Reflections on "The Edison Effect" - a series of audio installations consisting
of electro-optical devices which play ancient phonograph records with laser
beams.
My title "The Edison Effect" has multiple references. It refers first to the
profound and irreversible effect the invention of sound recording has had upon
music, the soundscape, upon the time and place of our memory and sense of
belonging. It should also call to mind Thomas Alva Edison's illicit claim to
the invention of the light bulb, and his general propensity for copying and
appropriation as an emblem of the inherently uncertain authorship of all
recorded works. Finally, it invokes a metaphorical allusion to the physical
phenomenon known as the "Edison Effect" wherein atoms from a glowing filament
are deposited on the inner surface of light bulbs causing them to darken. It
was this phenomenon of thermionic emission that, when understood, made possible
the invention of the "audion" or vacuum tube. This, in turn, led to the
development of sound amplification as well as radio, television and the
earliest digital computers. The metaphorical image of the darkening of the
light is an ancient one, recurring in the I-Ching, in Mazdaism, and in
Shakespeare's oxymoronic "when night's candles have burnt out". Enantiodromic
reversal at the atomic level can be used to symbolize opposing primal forces
and may serve to mythicize otherwise commonplace occurrences.
Edison's name and face are synonymous with invention, brilliance and
technological innovation. As the modern Prometheus, he lured millions toward
the light. The light bulb, commonly believed to be his consummate invention,
still stands as an iconic exclamation of ideas, innovation - the stroke of
genius.1 The discovery of a potentially fatal flaw inherent in the invention -
that the light-producing bulbs would themselves darken, causing them to cast
shadows rather than light - was perceived by Edison to be a potential bug, a
stain upon his brilliant reputation. To compound the paradox with irony, this
is the only bona fide scientific phenomenon which bears the inventor's name.
Whereas other nineteenth century colossi, such as Tesla, Ampere or Volta had
basic units of measure or even third world nations named after them, Edison,
universally resented by the scientific community and deemed by them a charlatan
and promoter, was grudgingly awarded only this obscure and obscuring "effect"
to immortalize his name.
It is often the case that a new medium's first major flaw or contradiction is
destined to become its dominant metaphor. The disembodying upside-downness of
Della Porta's camera obscura, the shadows created by light falling on Niepce's
photographic emulsion producing a "negative" image, the montage necessitated by
the frailty and shortness of early celluloid film - these have become the
mechanophors which convey the richness and complexity of our experience. No
less with the whole of Edison's oeuvre. Like the lightbulb, the phonograph
casts its own unearthly shadows upon listening, upon our memory and our sense
of time. It is the false and deceptive quality of the voice which emanates from
the phonograph or gramophone, compounded by the mindless soliloquy of the of
the broken record, which lends its root to our word "phony". The exact
repetition of this falsehood ingrains itself in our memories, creating a
sequence of recognition, anticipation and fulfillment which is in itself
addictive and predictive. Prior to the invention of mechanical recording,
references to the now commonplace phenomenon of a tune-running-thru-the-head
appear absent from literature.2
The invention, or rather, the discovery, of sound recording and reproduction by
Edison came as a shock to the entire world, the inventor included. Edison's
reputation had grown as an inventor of electrical miracles - but the talking
machine was a simple mechanical contrivance which could have been built
successfully several centuries earlier, in plenty of time to skyrocket Bach and
Mozart to international stardom. The technological wheels had long been in
spin. Beeswax, a medium with a natural propensity for capturing aromatic and
sonic essences, was abundantly available. Spring driven clockwork motors with
speed governors had been around since the seventeenth century. The theory that
sound consisted of mechanical vibratory disturbances, held since Aristotle's
time, had been quantitatively studied by Marin Mersenne, who actually recorded
the vibrations of a tuning fork on the surface of brass bar before 1650.
At the time of the phonograph's gestation, Edison's legendary research team had
been working furiously on three diverse electrical contraptions. One (a
forerunner of our FAX machines) was a machine for copying and transmitting
images. Another was a variety of recording telegraph for embossing Morse code.
The third was an electro-mechanical device for amplifying voice received over
telephone lines - Edison wanted to call it the "telespeacan" - although it
couldn't. All three involved a threaded lead-screw moving a stylus which
impinged upon a rotating drum. In retrospect, the synergistic serendipity seems
obvious: a copying machine, a machine for storing words, a machine for making
sounds... but it was not so at the time.
When Edison announced that he could record and reproduce human speech, he met
with incredulity. Eminent authorities, including French scientist Sainte Claire
de Ville, upon reading announcements of the talking machine, pronounced it a
fraud and a hoax perpetrated by a concealed ventriloquist - totally phony.
Either Edison's reputation for chicanery had preceded him, or there existed
conceptual barriers which made the feat seem more difficult than it actually
was. Perhaps the very notion of compressing the vitality of human utterances,
of squeezing the flights-of-fancy of musical invention into the unidimensional
coffin of machine reproduction was abhorrent on some primal level. Or perhaps,
there persisted the stubborn notion that sounds are inherently transitory and
must always be synthesized or intoned-anew3 , as in the Futurist intonarumori
( - music boxes with an agenda. ) The spirit of that doubt is lost forever.
Now, as he stood in the shadow of his own reputation, Edison appeared both
larger and flatter than life.
Among the cognoscenti, Alexander Graham Bell, Edison's main competitor at the
time, was shocked when he heard news of the phonograph - amazed that he had not
invented it himself. "It is an astonishing thing to me that I could possibly
have let this invention slip through my fingers when I consider how my thoughts
had been directed to this subject for so many years", he confided. But Bell
had missed by a mile - his researches had been directed toward devising
mechanical models of speaking and of hearing. What Edison had created in the
phonograph was a mechanical model not of hearing, but of remembering.
A dream of early phonographers was to read with their eyes the wiggly line
inscribed by the needle as a lasting trace upon the wax - allowing the
illiterate to write, the uncouth to compose, even the spirits of the dead to
speak. Such efforts soon proved futile.4 The scopic impulse relentlessly afoot
in western civilization appears to have been delayed by almost an epoch. If the
nineteenth century had invoked sight alone to comprehend the infinity of space,
( superseding the eighteenth century's insistence that space is known by the
sense of touch,) a more ancient tactile paradigm persisted in matters of
memory, perhaps due to their traditional codings in the form of renaissance
spatial-mnemonic systems. Until very recently - the 1980's, - the memorative
act of audition still consisted of dragging a diamond stylus, fingernail-like,
across a vinyl blackboard. As the needle played, it eroded the memory it
touched. Ever so slightly, as the needle touched, the sounds present in the
room in which it played were minutely engraved and added to the record.
Edison's earliest efforts were feeble impressions on tinfoil, easily erased by
the act of playing them. Indeed, the first recording was so frail it only could
reproduce once and then die. Later efforts in wax proved durable enough to be
played dozens of times before the effects of the mechanism combined with the
sounds in the environment would modify and erase them forever. And still each
record was a unique object. The Edison laboratory's earliest cylinders of mass
production were created by capturing the sound of an orchestra on twenty or
more phonographs - the orchestra's output of a two minute waltz might thus
amount to many hundred cylinders per day 5 . By the turn of the century, with
the advent of electroplating and gold-molding, many thousands of records could
be manufactured, sold, played, enjoyed and worn out before the orchestra would
need to reconvene and intone the waltz anew. The escalation of this economic
exercise culminates in the digital compact disc - a consumer item whose
durability is adamantine and whose relation to the original soundwaves - thus
its use-value - is determined wholly by the ruling taste. The laser touches but
fleetingly upon the groove, the impact of its photons abrading no material
whatsoever. The rupture is complete. The emancipation of memory from touch has
been fulfilled. The age of the palimpsest is over.
(c) 1993 Paul DeMarinis
1 Notwithstanding Felix-the-Cat's ectoplasmic punctuation marks - insights
which could become tools of inquiry or aggression.
2 We do not know if Emily Dickinson's image of the "mind running in its
groove" refers to sonic material, nor if Edison drew on her imagery for his
inspiration.
3 Such synthesis implies a prior analysis. Inherent in such a notion (which
persists to this day in computer music) - is the idea of physical modeling -
basically, a proof that the author totally comprehends and thus dominates the
system in question.
4 It was not until the last decades of the twentieth century that the visible
traces of speech succumbed to human reading, and then to only one human, Victor
Zue.
5 The fact that the several phonographs were spread out in the recording studio
has made possible the excavation of primitive stereo imaging by combining two
or more cylinders from a single "take".
1 Notwithstanding Felix-the-Cat's ectoplasmic punctuation marks - insights
which could become tools of inquiry or aggression.
2 We do not know if Emily Dickinson's image of the "mind running in its
groove" refers to sonic material, nor if Edison drew on her imagery for his
inspiration.
3 Such synthesis implies a prior analysis. Inherent in such a notion (which
persists to this day in computer music) - is the idea of physical modeling -
basically, a proof that the author totally comprehends and thus dominates the
system in question.
4 It was not until the last decades of the twentieth century that the visible
traces of speech succumbed to human reading, and then to only one human, Victor
Zue.
5 The fact that the several phonographs were spread out in the recording studio
has made possible the excavation of primitive stereo imaging by combining two
or more cylinders from a single "take".
Paul Demarinis.