2^nd Sep 2011

Messerschmitt

I recently screened my short film “Mini-Cars” in a garden behind the Danielle Arnaud Gallery. The film features Messerschmitt bubble cars along with Goggomobils, Peels, Trojans, Heinkels and various other miniature vehicles, two examples of which I once owned. To accompany the film I played a CD called “Messerschmitt” by Michael Esposito which employs recordings based on David John Oates’ experiments and theories of Reverse Speech Phenomena. The CD was released in 2010 by Firework Edition Records. Michael Esposito is a descendant of Alfred Vail who invented Morse Code and several early telegraph devices with his partner Samuel Morse. Another ancestor, Jonathan Vail was office manager and assistant to Thomas Edison in his later years when Edison attempted to develop a device for communicating with the dead. Over the years, under the Phantom Airwaves institution, Michael has participated in hundreds of paranormal investigations all over the world. He has conducted extensive research at many active locations and has developed a great deal of unique theory and devised many unique experiments within the field of Electronic Voice Phenomena which is basically the recording of inexplicable voices. Focusing primarily on EVP research, he has collected tens of thousands of EVPs and video. Working extensively with EVP’s relationship to experimental music, Michael combines EVP with field recording and related frequency tones of research sites. Michael is currently published by Touch Music UK. I’ve recently been in touch with Michael Esposito and hope to have him on as a guest probably in October. It is worth remembering that the Messerschmitt had a unique reversing system which involved stopping the engine and then turning the ignition key anti clockwise which restarts the engine in the opposite direction. For the skilful or foolhardy this offers the interesting possibility of travelling just as fast backwards as forwards because of course top gear can be engaged with the engine spinning in either direction.