TAPPING INTO HUMAN URGE TO COMMUNICATE
Exhibit explores two distinct means of reaching out
One tap, then another, then a rapid-fire sequence. Silence, interrupted by a sudden chorus of clicks and clacks. The sounds emerge from a row of mysterious metal objects, with no evident human volition. Yet there’s a sense of urgency in this indecipherable conversation, a message trying to get through.
This is Matthew Ostrowski’s “Summerland,” on view at the Albany Institute of History and Art through Jan. 3. A sound installation designed for 24 antique telegraph sounders, the piece is inspired by the overlap of science and spiritualism during the mid-19th century.
The tapping of a telegraph machine might seem to exist at the opposite end of the believability spectrum from the rapping sounds purportedly made by spirits during séances. But at the time, both had an aura of the supernatural about them.
“The telegraph was the first piece of technology using electricity that made it into any kind of circulation amongst regular people,” Ostrowski explained in a recent interview. “Suddenly this technology appears where you can perform remote actions at a distance and have long-distance communication. Here’s this invisible force that allows us to communicate with anywhere—so what other invisible forces are there?”
A composer and musician whose collaborators have included Laurie Anderson, the Flying Karamazov Brothers and choreographer Elizabeth Streb, Ostrowski has more recently begun creating works that include visual elements as well as sound. His “Negative Differential Resistance” features a palette of fluorescent lights and droning hums; “Western Electric” was composed using the ringing of 15 computer-controlled rotary telephones. For “Summerland” (the title refers to a name for the afterlife used by some occult groups and pagan religions), he zeroed in on the sounds and historical connotations of another form of telecommunication, one that has far fewer cultural associations today.
“The only thing we know about telegraph machines is that they ’re obsolete—you don’t even see them in old movies,” he said. “That led to research on what did telegraphy mean to people when it first appeared, and its connection with spiritualism. This idea of conversational speech with the dead is directly connected with the fact that that’s what
you can do with telegraphy. You’re talking to Grandma just the way you could when she was in St. Louis, and the magic and invisible nature of telegraphy is the thing that brought that on.”
In building the infrastructure of the work, he landed on two disparate voices to represent these two movements: Samuel F. B. Morse, developer of the telegraph and the code it used, which bears his name; and Kate Fox, who with her sister Maggie founded modern spiritualism. At the séances they conducted for hundreds of people, spirits from the beyond answered loved ones’ questions using a code in which raps indicated yes or no, or corresponded to letters of the alphabet. (Maggie eventually confessed that the rappings had been a hoax, and later attempted to recant the confession.) Drawing from Morse’s published letters and from Kate Fox’s “automatic writing ” sessions, in which she transcribed messages from the beyond, Ostrowski chose text to transliterate into sound. He recreated Morse’s words with the inventor’s own system of dots and dashes; for Fox, he attempted to resynthesize a voice using the limited capabilities of the telegraph sounders.
“I decided to make the whole thing in itself be a kind of séance and have these historical dead people speak to us, with language driving the actual noisemaking, interwoven and juxtaposed into a dynamic sound composition,” Ostrowski said. “A medium is a mouthpiece for something coming from beyond, so in this case (the telegraph sounders) are functioning as a mouthpiece for what’s coming from beyond.”
The irony of “Summerland” is that it’s all about transmission and connection, and yet it’s impossible to understand. As Ostrowski writes in his essay on the work, “The messages are clear, the code is true, but there is hardly anyone left to receive it.” It’s a failure of communication that’s reflected in 21st-century technology, he says.
“In the early days of the Internet, everyone thought, ‘This is going to usher in a new world where everyone is equal and everyone’s voice can be heard. It’ll be a new era of what it’s like to be human, and we’re all going to be happy together.’ We all know how that went wrong.”
“John Lewis: Good Trouble”: Rep. John Lewis died in July, leaving a breathtaking legacy. Known for marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on 1965’s Bloody Sunday to protest voting discrimination against Black people and risking his life amid deadly police beatings, his more than 40 arrests during the civil rights movement protesting segregation, and decades of work toward legislation in these areas as well as health care and gun reform ( just to name a few), Lewis is affectionately profiled in the documentary, directed by Dawn Porter.
Among its charming moments are the ones when Lewis reflects and reacts on archival footage featuring the iconic activist. But its anchor is its subtitle: As Lewis said in March of this year, to commemorate the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, “Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and redeem the soul of America.”
As Tribune News Service critic Katie Walsh wrote in her review,
the documentary reminds us that these battles weren’t that long ago, and they especially resonate in the current climate.
“Lewis is such a towering figure in American history, and American politics, that any tribute to him is a worthy one,” Walsh wrote. “We all have so much to thank him for.”
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