‘Aman picked s nightingale and, Siding bt ie te, sd “You ae fans voke ad noshing more Phar, Mae: ues Apopbeymaa Laconia 2558, ‘here isa story which goes ke this: In the mide of abate there ‘4 company ofallan sors in the trenches, and an allan com ander who sues the command “Soldier, stack” He ces out in loud ad cles voice to mak himself heard inthe mis ofthe uml, bur nothing happens, nobody moves. So the commander gets angry ated shouts louder “Sle stack” Sill nabedy nove And slnce ia, joke things have to happen thee ies for something tate yell even louder: “Soldiers, atak' At which point there isa response, 3 ‘ny woes rising ftom ee teaches, saying appreiatively “Che he sec” "What a bea vice!™ “Tis sory ca serve a3 provisional enc into de robles of the ‘oie, On the fit vel tia story of filed imerpeation, The sl ers filo recognize theses inthe appeal the alle oter, the cal of du and they donot act accordngy Surely the Gt Us they ae ain soldier ply ome olen they az accoing to thee image ‘of not being the most courageous solder in the world a the legend has and the tor i ertily noe model of poll correcmess— St indolges in at chauvnim ad national sterceypes. So the coms ‘mand fs the addressees do nt recognize theives nthe meaning being eoumeyed they concentrate instead on the medium, which the ‘oie The tention pao the voiohiner the interpelion and che _ssumpdon of symbole mant,the transmission of mission, Baton second lee, another inerpellaton works inthe place of| the ile one if the sors do not recognize themselves i their sisson at sole inthe mide of atl, they do recognize hem selves as adresses of anber message; they constitute community 2 response to il, the commanty of people who can appreciate the ashes of beaut voice —who can appreciate it when ts arly the moment and expecially when its ard the momes, 0 oso Soif'm one espet they acta stereotypical alan soldiers they also et as stereotypical alan inthis other respect namely a tala oper lover. They constitute themselves a the community of heSends ofthe Flin opera” (otk the lmrcral in rom Seni [nH ving up other repuasion as connotnears, peopl of refined taste who have amply tained thei eare with ca 0 they ca tll a beauufil voice when they hear one, eve amid the cao fi. ‘rom our hasd penpecive the solders did therightthing,t at ‘nan neiplent way. when they concentrated on the voce instead of | ‘he message—and his the path propote fallow. Although, tobe seth iit forthe wrong reasons they were seized by 3 sudden asthe interest precisely when they hold hav tacked they con- ‘enated onthe vlc because they grasped he meaning aloo well 1 a prolongation ofthe eretype, we imagine the Haan com- sander saying “Soler, che ten ul of beautifilgir, you can have the afternoon of then we can perhaps doubt tat hey would refer the medium of the vice othe al for action. Their lective seathetic interest wa used on 4" dates wll" bat witha twist: usually one eas the meaning and overeas the woe, one "doesnt ‘near [the voce] well” bec ts covered by meting Ye, quiteapart ‘om their feigned artistic incinaton, the soldiers alo bungled the woe the moment they slated ity Ammedatly turned tito 23 objet of ssthetc lesur, an abet of veneration and worship, the bearer of meaning beyond ay ordinary meanings The esthetic on ‘zntaion onthe voice loses the vice presely by turing it into a fexsh objet th aestheipleasoreobfscatesthe objet voice, which wll eyo purse. ‘Tl ry to argue that apa from hose wo widespread uses ofthe ‘oice—the voice athe vehicle of meaning: the voice asthe source of aesthetic admiration—there thir level an object voice which doesnot go up in smoketn the conveyance of medning and doesnot sohaify nan objects fash reverence, bt an object which functions asa blindspotia the clland as dturbnce of esbetc appreciation, ‘One shows dey tthe ist by rusning to aac; ane shows ely tothe second by rsaning tothe oper. As for fidelity tothe third. one Justo tur w psychoanalyst Army, opera aychoanayele? et me ae asthe second—and more presse —enty into our prob lem one ofthe most notorious and widely sonsed passages, th fit of Waler Benjamin's “Theses onthe Philosophy of History” the lst texte competed sholy before his death in 940 ‘The ory eo ofan aston contacted i sch x way da i ‘oul ply a winning ame of ches, answering each move of nop ‘ponent witha win coustrmoe.A puppet Takis ace ad ‘wit Booka nite mou st before a cheaboaré placed on age ‘able sytem of mire rested he sion that is able was was eat Gor alse. eal aie hone ho was an expert ‘heat plier st inside and ded the poppers hand by means of ‘ings Ooe can migine a posopicl counterpart to this device. ‘The papper called" storie teal” to wit al he ine. ean as be amtch for anyone ite the service thealogy, which Codey as we kaos wrzened [uh] and ha tole oa of she (Benjamin 97,382) {am almost embarassed to revs this egendary and esl inter preted ex but ete try ous it 2s prolegomenon to a theory of the voice. Adie the connection by no mesns evident. Benjamin used the story asf were widely known and indeed it as been popula at eas since the time of Bgar Allin Poe's curlous ice” Mala Chess Payer" writen in 16, Poesstor isacually 2 piece of research journalism combined with Dupl-ke detective atocnation”—when ohana Nepomuk Maze made hisAmerian tour with the alleged chest aomston in the ios, Poe took the ‘rouble of tending many pretation, meticulously nog lhe pecaiastes, and the purpose f is piece was to show, by empiri ‘beraton apd deductive reeoning, tat this could oe possibly be 2 thinking muchine aepretended be, bat warcemy a hoax. There rust be a ghost nthe machine, a ghos i the shape of a human aes paye* ‘What xa Benjamin mean by tit strange parable or meta. hor (itis one)? Lewing aside itorial materialism and heology, the following mystery remains: how cana puppet ens the services ofthe one who s operating it who is erally pilings steings? The puppet ppeasto be contoled by the bunchback, but nthe second sag ite endowed wath ts oem ntentionaly it isuppose tel to pl ee sings oft maser, end he services for sown purpose“The meuphor el ks the stoma, seems to he redoubled but maybe the secret ofits double nature ito be sought in avery eral doubling ‘The chess automaton was constructed in 1769 by one Wolfgang von Kempen, an Austrian court ofc fr the benef f the Em pres Mara Theres (ofcourse). R conssted of «Turkish puppet, 2 hookah in one hand and making the mores wih he ote, and of box containing a complicated stem of mierors,extapments, and ‘contraptions which permited the alleged huachbacktomove around nd emaininwsible while the inside fhe machine was displayed to the audience before he game srted. The automaton achieved grea notoriety: test many fimoue opponents (among whom was Napo leon, in finous game which was reared, although the record dobfal—Napoleon had the reputation of beng avery strong chess player, but this game did not do hin credit solo esapides with the ‘queen, neglect of he defense—ao wonder he waheading for Witer- too). After Kempele’s death i 18 the aomaton was taken et bby Malt, who eventually onk fr the long American tour Mile’ ‘him to historia ame otherwise rested on his constriction ofthe St metzonome, i s816—the fist person to use the metronome ‘empo indication was Besthoven in hie Eighth Symphony (817), 8 ‘conection which wasn colncdenee, since Mill also constructed ‘Beethowen’shearingald—so there is a immediate voice elton, But for Kempelen, te constructor made famous by his invention the chess automaton was notte eater of his interest. He hada ther big obsession, afr more amistious one to constract 3 speak ing machine a machine which ould instate human speech, Tat was problem which aroused some lively cursos inthe eighteenth cen tryin 178 Ta Merie suggested dh Yaucason, the great constr tor of automata, should ry co bul am par (198s, p43); and Leonhard Buler, the greater mathemadlan ofthe entry, drew a= ‘tention 02 serious problem in pyses: how to consteact machine which coud imitate the acoustic roducions ofthe human mouth? ‘The mouth, dh tongue the voc cords, de eeth— how that this simple panoply can produce a wide variety of specifi sounds of such complet nd dsncivenes hat no acoustic machine can emulate ‘hem: Elerhimsef eterined the finasy of enstracing piano oF organ where cichey woud represent one of he sound of speech, so tha one ould speak by posing the succession of keys, ke ply ing the piano, "The Royal Academy of Slenes in St, etersbang ised apie sigomentin 780-toconsructa machine which could reproduce the ‘rely and to explain tht physi properaes. Many people tied ‘heirhind at this strenious as,” among them Kempelen, who con sarcted Spek Masi (tilto be seen today nce Deutsches Mi seam im Munich and stil sn working det) The machine was ‘compored of a wooden box which was connectedon one sdeto bel lows (athe ike bagpipe) which served as "lungs." andon the oer toaubber fanned which served "out," and ado be mosied byhand while “speaking” Inthe box bere was series of valves and ‘seine which hadohe operated bythe other hand, and wah some ‘exercise one could proce astounding eens. As one winess put it sn 78y ‘Youcanor bles, my es end how we were al saz nape {ecg when we fi beardthe man oe and human speech whch ypu dicen rom shuren moth Welooked teach other isiene and conteration and we lad gore fess pode by oro ist moments (Quote by Flderer 202,63) 1 94? Kempelen meticuouly described hit invention ina book, Mecano manic pach Best rch Msi (The mechani ofthe human speech with the description of pening machine”). The book laid down the eeorcil principles, ‘sd he guidlines for practical relizaton. Yet, no mater how mich the thing was described fr everybody to study, the machine never- ‘eles pe producing effects which can only be described with the Brendan woed “uncanny” There san uneaninesin the gap which ‘enables a machin, by purely mechanical means to produce some- ‘dingso uniquely himanasvoieandspeech esasfthe fet ould