The Dream of the Speechmachine
Tine Melzer
2007

Within the tradition of scientific presentations the audience was never a group of a experts only. Scientific instruments are artefacts to produce amusement and wonder to a group of people who shared their experience in the physical world: the way light or sound and other sensitive phenomena were habituated to in daily life is the basis on which we can understand the meaning of the demonstrated instrument. Every fascinating demonstration scoops from a similar attitude towards the demonstrated subjects. Our attitude is constituted by a mixture of our own observation of the laws of nature and our habits of interacting with other humans who deal with similar experiences. We share our habits of dealing with natural facts as gravity, night and day and time, to name but a few fundamental forces of nature. However, the cultural mythology of an audience generates more likeness between audience and scientist: scientific demonstrations which contradict the natural facts draw more attention than demonstrations which we observe in our daily routine. For instance: a balloon expanding in a vaccuum environment leaves us astonished – a balloon exploding if the sting it with a needle – not really.

In Greek mythology Ikarus succeeds to fly with his father with man-made wings; it is the collective dream of flying which all cultures have incoporated in their tradition. This dream has made western industrial cultures into countires of engeneers, inventors, scientists and politicians. The second part of the Greek myth makes Ikarus fly to close to the sun which melts the wax which keeps the wing-construction together. Ikarus falls and drowns in the sea. His father survives.

The story of scientific instruments and their demonstrations for a larger public often become seductive: they answer an inner dream to rule over the forces who define who we are. Demonstrations of such phenomena give us the impression to get a glance of reality. Exactly this aspect makes scientific and artistic demonstration quite similar. Both involve us in reality, seen through the angle of this certain scientific discipline or a certain artistic procedure. The dream of flying has been a driving motivation to develop flying-instruments of all kinds. We got used to the idea to fly in an external vehicle instead of flying ourselves. Flying is external to human nature, yet many people fly kites and jump out of airplanes to experience free fall. In visual arts the subject of flying has never seized to occupy the artefacts. Again, everybody’s inner dream of flying guarantees the demonstration of i.e. weightlessness to create curiosity and wonder.

Clearly there are many different classes of such collective dreams. One can always discover them in demonstrations in a circus, a dance show, sports, in novels, movies, or musea. These dreams always lean against the edge of what we experience as ‘normal’. Bodies that bend, voices which are so clear and high, illusionists.

Clearly there are many different classes of such collective dreams. Very often
these dreams lean against the edge of what we experience as known from own experience. While some are inventing bicycles and airplanes, scientists, engineers and amateurs were busy to create instruments to experience most of these collective dreams. Whole generations were visiting entertaining demonstrations in circus and fun fare. Since he was a child Graham Bell attempted to build a speech-machine and failed. Later the failure will be called telephone. Yet the speech-machine failed. Speech is by definition a human feature. A speech-machine is a paradox, a contradiction per definition. He had to fail.

While flying is a non-human activity
speaking is an only-human activity.
A machine is a non-human generator of possibly imitations of human activity or instruments of non-human activity.

a flying-machine can exist extern to humans.
a speaking-machine can not exist, unless it is a human.

A speech-machine can be an instrument for demonstrating something about human speech. Speech, language, communication belongs to the set of great dreams.

2007 Published in A for Alibi, Uqbar Foundation, Sternberg Press, Berlin