Devachan Music - Community Room

A Cautionary Tale

Preface

I wrote the following fable inspired by two intersecting ideas: the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle; and the Turing Test; with the great Digital/Analog Audiophile Debate thrown in for good measure...

Werner Heisenberg came up with what's now know as the Uncertainty Principle: when experimenting on phenomena that are extremely sensitive, the very act of experimenting can interfere with what you are trying to measure. So, since microscopes use light to see atomic particles, which are small enough to be perturbed by the light, we can't really know how they would behave unobserved. A fancy version of the familiar "Does a tree falling in an empty forest make any sound?" Some physicists speculate that we may actually be creating the reality of our latest sub-sub-sub- atomic particles through the machines and experiments we devise to "discover" and "observe" them.

Second idea: Alan Turing, the father of modern computer science, came up with something known as the Turing Test: in one room, a computer, in another, a human. Another person sits in a third room, connected to both only by a teletype, trying to tell which one is human and which a machine. Turing claimed that, for all practical purposes, "machine intelligence" would have been achieved when the person could not correctly guess which was which. This test is being played out now on the Web, where various chat rooms have automated as well as masked human characters interacting. And then there's that gorgeous Holodeck creation, Minuet, that Riker fell for...

Now, take the Heisenberg principle and add the little twist that asks the following: what if constant experimentation changes the experimenter as well as the phenomenon studied? In fact, suppose that in the way we interact with technology we are simultaneously changing our creations and experimenting on ourselves?

Now, put the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle together with the Turing Test: What if man's capacity to judge the difference between human and computer responses begins to erode after asking this "question" too many times? What if we let computers overtake us because our current technology actually atrophies our sensibilities as we build the machines?

Now apply all this to the great debate about whether human ears can really tell the difference between CD quality digital sound and analog sound. Audiophiles have religious debates that make Ignatius of Loyola look like a push-over on this topic. But what people rarely ask is: what is happening to our hearing? What if, after years of being exposed to sound of a certain type, our faculties literally become dulled? Kind of makes the question: "Can humans hear the difference?" more pointed; perhaps it's really: "Can humans hear the difference any more?"

And nowthe resulting fable. (To hear a wonderful old-time version of this tale, check out Jody Stecher's song "Henry and the True Machine" on the album Our Town (Rounder Records CD 0304). It was inspired by my telling him this story.)

Vox Humana

A famous Renaissance organ-builder in Venice becomes possessed by the alchemist's passion for the Philosopher's Stone. Now in those days, there are certain groups who know secrets of the alchemists that are now largely forgotten. They know the secret that the "gold" the alchemists were trying to create was, in fact, life itself. For the organ-builder, this search for the secret of life transforms into a burning desire to create an organ stop that would exactly recreate the sound of a human voicethe real Vox Humana. (Vox Humana actually is the name of one of the organ stops on the old organs.)

In pursuit of this quest, he dives deep into the arcane arts of metallurgy and acoustics. He studies the writings of Islamic musical philosophers who, in turn, had studied lost manuscripts written by students of students of the great Pythagoras himself. He visits the churches and cathedrals of Europe, listening to the tones of the great bells, talking to foundry masters and bell- tuners. To learn the structural secrets of the vocal cords, he becomes a member of a secret society of medical experimenters who, in violation of Church edicts, have begun clandestine dissections of the dead.

Over the years, his goal changes, becomes much more focused: he works on a pipe that will mimic the sound of his own voice. Each night he asks his wife, that patient woman, to come to his workroom, stand behind a curtain, and listen to his voice and the sound of the organ stop. Each night, she easily distinguishes his voice from the sound of the device.

As the months go by, he becomes more and more obsessed. He spends long hours in the workshop, coming to bed well after dawn. His health fails; his voice grows hoarse from lack of conversation: all his transactions are letters to obscure merchants of rare metals, carried by couriers who scurry away from the strange old man as soon as the letters are delivered. Night after night his wife comes out to deliver her verdict, and pleads with him to come to bed. Night after night her easy recognition of his human voice in distinction to the mechanical sound infuriates him and he goes back to his tools and his workbench.

As time goes on, his organ stop really does approach the true Vox Humana, far more than any ever devised by man before. At the same time, unbeknownst to him, his own voice has become more and more like the sound of the organ-stop: harsh, metallic, uninflected. Finally, one night, he calls out his poor wife for one last audition. "Does it sound like my voice?" he asks. "Can you tell the difference?"

His wife has been patient, but is not infinitely patient. Long nights trying to sleep through the moan and sigh of pipes that shake the rafters and pierce with high shrieks through the window have shattered her nerves and dulled her ears. And the man she once loved is lost to her. "No," she says. "I can no longer tell the difference." This night, she does not plead with him to come to bed. She goes back to the house, packs her bags, and leaves by the light of the moon.

The organ-builder is at first triumphant and elated. His long labor of love has succeeded! Yet he feels a strange emptiness. As he hears the door close behind his departing wife, he looks out the window and begins to suspect what has happened. He runs after her, but she is gone. He is filled with remorse, and returns to his workshop, where, to his surprise, he hears the organ-stop sounding on its own. It is talking, it seems, to a visitor that he cannot see. The organ-stop is exulting, laughing. "It took a long time," it says, "and for a while I suspected the medium was simply untrainable. But at last, I have succeeded," it sings, "in making this man into my own image."

Comment? Use the Tag "Vox Humana"

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