Art and Illusion for Sound
By Joe Banks
Published by Disinformation
£9.99, HB, 192pp, 160×110 mm
ISBN 9781907222207

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“Engaging”, “Packed with interest” – Times Literary Supplement
“Amiable… idiosyncratic… very intriguing” – Art Monthly
“Wonderfully argued” – The Quietus
“Fascinates” – Mojo Magazine

The earliest form of sound recording technology was not a machine but was written language…

What are the connections between Leonardo da Vinci and Dick Whittington, between the BBC Monitoring Service and punk band The Clash, between wartime military intelligence work, visual arts theory, battle management systems, Spiritualism, radio and recording technology and criminal witness testimony?

What role do JG Ballard, Osama bin Laden, William Burroughs, Jean Cocteau, Richard Dawkins, Jean Genet, Adolf Hitler, William Hogarth, Victor Hugo, Joe Meek, Pope Pius XII, Primo Levi, proto-Surrealist writer Raymond Roussel, teenage criminal Derek Bentley, Sigmund Freud and crystallographer Louis Albert Necker play in the disentangling of mysteries of human perception?

Rorschach Audio is a work of contemporary cultural scholarship and an exploration of the art and science of psychoacoustic ambiguities. Part detective story, part artistic and cultural critique, Rorschach Audio lifts the lid on an array of fascinating and under-examined perceptual and political phenomena.

Rorschach Audio is essential reading for everyone interested in air-traffic control, anechoic chambers, artificial oxygen carriers, audio art, bell-ringing, cocktail parties, cognitive science, communications interference, compost, the death penalty, Electronic Voice Phenomena, evangelism, evolutionary biology, experimental music, ghosts, the historiography of art, illusions of sound and illusions of language, lip-reading jokes, nuclear blast craters, predictive texting, singing hair, sonic archives, sound design, steam trains, tinnitus, the Turing Test, Victorian blood painting, visual depth and space perception, ultrasonic visual music, ventriloquism, voices and warehouse fires and robberies.

Read more about Rorschach Audio at the RA web site