EVP
While not personally sure if I believe in EVP, Galileo's Grave cinematographer Stefani Foster and I took a road trip a few years ago and listened to the bizarre and sometimes hilarious show called AM Coast to Coast as we drove across Iowa late at night.
Some guests came on and played examples of EVP. After laughing for a few minutes, we soon found ourselves laughing less and less, listening harder and harder, with eyes that were opening wider and wider. And lots of goosebumps.
I liked the notion that Meg might find that making EVP recordings appealed to an intense curiosity, a fascination with old electronic gadgets, and walking through nature, all while providing an intense adrenaline rush - just the kind of energy Vic might be looking for.
- Clayton Brown, writer and director
In Galileo's Grave, Meg is obsessed with Electromagnetic Voice Phenomenon (also Electronic Voice Phenomenon or EVP).
EVP involves voices of the departed heard long after their host has died. Either transmitted from the beyond or captured in this world, these voices are generally believed to be electromagnetically transmitted - that is, not audible to human ears but detectable by analog audio tape, a magnetic medium.
Some people believe EVP can be captured using any audio media, including digital recording, cell phones, and computers. Some proponents search for voices in static. EVP are usually short, lasting the length of a word or phrase.
Wikipedia entry (including information EVP's history and reasoning by supporters and detractors)
EVP Samples
American Association Electronic Voice Phenomena
The Shadowlands
Satellites
The Crashing of Galileo
Galileo Heads for Fiery Death: NASA Probe to Take Kamikaze Plunge into Jupiter aired on NPR on September 21, 2003
With that headline, how could you not be intrigued? We certainly were. Does the satellite know it is about to die? What is it saying? Would it feel betrayed? Or was it tired and glad to go?
Finding it difficult not to anthropomorphize Galileo as NASA plotted its demise, these questions and others like them eventually drove the Galileo's Grave script.
Simultaneously, we were fascinated by the idea that that "scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory...will listen in Sunday as the Galileo spacecraft sends its final signals." What would that moment be like? Who were we, as a civilization, that we could throw a satellite to Jupiter and crash it to avoid spreading germs to Europa? What world did we live in that something so bizarre could be possible?
Galileo's Grave evolved from that moment. If two people couldn't be brought together by listening to the last signal of Galileo, millions of miles away, on a tiny shortwave radio speaker, how could they?
Satellite Recordings
When Sputnik satellites began orbiting the earth in the 1950s, Americans felt chills going up and down their spines when they heard the satellites' "beep - beep - beep"
Then and today, amateur radio enthusiasts listen to satellites all the time. With hundreds orbiting the earth, a hobbyist can find and listen to them. Although the required equipment and technical knowledge involved can be quite sophisticated, books and websites give tips on how to find and listen to satellites.
Vic, another character in Galileo's Grave, spends hundreds of hours wearing his headphones, listening to sounds like these (perhaps to the detriment of his social skills).
General Information
Satellites for SWLs
The Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation