EPISODE 29 — Psyché Tropes

Psyché Tropes Episode 29
11pm, 24 February 2025 on Resonance 104.4 FM

Presented by Steven McInerney, Psyché Tropes Episode 29 investigates the birth of television and its connection to spiritualism, fringe scientific research and avant-garde video art featuring the work of Sir William Crookes, John Logie Baird, The Scole Experiment, Klaus Schreiber, Ken McMullen, Genesis P-Orridge, Psychic TV, William S. Burroughs, David Cronenberg and John Carpenter.

As you adjust the frequency from one station to another, the static on your radio or television echoes back to the early moments of our universe. A small fraction of this audible hiss and visual noise is the cosmic microwave background radiation—the oldest light in the observable universe, dating back nearly 13.8 billion years. This fossil radiation, contained in the white noise, offers a glimpse into our cosmic history. When we observe the sky, we are looking back in time at the universe’s formative era. Only now do our modern instruments capture these ancient photons. As the universe expands, some of these photons will drift beyond our observational horizon, forming a natural frontier beyond which we cannot see.

Sir William Crookes, an English chemist and physicist renowned for his discovery of the element thallium in 1861 using flame spectroscopy, later developed the Crookes tube in the mid-1870s. This early form of cathode ray tube demonstrated that electrons emitted from a cathode could produce visible effects when striking a phosphorescent screen. While Crookes' experiments were fundamental in advancing our understanding of electron behaviour, later developments in cathode ray technology paved the way for television. Pioneers such as the Scottish engineer John Logie Baird built on these discoveries, leading to the creation of television systems that would eventually pervade nearly every household on Earth.

Although Sir William Crookes was a widely acclaimed scientist, he was also a fervent believer in spiritualism. As a prominent member of the Society for Psychical Research, he participated in paranormal investigations that later inspired Sir Oliver Lodge's research in the field. Crookes, who advanced our understanding of tiny elementary particles now known as electrons, also invented devices to measure them. In his memoirs, he stated that he was convinced that spirits might somehow be summoned to arrange these charged electrons into images of spirits.

Crookes' earliest experiment to produce an image in a cathode ray tube involved placing a Maltese cross inside it and exposing it to streams of negatively charged electrons. The Maltese cross is an ancient symbol used by various military orders, as well as by the Knights Templar in US York Rite Freemasonry.

During a séance John Logie Baird claimed he was contacted by the ghost of Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, phonograph and motion picture camera. The spirit of Edison tapped a message in Morse code which told him that his Noctovision system would enable the living to speak with the dead. In 1927, Baird demonstrated the use of the ‘Noctovisor,’ which recorded near infrared radiation as a television signal. Sir Oliver Lodge (the first man to send a signal using radio) experienced noctovision for the first time at a meeting of the British Association held in Leeds.

The switch from monochrome to colour television represented a major technological and psychological shift for humanity. In the early 1960s, researchers at the Institute for Motivational Research, led by consumer behaviour analyst Ernest Dichter, investigated the visual attentiveness of colour television audiences by combining Freudian analysis, observational methods, and interviews to understand the unconscious drivers of consumer behaviour. A 157-page report argued that colour television reduced viewers’ sense of psychological distance while increasing levels of emotional involvement, empathy, creativity, comprehension, sociality, and immediacy. It concluded that colour TV could intensify a sense of realism while simultaneously stimulating “a world of fantasy.”

During séances, a common observation was often the malfunction of electrical devices, such as; flickering lights, autonomous switching radios, and television sets displaying strange, unexplained images. This has led many researchers to carry out experiments using electronic devices such as cathode ray tube televisions and video cameras as a means of recording communication with non-physical entities. In the early 1970s, Klaus Schreiber introduced a research method known as Integrated Television Communication (ITC), which adopted a technique similar to that of Electronic Voice Phenomena. ITC utilizes a video camera to capture and display its own output on a television screen, creating a recursive feedback loop of images. Schreiber claimed that these generated televisual images were being communicated by entities from beyond the grave.

The Scole Experiment, conducted between 1993 and 1998 in Norfolk, England, remains one of the most compelling investigations into the paranormal. With the involvement of scientists and mediums, over 500 sessions documented the materialisation of non-physical entities using Instrumental Transcommunication (ITC) techniques to capture paranormal phenomena on video, film, and sound recordings.

The 1983 British film Ghost Dance directed by Ken McMullen explores the beliefs and myths surrounding the existence of ghosts, memory and the nature of cinema. In this film, Algerian French philosopher Jacques Derrida, explains his theory of the revenant, which is closely linked to media recording, especially in film and television.

By the 1980s, the allure of the occult and the televisual format entered the consciousness of British counterculture and avant-garde video art. One pioneering group in particular was Psychic TV, founded in 1981 by Genesis P-Orridge, Peter Christopherson, and Alex Fergusson. Their performances often contained magickal or esoteric symbolism, operating the hypnotic differentiae of TV static, video feedback, and dichotomous language.

The writer and poet William. S. Burroughs was another disruptor of the established order of language. He challenged the very mechanisms that manipulate thought and maintain power, viewing language as the ultimate tool of control, shaping societies and enforcing laws. By slicing cutting up and rearranging text, he subverted the linearity of order, pirating the technicolour broadcasting of mainstream media. In September 1982 Burroughs and Psychic TV met in London where they recorded the soundtrack to Derek Jarman's 'Pirate Tape'.

As the 37th President of the United States, Richard Nixon understood the power of the audiovisual apparatus as a tool for manipulation on a mass scale, similarly, these ideas found their way into the science-fiction horror genre by directors such as David Cronenberg in his 1983 film Videodrome and John Carpenter’s They Live.

Television has been used as a tool of mass distraction. Modern society has created a world where people are more susceptible to manipulation, consumed by materialism, and disconnected from the deeper spiritual forces that guide our existence. As we witness the effects of this disconnection, it's critical to remember the wisdom passed down through generations—and to choose a path that sees through the chaos, confusion and noise.

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