The British Library Sound Archive (London, England) is featuring a June 28, 2013 lunchtime talk (Note: It is free and sold out as of June 24, 2013 2:30 pm PDT) according to a June 23, 2013 Disinformation PR (public relations) announcement (from the June 4, 2013 Rorschach Audio blog posting, which originated the announcement),

Writing in “Playback: The Bulletin of the British Library Sound Archive”, Toby Oakes observed that the archive “deals with the voices of the dead every day, but our subjects tend to have been alive at the time of recording”. “Mortality was no impediment” however, in the case of tapes recorded by parapsychologist Konstantin Raudive, who claimed that Galileo, Goethe and Hitler communicated with him through the medium of radio. Raudive was the most famous exponent of Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP), as it is known, and the British Library holds a collection of 60 of his unedited tapes. Rather than dismissing the claims of EVP researchers out-of-hand, author Joe Banks demonstrates a number of highly entertaining audio-visual illusions, which show how the mind can misinterpret recordings of sound and of stray communications chatter, in a similar way to how viewers project imaginary images onto the random visual forms of the psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach’s famous ink-blot tests. The talk stresses the important role that intelligent guesswork plays in normal perception, and discusses descriptions of sound phenomena by Leonardo da Vinci, and the work of the BBC Monitoring Service, emphasizing the influence that wartime intelligence work with sound had on one of the most important works of visual arts theory every published. [sic]

[from the British Library Rorschach Audio event page: The talk stresses the important role that intelligent guesswork plays in normal perception, and discusses descriptions of sound phenomena by Leonardo da Vinci, and the work of the BBC Monitoring Service, emphasizing the influence that wartime intelligence work with sound had on one of the most important works of visual arts theory – Art & Illusion by (wartime radio monitor and post-war art historian) E.H. Gombrich.]

The talk starts at 12:30 (however the library is a bit of a labyrinth so arrive 10 minutes early to make sure you find the scriptorium on time). Admission is free and refreshments are provided. To attend please e-mail your name to summer-scholars@bl.uk.

“Rorschach Audio – Ghost Voices, Art, Illusions and Sonic Archives” [emphasis mine]
12:30 lunch-time, 28 June 2013
The British Library
96 Euston Road
London NW1 2DB

This talk is part of the British Library’s Summer Scholars programme –
http://www.bl.uk/whatson/events/event147624.html

There is a second chance at finding out about this project at a Café Scientifique in Leamington Spa, from the June 4, 2013 posting,

After the British Library talk, the next “Rorschach Audio” demonstration will be for Café Scientifique in Leamington Spa – upstairs at St Patrick’s Irish Club, Riverside Walk (off Adelaide Road), Leamington CV32 5AH, 7pm, Monday 15 July 2013…

http://www.cafescientifique.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=221:leamington-spa

I like the Café Scientifique in Leamington Spa description of the July 15, 2013 event,

Monday 15th July 2013

Electronic Voice Phenomena: ghost voice recordings and illusions of science

Joe Banks

Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) refers to a movement – not unlike the UFO scene – whose supporters contend that misheard recordings of stray communications and radio chatter constitute scientific proof of the existence of ghosts. Rather than dismissing ghost-voice recordings out of hand, Joe will show how EVP researchers misunderstand the mind’s capacity to interpret sound, similar to the way we see illusory images in the random visual forms of the famous Rorschach ink-blot tests. Joe will demonstrate the formation of such perceptions using a number of entertaining and sometimes bizarre audio-visual illusions.

Joe Banks is a former Honorary Visiting Fellow in the School of Informatics at City University, London, and former AHRC-sponsored Research Fellow in the Department of Computing at Goldsmiths College and the Department of English, Linguistics & Cultural Studies at The University of Westminster. One of his “Rorschach Audio” research papers was published in a scholarly journal by The MIT Press, his recently-published book Rorschach Audio was featured on BBC Radio 4 and he has given talks about “Rorschach Audio” at the London Science Museum’s Dana Centre and the British Library.

Joe lives in London, near the set of traffic lights that inspired physicist Leo Szilard to conceive the theory of the thermonuclear chain reaction.

For those of us who can’t get to the British Library or Leamington Spa, here’s a video featuring the Rorschach Audio project, from Joe Banks’s webpage on the Goldsmiths College website,

I think it might be necessary to attend the talk in order to make sense of this video although perhaps you’ll find this image included with the publicity helpful,

Rorschach Audio visual image [downloaded from http://rorschachaudio.wordpress.com/2013/06/04/british-library-sonic-archives/]