Weird Science Project Two: Liz Bailey was able to contact Tesla through radio frequencies and the turbulence created by her own psychic resonance. It seems that Liz is mysteriously connected to the history of the radio as evidenced by her birthplace near Edison, and her next home town near the Marconi Tower in Sea Bright, NJ. She was unaware that the radio history was calling to her until she read Rushdie's Midnight's Children.

The object you thought you knew: changing radio.

I was inspired by several books in the creation of my second project (which at the time mostly involved a speech about the controversial and 'weird science' aspects of radio history as it relates to me). The books most important to the creation of this project are:
Avital Ronell's The Telephone Book: Technology--Schizophrenia--Electric Speech and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children.
Ronell's text inspired me to reexamine an object that we take for granted in everyday life and try to rediscover the people and struggles that are still present in its many incarnations. I think that the turbulence found in the patent process of the radio is perhaps similar to many other invented object, but I certainly did not expect to find out that Tesla considered to object to be a work of art rather than a true 'invention.' The connection between art and science is of course one of the main elements of all of my projects so it was quite interesting to see Tesla's own thoughts collided with mine!

Rushdie's text tells the story of an individual called Saleem who ironically and even humorously comes to find that he is connected with the fate of India. His nose (yes, his nose) has supernatural powers (powers obtained by being born at the stroke of midnight!) allowing him to telepathically connect with other people. He connects with the other midnight's children to create a sort of copy of the "All-India-Radio." The connections between this text and my second project are awesome: Tesla was born at "the stroke of midnight." Did Rushdie know this fact? I am still trying to find some evidence that Rushdie may have know this and deliberately given his main character 'supernatural powers' of mental radio in a sort of copy of Tesla.

The text of my own life helped to direct my second project. I was born near Edison, NJ where two things happened: Edison had his laboratory where Tesla first worked and then got ripped off (no ten Gs for you, buddy) AND the a filming of Frankenstein was shot here and in NY (blocks away from my father's first business branch). It was a silent film that links Tesla to Frankenstein (a major theme of my first project)--Edison reportedly based his Frankenstein upon his hated rival and ex-worker Tesla!

I then moved to another area in NJ which is miles away from Marconi Tower, the radio tower of Tesla's second nemesis. I used to go to the tower every month or so for the view, never realizing that all the while Tesla was trying to tell me something...

All of this came together in a sort of explosion after I bought my first radio for the project. I had thought of listening to radio and coming up with a fake broadcast, but then I decided to tie together Rushdie, Ronell, and my life to bring out the history of the radio and Tesla's own life. I had never before known of the scientist named Tesla who had inventions to radical for his own time; who thought of his creations as art; who had all his papers confiscated by the government after his death; who liked the number three...

In the middle of my project, I realized that I was not the only one who was (re)discovering Tesla: Scientific American had just released a cover article on him!