Marconi conceived wireless telegraphy as a spectral science for hearing past voices

Evidence

Jeck began the extraordinary 2008 version of Gavin Bryars’ The Sinking of the Titanic (which he performed in collaboration with Italian ensemble Alter Ego and Bryars himself) with nearly 14 minutes of crackle. In this audio-fog, threatening objects loom, barely perceived. As we listen, we come to distrust our own hearing, begin to lose confidence in our ability to distinguish what is actually there from audio hallucinations. Ominous strings and a solitary bell produce an atmosphere of quiet foreboding, and the ensemble – at first indistinct shadows in a Turner-esque squall – only gradually emerge from the cloud of crepitation. Here, as in Asher’s Miniatures, crackle suggests radio static. The sinking of the Titanic in fact prompted the first use of wireless in sea rescue. As Bryars points out in his sleevenotes, Marconi had conceived of telegraphy as a spectral science. He ‘became convinced that sounds once generated never die, they simply become fainter and fainter until we no longer perceive them. Marconi’s hope was to develop sufficiently sensitive equipment, extraordinarily powerful and selective filters I suppose, to pick up and hear these past sounds. Ultimately, he hoped to be able hear Christ delivering the Sermon on the Mount.’ — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 335

Categorization

• CANDY: Marconi believing sound never dies and hoping to tune into Christ’s Sermon on the Mount is a fantastic dinner-party fact.
• SHARE: Worth sending to a sound-art or hauntology enthusiast — Marconi’s spectral conception of radio is exactly the kind of lore that illuminates the aesthetic.
• QUESTION: Would be worth tracing whether Marconi’s recordings of ‘past sounds’ idea links to later ideas of radio as time machine or archaeology.
• FICTION: A scientist convinced all sound persists and building ultra-sensitive filters to listen to the past is a ready-made story engine.
• XREF: connects to: Wireless telegraphy supplied the metaphor that made language a communication system — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 442; Marconi believed sounds never die but only fade beyond perception — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 335

Broader Connections

• Marconi believed sounds never die but only fade beyond perception #expands (0.95) — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 335
• Wireless telegraphy supplied the metaphor that made language a communication system #expands (0.85) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 442