Michael Windle
Weltanschauungskrieg (A Space Opera) 2008
Additional sound Brian Cope
Video 23 mins excerpt
An incredible device has been
developed by Dr. R. Fischl-D'Mur at the University of
Historical Science in Venice. The MatrixMapper(TM)
is able to scan materials by means of a unique plug-in
for image manipulation systems that can translate the
minute patterns embedded in materials such as plaster
and mortar and convert them back to the sounds that
first produced them.
Inspired by Guglielmo Marconi's
belief that sound-waves never disappear - they only
get quieter, Dr. Fischl-D'Mur has extrapolated data
from Marconi's final research project (which was
driven by a desire to "hear Jesus Christ deliver the
sermon on the mount") and recovered a series of what
are claimed are astonishing audio recordings from the
time of the Italian Renaissance.
The content of the recordings have so
far been kept secret. Delegates from the University's
research labs have been in conference with government
officials in Italy and America while the sound is
being carefully decoded from infrasound to above 20
hertz (which can be heard). It seems wet building
material from the early 16th century has been imbued
with sub-sonic sound created from the massive pipes
made from Murano mirrored glass prevalent in Venetian
church organs of the time.
This is only the most recent
scientific search for sounds from history.
"MK-Liminal", a now declassified covert Psy-Ops
operation run by the CIA during the cold war,
attempted to develop a translation device along
similar lines with limited success. This is thought to
be the reason for the aforementioned American
involvement. The CIA programs at one point were said
to have focused on photographic images of thick
impasto paintings hanging on the walls of the Kremlin.
The widely held suspicion is that
American agencies heavily financed Abstract
Expressionism (establishing it as the cutting-edge art
form of the 1950s) to upstage the Soviets and claim
the market from the Europeans with a native art form
it could make use of. This theory has recently been
buoyed with the discovery of systematic sound studies
of Ab-Ex paintings on return from travelling
exhibitions to USSR in 1961 and 1962 (they were being
used as giant clandestine eavesdropping devices).
Back in Italy scientists have now
discovered that those large Murano organs (funded by
the Vatican in the late 15th Century) could generate
considerable amounts of subsonic sound, out of normal
hearing. Research has tested audiences within range of
these and found they engender "intensely spiritual
sensations".
