Silent Witness part 2

‘The Thing’

‘The Thing’ – listening device

(also called the ‘Theremin’)

The ear

speak thinking in ear recording (jack and jill)

I don’t know if you can see similarities between these 2 ‘gadgets’ above. The one on the top is at times called the Theremin (or ‘The Thing’) after the inventor Dr. Leon Theremin. It is a listening device. The figure at the bottom is the structure of the ear. In this article i want to try and show you there is something of the , ‘The Thing’ between the structures of the middle ear and the inner ear. So what i am trying to postulate here is that the structure of the ear is a listening device that works according the principles of the Theremin and hence can be used to eavesdrop on conversations from distances where the listener cannot be seen. But more importantly if you have been following the ‘speak thinking’ article from earlier, where I showed that what you are thinking is played out and can be heard in your breath and (your body cavity). The only difference here between the 2 diagrams is the incoming High-frequency radio beam as seen on the top diagram.

To understand this better and see how it is translated to the ear, you need to ‘see’ how the ‘Theremin’ worked. This listening device has a great story of its own.

“In 1946, Soviet school children presented a two foot wooden replica of the Great Seal of the United States to Ambassador Averell Harriman.
The Ambassador hung the seal in his office in Spaso House (Ambassador’s residence). During George F. Kennan’s ambassadorship in 1952, a secret technical surveillance countermeasures (TSCM) inspection discovered that the seal contained a microphone and a resonant cavity which could be stimulated from an outside radio signal.”
The whole structure of the ‘Theremin’ is basically a microphone, but it was how it worked that made it special: like your ear having all the hallmarks of a well designed natural ‘Theremin’. The ‘Theremin’ did not need a power supply source, like your ear. Hence it cannot be detected by bug sweeps. It only powered up when the high-frequency radio beam was directed to it. That is, it only started to work when it was needed and the rest of the time it remained undetected. Now how this worked is this: very simple but effective. When a radio beam is directed towards the antennae it would cause it to resonate. The resonating beam cutting through the earth’s magnetic field would create a charge in the antennae. So now the gadget is powered up ready to do its job. In the chamber above speech would cause the diaphragm to fluctuate and alter the space size within the chamber: this would create a fluctuating capacitance (electrical charge). This is then transferred to the antennae and is responsible for modulating the incoming radio beam. The data for the sound is then carried by the now modulating radio beam to a demodulator some distance away to be decoded back to sound. The carrier wave now contained the information that is needed: ‘The Conversation’ (1974) Gene Hackman.

‘How the Thing worked: A radio beam was aimed at the antenna from a source outside the building. A sound that struck the diaphragm caused variations in the amount of space (and the capacitance) between it and the tuning post plate. These variations altered the charge on the antenna, creating modulations in the reflected radio beam. These were picked up and interpreted by the receiver.’

What in the inner ear can act as a modulator for an incoming radio beam? The inner ear is a complicated device. It is a multifunction device and a number of parts in it could act as a resonator antennae as in the ‘Theramin’. For one the travelling wave in the fluid filled cavity can act as a resonator for an incoming carrier wave picking up the signal of the travelling wave in the cochlea to be decoded back to sound by the receiver etc.

“The cochlea, shown uncoiled, is filled with liquid. In the accepted travelling wave picture (A), the partition vibrates up and down like a flicked rope, and a wave of displacement sweeps from base (high frequencies) to apex (low frequencies). Where the wave broadly peaks depends on frequency. An alternative resonance view (B) is that independent elements on the partition can vibrate side to side in sympathy with incoming sound. It remains open whether the resonant elements are set off by a travelling wave (giving a hybrid picture) or directly by sound pressure in the liquid (resonance alone).” – wiki. The description is uncannily similar to that of the way the resonating antennae works in the Theramin – it just needs an incoming electromagnetic beam to pick up the resonating silent (sound) signal in the ear and send it to a receiver. So how can that be done.

I think all the magic of technology has already been discovered: it is just how do you use them. The cochlea has a travelling fluid wave that carries the information of sound in fluid form. The sound exists in that wave in a different form. How can one extract that sound so it can be heard. The cochlea does it well by converting it into an electrical signal then sent to your brain so you can hear. A radio beam directed at the cochlea can modulate that radio beam (as in the ‘Theremin’) where it can be also heard when it is picked by a receiver some distance away and decoded back to sound. There are other parts in the cochlea where the sound can be picked up. Much of the working of the ear are still not understood very well and there are different theories as to how sound can be generated. Sound can cause the bony structure of the cochlea to vibrate and this can be picked up. The resonating electrical signals generated by the inner ear can create electromagnetic waves as in the resonating antennae of the ‘Theramin’ to modulate an incoming radio beam which is then sent to the receiver a distance away to be decoded. There is also bone conduction: where the bones in your head vibrate to sound and then transferred to the cochlea via the tiny bones in the middle ear. You can now purchase bone conduction head phones that sit on your skull just above your ear to hear sound: this bypasses the eardrum. You don’t need a microphone to pick up sound that comes to your ear: you can do it from a distance away by sending a electromagnetic beam  The electromagnetic spectrum consists of all the energies that you know off, including visible light, radio waves etc, as seen below. They just have different operating frequencies. Any of these waves, where suitable, can be used as a carrier wave, to pick up sound from your ear by being directed to it, then being modulated by some process in your ear, and the information carrier back to the demodulator as in the case of the ‘Theramin’. Even light can be used for this purpose: A laser beam directed to a window, picks up the tiny vibrations of sound on the glass pane created by speech sound, then is reflected back to the receiver and decoded back to sound. Your body itself is one big silent speaker. It might be possible that the vibrating surface skin of your body could carry information that can be monitored from a distance by the right incoming monitoring beam of energy: your heart beat, your blood pressure, The state of your organs, the thickness of your blood, etc.
“Humans thus have an electromagnetic energy field. As a result of this, the human body could act as an aerial that has the potential for simultaneous transmission and reception of energy with its environment.” (Journal of Theoretics Vol.4-2 April/May 2002 Vol. 4, No. 2 by

William L Smith. The Human Electromagnetic Energy Field: Its Relationship to Interpersonal Communication. http://www.journaloftheoretics.com/second-index.htm)

Of course you have to consider that if it can be monitored, then that same beam might be able to influence the state of your bodily functions too etc. So the walking talking person walks with no secrets. Knowledge from one can be easily picked up by others perhaps naturally without the aid of technology, but you come to see how via the process of technology. And the simple ‘Theramin’ showed you how this can be done.
(The types of electromagnetic radiation are broadly classified into the following classes: (wiki)
Gamma radiation
X-ray radiation
Ultraviolet radiation
Visible radiation
Infrared radiation
Microwave radiation
Radio waves
To conclude: the significance of all of this is unity in all things living. All is connected. Ideas are passed through subtle means from one to another. We communicate subliminally in strange silent ways to one another. Discoveries are made by one person or country after ideas have been picked up from different people and then put together by one person – subliminally. It is all cool like that. It is a fascinating single unit functioning as one entity. And it is all about Art too (as this is an Art website) as to how form and structure comes about in an artist studio. The silence that is needed for discovery can be got from an artist studio. It is a temple of silence. When an artist stands in from of his work a silence descends in the space. One is focused with a certain one-pointedness. The universe implodes into that space and one becomes connected to the total space of the universe and becomes all knowing for that moment. That is until the noise returns when one is outside the studio. It is cool like that. Really, or rather reality.

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