"Audio Rorschach" in "Orphée" by Jean Cocteau

Electronic Voice Phenonema research is a form of occultism that alleges that (using radio, video and tape recording technology etc) contact can be made with personalities that survive into the afterlife. EVP researchers believe that domestic appliances literally engage them in conversation, and "Rorschach Audio" is a research project set-up to study this belief. "Rorschach Audio" is a project which investigates EVP as a manifestation of the mishearing of speech, proceeding from the premise that the empirical evidence of EVP recordings is in fact perfectly real, arguing instead that it is the interpretation which is sometimes given to this evidence that is false. "Rorschach Audio" cites a wealth of anecdotal and scientific evidence to illustrate how the mind moulds ambiguous sounds (in this context sounds of "stray" radio voices) by psychoacoustic processes, into perceptions that EVP researchers recognise as having personal meaning. Rather than assuming that these processes are "anomalous" or unusual however, instead "Rorschach Audio" shows that these processes are (paradoxically) important aspects of normal perception.

"Rorschach Audio" states that the sound design in Surrealist film-maker Jean Cocteau's masterpiece "Orphée" (based, as it was, on acute observations of how French citizens reacted to coded British "numbers stations" heard on radio during WW2) provides a vivid illustration of how some listeners feel that voices whose source they cannot explain a/ come from the "other side", and b/ speak to them personally and directly. In the dialogue summarised in the English subtitles Orpheus states "Where can they be coming from Heurtebise? I know they are for me", while the translation offered by Carol Martin-Sperry in "Cocteau" (Viking 1972) is more complete - Orpheus asks Heurtebise "Where could they be coming from? No other station broadcasts them. I feel certain they are addressed to me personally". Similar perceptions seem to be shared by those EVP enthusiasts who believe that "stray" radio voices are of supernatural origin; and, if such beliefs seem a little outlandish, it is worth remembering that this reaction is very similar to the process whereby millions of people believe that ambiguous astrological readings in newspapers also apply to them personally. Although it could be misleading to over-interpret such reactions in context of analysing Cocteau's film, in context of bereavement and/or strong religious impulses, such perceptions can have a powerful impact on the formation of personal beliefs.

Cocteau's "Orphée" depicts a creatively bankrupt poet, who ignores real life in a desparate struggle to re-gain inspiration from voices he hears on his car radio - the irony of this fact seems lost on some artists who have embraced EVP, and EVP imagery seems to have proven popular with (sound and visual) artists and musicians etc, but not least because (as observed by EVP researcher Lisa Butler in a documentary extra on the DVD of the film "White Noise") the recording of EVP images, sounds etc is "easy for anyone to do". The comparison made in "Rorschach Audio" between "Orphée" and EVP research has strongly influenced several art projects, none of which ever acknowledged where this idea came from ("Rorschach Audio" had a particularly strong influence on an art project known as the International Necronautical Society or INS, initated by Tom McCarthy). "Rorschach Audio" was first published in 1999, and is a side-project of the experimental music group Disinformation. The term "Rorschach Audio" also describes phenomena like Back-Masking and Chinese Whispers, etc.

Viewers are stongly encouraged to buy the complete "Orphée" DVD http://www.amazon.co.uk/Orphee-Jean-Marais/dp/B0002IAQDQ/ref=sr_1_1/026-80249...

More information about "Rorschach Audio" can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjlacNOAhQI

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[asonofleemarvin]

the sounds gone!

[scotpens]

"EVP researchers believe that domestic appliances literally engage them in conversation." So do schizophrenics.

So basically, "Rorschach Audio" means "hearing what you want to hear," right? Like those bozos who claimed they heard hidden clues on Beatles albums saying Paul McCartney was dead.

Funny, though, I never made the connection between the mysterious voice on the car radio in "Orphée" and coded broadcasts to the French resistance in World War II until now.

[sign69]

the messages come in spam now...

[theprophet20]

Like many other short-wave listeners during the cold-war era, I heard those mysterious so-called 'number stations' which were used for espionage purposes.

Yet sometimes listening to them alone in the dark in the dead of night, despite my knowledge of what they were, I had that same eerie impression that they were somehow meant for me personally, sending messages to me from beyond, from 'The Other Place'...