknow when to stop projecting . . . aconfiguration of sounds evokes some

vague association of words and we start projecting them into the medley. Then we shall either find that there are othersounds which stand in the way of thisprojection or we shall be happy until

we pass to larger contexts. . . . if thenthe sense does not fit we must . . . start introducing some auxiliary hypothesisto save our projection from being con-futed by the remaining signposts of sound [15].

An important lesson of the monitors’listening experience was that monitorsshould not be too dogmatic about “sav-

ing” a troublesome interpretation. They should instead recognize the long-termimportance of admitting failure whennecessary and discarding incorrect hy-potheses, even if much effort had beeninvested in their formation. If a monitorthought he or she had finally made senseof an utterance swathed in noise, only tofind its apparent meaning contradictedby the sounds that followed, they werenot to try and force a square peg into around hole out of sheer frustration. They should instead have relaxed, staying trueto the axiom that tiny bursts of informa-tion are inherently easier to misinterpret than large ones and trusted that their

lated a new hypothesis and tested it untilit was either discarded or proven—“the

whole comes before the part.” “Ratherthan pressing the data of sound into ourpet projection, we must discard the pro-

jection and start again” [16].Similarly, audiologists sometimes ad-

vise those who begin to experience conversational problems owing to partialdeafness not to concentrate too hard onhearing individual words, but instead torelax and interpret the overall flowrather than the component detail of conversational speech. Evidently con-

centrating too hard on the minutiae of unclear sentences can effectively makedeafness worse, with psychological stressfactors exacerbating what were origi-nally only physical problems. These ex-periences tend to support the conten-tion of Michael Handel, a historian of

military intelligence and deception, that “another piece of advice . . . based onpsychological tests, is not to put toomuch confidence in conclusions drawnfrom a very small body of consistent data. . . because conclusions drawn from

very small samples are highly unreliable”

Fig. 1. Image from the flyer advertising the “Rorschach Audio” lecture, Royal Society of British Sculptors, London, 29 May 2000. (© Joe Banks) Electronic Voice Phenomena(EVP) recordings can be thought of as “Rorschach Audio”—the aural equivalent of Ror-schach inkblot tests. Responses to EVP recordings reveal something of the role that emo-

tional factors can play in shaping perceptions.



[17]. Assigned to Listen states that “six orten syllables may answer to all sorts of projections, but thirty or forty are lesslikely to trick you” [18]—typical EVP re-cordings often involve no more thanthree or four. Handel’s advice concurs

with the basic principles of statistics and

experimental science. Handel alsoquotes Richards Heuer that

as a general rule, we are more often onthe side of being too wedded to our es-tablished views and thus too quick to re-

ject information that does not fit these views, than on the side of being tooquick to reverse our beliefs. Thus, most of us would do well to be more open toevidence and ideas which are at vari-ance with our preconceptions [19].

In a 1996 Scientific American article[20], Shawn Carlson described an ex-

periment designed by Diana Deutsch, aprofessor at the University of California,San Diego. Deutsch’s experiment dem-onstrates how acoustic projections canbe explored in controlled conditions[21]. Deutsch recorded the sound of aperson speaking two neutral words andcreated a sequence in which the voicesamples are reproduced in alternatingstereo channels. Played back over stereoloudspeakers at “dizzying” speeds, fast enough that the sounds remain recog-nizable voices while scrambling seman-tic content, the sequence produces what Carlson described as “a pattern that sounds like language, but [in which] the

words are not quite recognisable.”Carlson continues,

within a few seconds of listening to thisstrange cacophony, my brain startedimposing a shifting order over thechaos as I began hearing distinct wordsand phrases. First came “blank, blank,blank.” Then “time, time, time.” Then“no time,” “long pine” and “any time.”I was then astonished to hear a man’s

voice spilling out of the right speakeronly. In a distinct Australian accent it said “take me, take me, take me” [22].

The ink-blot test invented by Swisspsychiatrist Hermann Rorschach springsto mind (Fig. 1), and it is interesting tonote that the single Rorschach test de-scribed by Henry Gleitman induced pro-

jections not only of “a head blowingsmoke,” but also of a “ghost” and an “an-gel” [23]—the last two themes strongly resembling the emotional agenda that underpins many examples of EVP. In my own experience, it proved necessary tolisten to Deutsch’s recording many timesbefore words began to emerge with crys

sions were sometimes very clear indeed.Deutsch’s recording resembles the voicemanipulation experiments of the soundartist Saul Z’ev and M.A. Naeser and J.C.Lilly’s “Repeating Word Effect” [24].

To my amazement, I discovered that techniques identical to those devised by

Deutsch are established methods for elic-iting EVP, known to EVP researchers as“Speech Synthesis,” “a phenomenon

which,” EVP researcher Raymond Cassclaims, “at the present time completely evades physical explanation” [25].

It could be argued that EVP experi-menters are in a sense psychologists whohave misunderstood their own work;however, while it seems clear that many EVP researchers are inadvertently repro-ducing acoustic projection experiments,it cannot conversely be argued that theDeutsch illusion inadvertently repro-duces EVP. The diverse and evolvingmeanings projected into the unvaryingsource material of Deutsch’s illusioneven by single subjects demonstratesthat this phenomenon is endogenous—that it comes from inside the subject—and subjective. Conversely, the pre-emptive narration characteristic of EVPdemonstration recordings creates ashared illusion of entirely false exogeny,the sense that the meaning comes from

outside listeners’ imaginations, andhence an illusion of objectivity. The widespread use of conventional pre-re-corded audio in EVP speech synthesisfirmly establishes the subjective origin of the imputed meanings. This argument could be countered by pointing to theobservation of shared meanings attrib-uted to specific EVP. However Assigned to Listen contends that “projections have a

way of sticking to sound . . . it isn’t easy once you hear your train rattlingCarmen to make it change to the Blue

Danube” [26]. The process by whichEVP experimenters create this illusory objectivity is a subject we will return toshortly. To be fair, some EVP researchersare aware of the phenomenon of acous-tic projection [27] and use jumpinglock-groove vinyl records, looped mag-netic tapes, computer audio samples,static and other sources of repetitive,pseudo-random noise as raw materialfor inducing projections. What seemsabsent from their discussions of thesetechniques is any suggestion that projec-tion effects might be r esponsible not only for EVP created in these ways, but i f t f ll if t ti f EVP

dency to drift away from their originalbroadcast frequencies and spontane-ously demodulate onto amplifying cir-cuits, because all audio amplifiers andgain stages in radio circuits can functionas broadband Very Low Frequency (VLF) receivers. Microphone cables of-

ten function as VLF antennas, especially when unshielded and used outdoors, with the amplifiers they are attached tofunctioning as VLF radios. Taxi transmis-sions, emergency services, airband, mari-time, military, short-, medium- and long-

wave commercial broadcasts, TV voicechannels, ham radio experiments, CB ra-dio, bugging devices, conferencing sys-tems, intercoms, baby intercoms/alarmsand analog mobile phones share a ten-dency to emerge in the same VLF

waveband, frequently producing stray signals. These signals are well known toPA operators, people who install in-carentertainment, and wildlife recordingengineers, who employ an arsenal of electromagnetic shielding devices andtechniques to eliminate this interfer-ence—Faraday cages, electrically con-ductive tents, paints, coaxial cables,earth-lines, grounding, etc., and the ra-dio-frequency “chokes” or line-filters in-stalled in PAs, car stereos and VLF natu-ral-phenomena receivers. When stray

signals are heard, they are often very garbled and therefore ideal raw materialfor acoustic projection. Some EVP re-searchers have attempted to exclude in-terference using metal Faraday cages,

which surround their experimental appa-ratus, draining the external electromag-netic field into the earth. However, most EVP techniques require not the removalbut the addition of extraneous noise tothe basic input in order to improve thesuccess and clarity of recordings. Radiostatic, deliberately mis-tuned voice trans-

missions (especially in languages not un-derstood by the researchers), audio oscil-lators, microphone feedback and taperecordings of foreign-language courses,birdsong, fountains, hissing taps, rain,surf and wind are all used. Deliberately adding noise to improve EVP receptionmay seem counterintuitive, but it makesperfect sense in the light of previous ob-servations. Investigator Raymond Cassstates, amongst other wilder hypotheses,that EVP voices “may be a mutant devel-opment of some remote corner of thesubconscious mind, or a transient by-product of the electromagnetic pollution

hi h i g l t ” i l i g



that the mental process responsible is re-ally not that remote.

A typical EVP process involves prompt-ing the imagination by asking questionsof deceased “entities” out loud—in themanner of a Spiritualist séance—and re-cording and then repeatedly analyzing

any signals that have emerged. Research-ers allege the presence of polyglot speak-ers switching languages from one wordto the next, and enthusiasts evidently scour foreign dictionaries for meaningsthat concur with the rhythms of re-corded sequences. EVP researchersmaintain that the hypothetical ghosts in-

vent neologisms and take liberties withgrammar. In other words, we are askedto accept that entities having the intel-lect to acquire a grasp of many languageshave lost the ability to speak grammati-cally or confine themselves to proper

words. These interpretive techniques set the widest possible parameters for thesubjective attribution of meaning,thereby validating and accumulating“data” that would otherwise be disre-garded as meaningless. By asking ques-tions of the spirit world, researchers tellthemselves and other listeners how to in-terpret sounds before any signals mani-fest, heavily influencing subsequent analyses. When compiling EVP demon-

stration recordings the convention is toreinforce this process by announcingmeanings before replaying examples,rendering the material useless for objec-tive analysis (note that similar promptsexisted on the cassettes from which The Ghost Orchid CD was compiled, but eventhough most were removed at the CDmastering stage, the prompts survive inthe form of track titles).

George Miller described an experi-ment that demonstrates the strength of this prompting effect:

David Bruce recorded a set of ordinary sentences and played them in the pres-ence of noise so intense that the voice

was just audible but not intelligible. Hetold his listeners that these were sen-tences on some general topic—sports,say—and asked them to repeat what they had heard. He then told them that they would hear more sentences on adifferent topic, which they were also torepeat. This was done several times.Each time the listeners repeated sen-tences appropriate to the topic an-nounced in advance. When at the endof the experiment Bruce told themthat they had heard the same record-ing every time—all he had changed wasthe topic they were given—most listen-

techniques employed by cardsharps,stage conjurers, pickpockets, magicians,

ventriloquists and military strategists,some of which involve ingenious uses of sounds (although the most effective mis-direction technique employed by con-

jurers is, of course, the presence of the

“glamorous assistant”).Interpreting this evidence en masse,the implication is that we are usually un-mindful of the extent to which projec-tions take place continuously, as an inher-ent part of normal cognitive processing,rather than as anomalous, occasionalevents. For instance, it is well known howdifficult it is to spot errors of detail whenone is familiar with the overall sense andstructure of a text. Novice readers spellout individual letters before interpretinga written word, while the eyes of experi-enced readers glide over text in high-speed saccadic jumps. The degree of fa-miliarity that comes from having written aparticular text oneself makes it almost impossible for authors to switch off theprojecting mechanism and detect smallerrors isolated in text of their own com-position—hence the necessity for proof-reading as a profession separate to au-thorship. Similarly, in acoustic cognition,

we actively project sense, interpretingdata as conglomerate chunks of meaning

according to reflexive pattern-recogni-tion techniques that skip from point topoint, ignoring some detail in favor of fuzzier, more cost-effective mental strate-gies. Normally projections generate in-terpretations that concur with the spec-trum of inputs from vision, taste, touch,smell and memory. Therefore, we areonly aware of the process of projection,especially its imaginary, subjective as-pect, when it occasionally generates im-ages that disagree with the broader con-text—errors that we perceive as

perceptual illusions.This theory traces its origin back to

Hermann Helmholtz’s Treatise on Physi- ological Optics of 1866, as discussed by Ri-chard Gregory. Helmholtz categorizedperceptions as unconscious inductive in-ferences that, despite our heavy relianceon memory as well as direct sensation“come about with immutable certainty,lightning speed and without the slight-est meditation” [31]. Gregory traces theevolution of these ideas to the discovery of the camera obscura and the concomi-tant realization that the images thebrain perceives are not the same as the

ti i d b th

sis of Beauty , published in 1753 (which wasthe subject of an installation in the Noiseexhibition at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge,U.K., 2000). Hogarth wrote,

Experience teaches us that the eye may be subdued and forced into formingand disposing of objects even quite con-trary to what it would naturally seethem, by the prejudgment of the mindfrom the better authority of feeling, orsome other persuasive motive. But surely this extraordinary perversion of the sight would not have been suffr’d,did it not tend to great and necessary purposes, in rectifying some deficien-cies which it would otherwise be subject to (tho’ we must own at the same time,that the mind itself may be so imposedupon as to make the eye see falsely as

well as truly) for example, were it not for the controul over the sight, it is wellknown, that we should not only seethings double, but upside down, as they are painted upon the retina, and aseach eye has distinct sight [32].

This capacity for projection reaches itsultimate aesthetic realization in the an-amorphoses of Salvador Dalí—his Para-noiac Visage—The Postcard TransformedHead of a Woman in the Form of a Battle andthe particularly eerie Metamorphosis oHitler’s Face into a Moonlit Landscape andPortrait of my Dead Brother [33]. The simi-larities between these last two paintingsand themes in many EVP recordings do

not seem accidental, since they are allrepresentations of personalities that typi-cally haunt the unconscious mind.

Jürgenson and Raudive believed they hadrecorded deceased relatives, andRaudive, also Adolf Hitler. Raymond Cassrecorded what he believed to be the voiceof Heinrich Himmler, and EVP record-ings are littered with alleged contacts

with deceased friends, relatives, impor-tant historical figures and menacing ap-paritions of evil personalities whosememories linger in the human imagina-

tion. Dalí was quite rightly kicked out of the Surrealist movement because of hisobsession with Adolf Hitler, despite thefact that he was being true to at least oneset of Surrealist imperatives—the preoc-cupation with the murmurings of the sub-conscious mind. A common aspect of EVP listening is the impression that whenfirst encountered (often accidentally, as aresult of tape-recording experiments)stray voices are interpreted as speakingdirectly to the person who recordedthem. The great Surrealist film-maker

Jean Cocteau exploited this in Orphéesuggesting that coded radio messages “in-

i d b th BBC b d t f th



tion broadcasts them. I feel certain they are addressed to me personally” [34].

Writing i n Fortean Times magazine, Jürgen Heinzerling described EVP as“more complex perhaps than even thecontradictory abyss that is ufology” and

wrote of “field research often hampered

by a remarkable lack of critical judge-ment.” I freely admit that my opinion of EVP is deeply negatively prejudiced.However, since Heinzerling rightly ar-gues that the scientific community’s ig-norance of EVP “indirectly supports thespreading of this cult, as potential fol-lowers are confronted with convincingdemonstrations that are only ‘ex-plained’ by the quasi-religious musingsof the convinced cultists” [35], what Ihope to add to this debate is evidencefrom outside this hermetic environ-ment, placing EVP in the context of vi-able explanatory material. My explana-tory model posits the evolution of apositive feedback loop, in which primor-dial superstitions about the afterlife aresufficiently powerful to inspire the ac-tive creation of EVP. So created, EVP re-cordings are recycled as evidence of afactual basis on which the belief-systemfeeds and grows. As a form of psycho-logical test consistent with a concept of “Rorschach Audio,” EVP recordings re-

veal something of the role that emo-tional factors can play in shaping per-ceptions and of the psychology of theirindividual “creators.” Furthermore, EVPas a belief system reveals something of the way in which people construct, au-thenticate and share beliefs and the way in which social groups gather aroundideas. Mental health issues associated

with EVP and the subject of how publicignorance of scientific psychology hasbeen manipulated by fraudulent psychicresearchers, and, with respect to related

“back-masking” phenomena in rock mu-sic, also by heavy metal groups and right-

wing Christian activists, are beyond thescope of this text.

The advice offered to the BBC moni-tors, that they should formulate, test andthen either accept, refine or discardprojected interpretations is similar toideas formulated by the philosopherKarl Popper [36]. Popper propoundedthe usefulness not of absolute scientifictruths (whose fragile, idealized perfec-tion carries with it stylistic echoes of ear-lier, more primitive beliefs) but of self-refining feedback loops in which“ ki g h th ” g i l

Incidentally, Popper’s ideas seem tohave been the same working principles as

were embedded in the circuits of the Co-lossus machines designed by the math-ematician Alan Turing to decipher theEnigma codes of World War II. In a re-cent TV dramatization of his life, the Tur-

ing character spoke of building a “ma-chine which senses contradiction,” of how “contradiction implies the solution”and of “electricity” that “flows throughthe hypotheses,” in a brief but beautifuldescription of this interface between phi-losophy and electrical engineering. Ac-cording to Turing’s biographer AndrewHodges, the Enigma code-breaking pro-cess “depended on the flow of logical im-plications from a false hypothesis”—aconcept that has int eresting parallels

with the recommendations described inAssigned to Listen [37]. Since important philosophical ideas are not necessarily either complex or obscure, and sincethey can be embedded in abstract au-tomata as well as real-world engineeringdesigns, this digression suggests that suchideas can just as easily be embedded insound art. Lessons about scientific meth-odology can be, if not learned, then re-

verse-engineered by taking a critical in-terest in styles of pseudo-scientificthought. In this case, the entire EVP be-

lief system is a macroscopic false hypoth-esis condensed from a larger body of mi-croscopic false hypotheses. Scientificmethod itself can be regarded as depend-ing on a flow of logical implications fromthe history of false hypotheses.

This argument highlights the impor-tance of openly admitting to “honest”mistake—indeed this article echoes thispoint, because much of its content wasinspired by just such a mistake. Whencompiling the material for the originalGhost Orchid sleevenotes, I attributed ad-

vice about psychological projection toauthors Olive Renier and VladimirRubinstein, who were BBC monitors in

WW2. The origin of this advice was a pa-per entitled “Some Axioms, Musings andHints on Hearing” written by their moni-toring supervisor—Ernst Gombrich. It

was only on discovering this mistake that I realized the extent to which investigat-ing this subject could also provide toolsfor analyzing sound art.

Psychological projection is discussedin detail in Gombrich’s classic Art and Il- lusion , in which he also mentions his ac-quaintance with Karl Popper in Viennab f W ld W II G b i h it

You should look at certain walls stained with damp, or at stones of unevencolour. If you have to invent somebackgrounds you will be able to see inthese the likeness of divine landscapes,adorned with mountains, ruins, rocks,

woods, plains, hills and valleys in great variety: and then again you will seethere battles and strange figures in vio-lent action, expressions of faces andclothes and an infinity of things which

you will be able to reduce to their com-plete and proper forms. In such wallsthe same thing happens as in thesound of bells, in whose stroke you may find every named word you can imag-ine [38].

While Diana Deutsch points out that “Leonardo may have been particularly susceptible to such transformations,”because “perhaps this facility is associ-ated with extreme creativity” [39], thephenomena Leonardo described areacoustic projections closely related toDeutsch’s own experiments and to EVP.

What is most surprising is that while theinfluence of Leonardo’s advice with re-spect to figurative and abstract paintingis probably inestimable, from the point of view of fine-art practice his final sen-tence seems to have been almost totally ignored.

The psychologist Georgy Kepes char-acterized perception as an active, inher-

ently creative process [40]; and I drawthis article towards its conclusion by stat-ing my agreement with what I believe isan idea both developed and shared by Helmholtz, Gombrich, Gregory and oth-ers, that at a fundamental neurologicallevel many of the faculties exercised inbasic forms of perception, in the formu-lation of scientific hypotheses and in theappreciation of art have a great deal incommon. There is much we can usefully learn from improving our knowledge of,and much we can usefully achieve by

promoting understanding of these pro-cesses. With respect to the role that pro-

jection plays in the appreciation of art,one must acknowledge that this is some-times taken to ridiculous extremes.Nonetheless, the process of reading“meanings” into artworks is simply anextension of processes that are hard-

wired into everyone’s perceptual mecha-nisms. Exercising this faculty is the es -sence of artistic appreciation, as well asof appreciating sound art.

Finally, the style and content of thisarticle may seem a harsh appraisal of phenomena whose creative impetus wek f ll ll t f i ti t



would like to suggest that the funda-mental message of any statement under-mining belief in life-after-death remains,as always, the same; it is the most roman-tic notion that humankind has ever con-ceived—seize the day.

AcknowledgmentsMany thanks to Knut Aufermann, Diana Deutsch,Ernst Gombrich, Caroline Grigson, Mike Harding,Chris Patten, Ed Pinsent and Celia Woolf for feed-back and information, to Nic Collins, Colette Bailey at the Royal Society of British Sculptors and to PhilHallett of the Sonic Arts Network. Rorschach Audio isdedicated t o Geoffrey Grigson (1905–1985), poet,naturalist and ether warrior.

References and Notes1. Joe Banks, The Ghost Orchid , Ash International,PARC CD1 (1999).

2. Mike Harding and C.M. von Hausswolff, “1485.0

kHz,” Cabinet magazine, Issue 1 (Winter 2000) pp.56–61, citing Friedrich Jürgenson, Rösterna Från Rymden (Stockholm: Saxon and Linström Fürlag,1964); Friedrich Jürgenson, Sprechfunk mit Verstorbenen (Freiburg, Germany: Hermann Bauer

Verlag, 1967); Friedrich Jürgenson, Radio och Mikrofonkontakt med de Döda (Uppsala, Sweden:Nybloms, 1968).

3. Konstantin Raudive, Breakthrough (New York:Taplinger, 1971).

4. These recordings were originally released withBreakthrough and are reproduced in full on The Ghost Orchid [1].

5. Oliver Sacks, Seeing Voices (London: Picador,1991) pp. 5–6.

6. David Wright, Deafness (New York: Stein and Day,1969); quoted in Sacks [5] pp. 5–6.

7. Helen Phillips, “They Do It with Mirrors,” New Scientist (17 June 2000).

8. Celia Woolf, correspondence, 8 December 2000.

9. H. McGurk and J. MacDonald, “Hearing Lipsand Seeing Voices,” Nature, No. 264 (1997) pp.746–748.

10. Jens Bernsen, Lydd i Design (Copenhagen:Delta Akustik & Vibration/Dansk Design Centre,1999) p. 93.

11. Primo Levi, The Periodic Table (London: Abacus,1986) p. 55.

12. Olive Renier and Vladimir Rubinstein, Assigned to Listen (BBC, 1986) pp. 75–79.

13. Renier and Rubinstein [12] p. 76.

14. Remez et al., Science 212, pp. 947–950, reportedin Woolf [8].

15. Renier and Rubinstein [12] p. 76.16. Renier and Rubinstein [12].

17. Michael Handel, “Intelligence and Deception,”in John Gooch and Amos Perlmutter, eds., Military

Deception and Strategic Surprise (London: Frank Cass,1982) p. 138.

18. Renier and Rubinstein [12].

19. Richards J. Heuer, Jr., “Strategic Deception: A Psychological Perspective,” International Studies Quarterly 25, No. 2, 294–327 (June 1981); quoted inHandel [17].

20. Shawn Carlson, “Dissecting the Brain withSound,” Scientific American (December 1996) pp.80–83.

21. Diana Deutsch, Musical Illusions and Paradoxes,Philomel Records CD 001 (La Jolla, CA, 1995) tracks5, 6. The CD can be ordered from Philomel RecordsInc., PO Box 12189, La Jolla, CA 92039-2189, U.S.A.

22. Carlson [20] p. 83.

23. Henry Gleitman, “Perceptual Hypotheses,” inPsychology (London: Norton, 1986) pp. 203–204.

24. M.A. Naeser and J.C. Lilly, “Repeating Word Ef-fect,” Journal of Speech and Hearing Research (1971).

25. Raymond Cass, narration transcribed fromoriginal cassettes used for compiling The Ghost Or- chid [1] .

26. Renier and Rubinstein [12].

27. Leonard Lander, “Audiomancy,” in Beyond the Dial (Wasa: Trapezohedron Press, 2000).

28. Cass [25].

29. George Miller, The Psychology of Communication (London: Penguin, 1967) pp. 79–80.

30. David Bruce, “Effects of Context on the Intelli-gibility of Heard Speech,” quoted in Colin Cherry,ed., Information Theory (London: Butterworths,1956) pp. 245–252.

31. R.L. Gregory, “Perception as Hypotheses,” in

The Oxford Companion to the Mind (Oxford, U.K.:Oxford Univ. Press, 1987) pp. 608–611; see also theentry on Hermann Helmholtz, pp. 308–310.

32. William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, JosephBurke, ed. (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford Univ. Press,1955) p. 119.

33. Robert Descharnes and Gilles Néret, Dalí (Cologne: Taschen, 1997).

34. Jean Cocteau, Cocteau, Carol Martin-Sperry,trans. (New York: Viking, 1972) pp. 101–191.

35. Jürgen Heinzerling, “All about EVP,” ForteaTimes No. 104 (November 1997) pp. 26–30. This ar-ticle contains much specific information on EVPfor which space is not available here.

36. Popper’s ideas are discussed in this context inE.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion (London: Phaidon,1959) pp. 271–272.

37. Andrew Hodges, Turing (London: Phoenix,1997) p. 26; for a more detailed explanation of thisidea see also Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The

Enigma (London: Vintage, 1992) pp. 179–183.

38. Gombrich [36].

39. Diana Deutsch, correspondence, 17 August 2000.

40. Georgy Kepes, Language of Vision (Chicago: PaulTheobald, 1947); quoted in Robert Wenger, “Visual

Art, Archaeology and Gestalt,” Leonardo 30, No. 135–46 (1997).

Manuscript received 31 December 2000.

Joe Banks is a sound-installation and recording artist who works under the brand name

Disinformation. Disinformation projects havinvolved radio noise from photographic flasguns and welding equipment, electrical andsolar-magnetic storms, alternating currentelectromagnets, domestic appliances, indutrial and information technology hardware,visual documentation of obsolete British miltary “sound mirrors” and studies of variousaspects of aesthetics, morphology and acoust

perception. Details of his ”Disinformationsound-art project can be found at <http:// www.ashinternational.com>.

Rorschach Audio: Ghost Voices and Perceptual Creativity by Joe Banks

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