Neil

Generally speaking, echo has two coextensive histories: the mythological one and the scientific one. Each provides a slightly different perspective on the inherent meaning of recurrence, especially when that repetition is imperfect.
To illustrate the multiple resonances found in an echo, the Greeks conjured up the story of a beautiful mountain nymph. Her name was Echo and she made the mistake of helping Zeus succeed in one of his sexual conquests. Hera found out and punished Echo, making it impossible for her to say anything except the last words spoken to her. Soon after, Echo fell in love with Narcissus whose obsession with himself caused her to pine away until only her voice remained. Another lesser known version of this myth has Pan falling in love with Echo. Echo, however, rejects his amorous offers and Pan, being the god of civility and restraint, tears her to pisces, burying all of her except her voice. Adonta ta mele. In both cases, unfulfilled love results in the total negation of Echo’s body and the near negation of her voice.
But Echo is an insurgent. Despite the divine constraints imposed upon her, she still manages to subvert the gods’ ruling. After all, her repetitions are far from digital, much closer to analog. Echo colors the words with faint traces of sorrow (The Narcissus myth) or accusation (The Pan myth) never present in the original.
For example, Narcissus’ rejection “Emoriar, quam sit tibi copia nostril”
to which Echo responds “sit tibi copia nostril.”
Narcissus: May I die before I give you power over me.
Echo: I give you power over me.
While The Figure of Echo takes special delight in word games, Hollander knows better than to limit his examination there. Echo may live in metaphors, puns, and the suffix- solis ex illo vivit in antris (literature’s rocky caves)- but her range extends far beyond those literal walls. For instance, the rabbinical bat kol means “daughter of a voice” which in modern Hebrew serves as a rough equivalent for the word “echo.” Milton knew it: “God so commanded, and left that Command/ Sole Daughter of his voice.” So did Wordsworth: “stern Daughter of the Voice of God.”
Thus Echo suddenly assumes the role of god’s messenger, a female Mercury or perhaps even Prometheus, decked in talaria, with lamp in hand, descending on fortunate humanity.
Aside from recurrence, revision, and commensurate symbolic reference, echoes also reveal emptiness. Since objects always muffle or impede acoustic reflection, only empty places can create echoes of lasting clarity.
Ironically, hollowness only increases the eerie quality of otherness inherent in any echo. Delay and fragmented repetition create a sense of another inhabiting a necessarily deserted place. Strange then how something so uncanny and outside of the self, even ghostly as some have suggested, can at the same time also contain a resilient comfort: the assurance that even if it is imaginary and at best the product of a wall, there is still something else out there, something to stake out in the face of nothingness.
It is not by accident that choirs singing Psalms are most always recorded with ample reverb. Divinity seems defined by echo. Whether the Vienna Boys Choir or monks chanting away on some chart climbing CD, the hallowed always seems to abide in the province of the hollow. The reason for this is not too complex. An echo, while implying enormity of a space, at the same time also defines it, limits it, and even temporarily inhabits it.
When a pebble falls down a well, it is gratifying to hear the eventual plunk. If, however, the pebble only slips into darkness and vanishes without a sound, the effect is disquieting. In the case of a verbal echo, the spoken word acts as the pebble and the subsequent repetition serves as “the plunk.” In this way, speeking can result in a form of “seeing.”
While this is not the place to dwell on the beautiful and complex properties of reflection, in order to even dimly comprehend the shape of this narrative it is still critical to recognize how the laws of physics in tandem with echo’s mythic inheritance serve to enhance echo’s interpretive strength.
The descriptive ability of the audible is easily designated with the following formula:
Sound + Time = Acoustic Light
As most people know who are versed in this century’s technological effects, exact distances can be determined by timing the duration of a sound’s round trip between the deflecting object and its point of origin. This principle serves as the basis for all the radar, sonar, and ultrasonics used every day around the world by air traffic controllers, fishermen, and obstetricians. By using sound or electromagnetic waves, visible blips may be produced on a screen, indicating either a 747, a school of salmon, or the barely pumping heart of a fetus.
Of course echolocation has never belonged exclusively to technology. Microchirotera (bats), Cetacean (porpoises and toothed whales), Delphinis delphis (dolphins) and other animals all use sound to create extremely accurate acoustic images. However, unlike their human counterparts, neither bats nor dolphins require an intermediary screen to interpret the echoes. They simply “see” the shape of sound.
Bats, for example, create frequency modulated [FM] images by producing constant-frequency signals [0.5 to 100+ ms] and FM signals [0.5 to 10 ms] in their larynx. The respondent echoes are then translated into nerve discharges in the auditory cortex, enabling the bat not only to determine an insect’s velocity and direction (through synaptic interpretation of Doppler shifts) but pinpoint its location to within a fraction of a millimeter.
As Michael J. Buckingham noted in the mid-80s, imaging performed by the human eye is neither active nor passive. The eye does not need to produce a signal to see nor does an object need to produce a signal in order to be seen. An object merely needs to be illuminated. Based on these observations, the already mentioned formula reflects a more accurate understanding of vision with the following refinement:
Sound + Time = Acoustic Touch
As Gloucester murmured, “I see it feelingly.”
Unfortunately, humans lack the sophisticated neural hardware present in bats and whales. The blind must rely on the feeble light of fingertips and the painful shape of a cracked shin. Echolocation comes down to the crude assessment of simple sound modulations, whether in the dull reply of a tapping cane or the low, eerie flutter in one simple word – perhaps your word – flung down empty hallways long past midnight.
The study of architectural acoustics focuses on the rich interplay between sound and interior design. Consider, for example, how an enclosed space will naturally increase sound pressure and raise the frequency. Even though they are usually difficult to calculate, resonance frequencies, also known as eigenfrequencies or natural frequencies, can be easily determined for a perfectly rectangular room with hard, smooth walls.
The following formula describes the resonance frequencies <[i>f] in a room with a length of L, width of W, and height of H, where the velocity of sound equals c:
f = c /2 <[/b>( n /L) 2 + ( m /W) 2 + ( p /H) 2 ] 1/2 Hz
Notice that if L, W, and H all equal infinity, f will equal 0.
Along with resonance frequencies, the study of sound also takes into account wave acoustics, ray acoustics, diffusion, and steady-state pressure level, as well as sound absorption and transmission through walls. A careful examination of the dynamics involved in sound absorption reveals how incident sound waves are converted to energy. (In the case of porous material, the subsurface lattice of interstices translates sound waves into heat.) Nevertheless, above and beyond the details of frequency shifts and volume fluctuations – the physics of ‘otherness’ – what matters most is a sound’s delay.
Point of fact, the human ear cannot distinguish one sound wave from the same sound wave if it returns in less than 50 milliseconds. Therefore for anyone to hear a reverberation requires a certain amount of space. At 68 degrees Fahrenheit sound travels at approximately 1,130ft per second. A reflective surface must stand at least 56 1/2 ft away in order for a person to detect the doubling of her voice.
In other words, to hear an echo, regardless of whether the eyes are opened or closed, is to already have “seen” a sizable space.
Myth makes Echo the subject of longing and desire. Physics makes Echo the subject of distance and design. Where emotion and reason are concerned both claims are accurate.
And where there is no Echo there is no description of space or love.
There is only silence.
Mah hah bone.
Echo and Narcissus
^AKA Woody Speaks Out^
You MUST watch this.
Don't worry, it's short & deep.
Click the flying Christopher Walken
to witness his finest achievement.