In the late 1950s, Haverford physics professor T. A. Benham used amateur radio equipment to track the earliest Russian and U.S. efforts to propel satellites–and eventually living beings–into space. Benham was a trailblazer in adaptive sound technologies for the blind; he worked with the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), corresponded with John Cage, and developed critical techniques and equipment to teach physics using hearing and touch. In Voices of the Satellites (1958), Benham describes his use of radio frequencies to measure the speed and distance of orbiting spacecraft. Nestled in the series of recordings that Benham made of satellite radio signals, we can also hear the heartbeat of Laika–a Russian cosmo-dog who flew to space on the Sputnick 2–as it pounds, settles, and slows. (The same year that Laika went to space, self-trained engineer Walt Fields–my grandfather–went to work for RCA at Cape Canaveral, FL, using radio signals to track satellites and early manned and unmanned spacecraft. Maybe he also listened for Laika.) Laika died on the satellite’s fourth orbit. This set sits with the still-reverberating rhythm of her heart, and with the resonances of Benham’s Cold War-era experimental sound project. What do we hear when we listen to Laika’s heart in space, and to the satellite that carried it, from the site where Benham recorded them?
–Lindsay Reckson
Now in its fourth year, VCAMbient is an opportunity for students, staff, faculty, and guests to fill the cavernous space of VCAM with their favorite sounds–at a volume that permits the ongoing business of teaching, learning, and working in the building. Make a Spotify playlist, or better yet, bring an instrument, start playing/streaming, and see what happens. You can have a theme, or the theme can simply be "stuff I like."
Contact HCAH & VCAM Associate Director James Weissinger to sign up for your VCAMbient set! jweissin@haverford.edu
