Possibly the most famous and pervasive of Science Fiction authors, Arthur C Clarke’s three ‘laws’ states that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
There is something about contemporary technology, however, that seems to make this magic completely invisible – a vastness that is hidden by the flashing screen it constitutes and a complexity that is completely outside of the capacity of the average mind’s comprehension. When I use Google, its sorcery is invisible, hidden by my search results, but I still get a feeling of overwhelming amazement when I try and think about how a cassette tape works.
The wonderment of analogue; electricity; technology and sound are all incited through Ray Lee’s Ethometric Museum, currently on show at Battersea Art Centre. The piece presents a museological collection of steampunk-esque contraptions that, we are told, produce ‘harmonically resonant sound and electro-magnetic waves that can generate ‘goodwill’ among the recipient organism’ (since 1769). This installation (and Ethometric Museum is not a ‘play’ in any traditional sense) is then activated first through the deadly serious scientific introduction to the ‘collection’ by Lee’s pencil-skirted assistant and then through Lee himself, who demonstrates the instruments potentiality for affect: in essence, playing with them.
And it is through this play, which includes fiddling with knobs, rolling small steel spheres and the tiniest of bodily movements towards and away from each instrument, that a truly remarkable aural landscape is produced. Free to wander the Battersea Art Centre’s echoing hall, the audience is immersed entirely into a wonderfully affecting and well-crafted half hour sound piece – an experience made all the more enchanting through the tinkering of Lee himself.
Certainly if I were to measure the success of the show on the ‘Ethometric machines’ purported capacity to generate amorous feelings amongst their users/audience, then it is most certainly a success, with the small audience alternating between grinning eagerly at one another near to the piece’s beginning and smiling wistfully, longingly towards its conclusion. Ethometric Museum is very difficult not to enjoy.
