Mind Webs - The Hall Of Machines

0:30Welcome to a half hour of Mindwebs. Short stories from the world's inspection. Michael Hansen speaking in a Mindwebs this evening, I do a story from the eye of the lens, a book by Lincoln Jones. It's called the Hall of Machines. Many great thinkers have attempted to analyze the nature of the hall. However, all they're different approaches to the world. The world's most important and most important is the fact that the world's most important is the world's most important and most important. The world's most important and most important is the world's most important. The world's most important and most important is the nature of the hall. However, all their different approaches have been characterized by lack of agreement, and often blatant contradiction of fact. The appearance of the hall is generally well known, but as soon as we try to unearth specific detail, we realize that all is conjecture. The hall is vast. We would expect the descriptions of its contents to vary.

1:32One person cannot be expected to cover the whole area of its interior. However, the other person cannot be expected to cover the whole area of its interior. However, there has been a great deal of superstitious rumor concerning its contents, and it's often difficult to separate the true from the Holy Felicius. There's been much conjecture concerning the size of the hall, but no results have actually been confirmed by any kind of measurement. It's been postulated by at least one writer that the hall is in fact infinite, inextent. Others no doubt influenced by exaggerated reports have maintained that the hall covers a variable area. Its size altering by a factor of at least 50. Other evidence however suggests that both of these ideas bear in all probability, little relationship to the facts. During the last few years, I found it a rewarding task to research all the material I could find that related in any way to the hall. The task has been determined to be a very simple task, and to be able to make sure that the whole area of the hall is in fact a very simple task. During the last few years, I found it a rewarding task to research all the material I could find that related in any way to the hall. The task has been difficult, but illuminating.

2:34I have now in my files a vast amount of information, in the form of books, articles, newspaper cuttings, recorded tapes, and movie films, as well as a large number of transcribed interviews, on a subject which I have found to become daily more, more fascinating. My research has become to a degree obsessional. I now find that my normal routine has been disturbed to quite a large extent over the last three years. I have devoted a complete room to this work. My ultimate intention being to shape the material into a comprehensive book. All over the wall are pinned to relevant newspaper cuttings, their arrangement depending on whichever aspect of the hall and currently researching. Set in the middle of the room is my movie projector. Frequently, I watch five hours of film that I've accumulated at one sitting, and beside it is the tape recorder. On tape I have a part from interviews in the commentaries, at least an hour of the recorded sounds of some of the machines actually in operation.

3:36I've taken these sounds down as accurately as possible into musical notation. I've permutated the resulting patterns of notes and I've found interesting relationships between the basic shapes, but as yet nothing more concrete. I now spend a large proportion of my day in carrying out this research. I sit four hours cutting out newspaper articles or developing film in the dark room I've constructed. And so with scissors, photographic chemicals, music paper, paste, tape recorder, and projector, I've built up a picture that is, it's far from complete, but is remarkable and it's specific to tale. I would now like to present some of the more striking of the descriptions I've under. They're not delivered in a planned order, but have been assembled to give rather than a dry academic account, a series of interesting impressions. I believe that one of the most fascinating aspects of the hall is in the diverse impressions

4:37it creates within the minds of the observers. When my book is complete, which will not be for some years, it'll run to at least five large volumes. I shall have sufficient confidence in the correctness of my results and also the scope to present them in the tale. Until then, these extracts are intended only to communicate the atmosphere of the hall as it appeared to some people. The Water Machine The trunks and gullies of the water machine extend over a large area of this section of the hall. Although it's enclosed by false walls of board, it still gives us sprawling impression. All about our convex metal surfaces. The floor is intersected by rundles and gullies. The water machine is constructed primarily of cast iron,

5:39but certain of its parts are made of a lighter metal, probably an alloy such as aluminum. The machine consists of a complexity of large components, which stretch probably 20 feet in height. The hall mass is supported by a surprisingly small number of slin metal struts. Water is being pumped in from a large pipe at the very top of the machine. It is conducted by a series of ingenious mechanical movements through a series of gullies and out of this part of the hall. I thought it likely that the water was moving in a large enclosed cycle and dropped into a nearby channel a small piece of white paper. As I suspected within about three minutes the paper came floating past my feet again. The noise of the water is almost definitely not times. Constantly there is the hissing of the jet at the top of the machine under brushing of the liquid as it bubbles its wave through its course. Also there is the loud creaking of the metal parts as they operate.

6:44Every few seconds there is an enormous crash, as a metal part is activated in the water, momentarily, we doubles its volume. Water drips constantly from the supporting members' gathers on the floor and runs down the slope toward the many drains. Concrete channels we've been graceful lines about my feet cast iron conduits curve in black rawness, globules of condensation running along their undersides. Situated at the top of the machine is the vast silver belly of the top water container spikyletan curved like a vast silver spoon. The lead-in pipe about six inches in diameter is pointing into the tank and a great jet of water like a column of glass is loosening into its interior. After a while the container begins to grow loudly. Suddenly the critical balance is attained.

7:46The groaning reaches a climax under the enormous weight of water and the tank begins to shudder under a volume of liquid that it is incapable of supporting. Overspills, slops to the floor and runs down to the square drains. Slowly, inch by inch, the tank begins to pit its mast balls. Water spills over its thick pouring liquid falls in a clasening ribbon into a reservoir a couple of yards below. The tank begins to accelerate its rate of movement and more water gushes down. Faster moves the container and then with a crash it inverts itself. A solid mass of water falls into the reservoir and the ground shudders with the impact. The container, meanwhile, is pulled back to a creaking vertical by a counterweight. Water leaks from the reservoir, jetting out with great force from a circle of six holes at its convex base.

8:48These six separate streams are all conducted by diverse methods to the ground. One of the streams gushes into a smaller version of the water barrel. Another enters one of the hinged containers at between the double rim of a large wheel. It's weight causing the wheel to rotate slowly. After a quarter revolution, the container will snag on a projection and tip up, letting the water escape into one of the channels. Another stream strikes a sprung flange which bounces constantly in and out of the flow. The other end of the flange operating the mechanism like the escapement of a clock. All the streams eventually reach the dark channels or wells at concrete set in the floor and are then conducted away from sight through holes set in the surrounding walls. Behind the wall can be heard the sound of great pumps. Up above I know of Poughton his plane.

9:50The machine's a movement. I was passing through a rather enclosed part of the hall now. Its spaciousness, not apparent owing to the large bulk of the partitions and closing various machines when I passed the small wooden doorway, set into one of the partitions. On the door was a plaque printed black on white. It said interlocking machine room. On entering the room I found it to be full of giant metal crabs. Great struts of thin metal rod criss crosses from ceiling to floor, making it impossible to see very far into this room. The very air shutters with the vibration of these machines. Although the construction is very considerably one from the other, a large number of them have the same basic shape. Their nucleus is a mass of rods and other interlocking numbers and they stand about ten feet high.

10:55The arrangement of these rods is infinitely complex. At their apex they are thickly composed and are surrounded by other parts that join them and permit their motion. They branch out and at floor level each machine covers a considerable area. All the legs of these machines are connected by free moving joints to the legs of the other units. And a movement of one causes an adjustment to the position of the other. The whole room is in motion and the machines twitch each other with an action that appears almost classive as in nature. A rod near me is moved by the action of a neighbor's leg. This movement is communicated at the top of the unit to another of the legs. And it's in turn in parts motion to a machine still further away. As these machines work, a constant metallic clattering fills the air as if the room is filled with typewriters.

11:57The machines are slick and oiled. Their movement is smooth but gives an impression of great nervousness. All over this chamber are various other parts, all of which seem affected in some way by the movement of the rods. On the wall near me is fixed a plaque with a jointed arm extending from it. Tought wires radiate from either extremity into these skeletal gray. One end is angled up the other down. As the wire of the higher end is pulled by some motion in the mass of interlocking parts, the arm reverses its position, jerkyly. Perhaps a million years ago these machines were constructed in a delicate static balance of frozen wave. And with the locking of the final link in the circuit, the fixing of the last jointed leg against leg, the balance was tripped. A motion would have run its path twisting and turning about the machines, splitting itself dividing again until today this movement still ran about the constructions, the fused and un-bredicable.

13:04A million strands of current still splitting. And perhaps the machines had been so carefully designed that in another million years all the currents would begin to amalgamate, becoming less and less complex until they finally became two, meeting an opposition and deadlock all movement ceasing. The mind drowns among the interlocking machines. Perhaps the reason is in the similarity of the subtract maze to that pattern formed by the neural current. Perhaps these patterns of motion parallel to closely the patterns of electricity that we call personality, and the one is disturbed by the other. Conversely, perhaps the very existence of a human mind in the room causes little at ease and worlds in the motion of the machines. I was unable to stay in the interlocking machine room for more than a minute or two before the psychological effects became more than I could bear.

14:09The clock. A large number of the machines in the hall are partitioned off by boards so that one often feels that one is walking in a constricted space and loses completely the feeling of a density that one often experiences in the hall. It was in such a place that I found set against one wall, the mechanism of an enormous clock. It was all of shining brass and it stood no less than ten feet high. It was facing the wall, the dials and hands if in fact any such existed being completely invisible. The clock was triangular in shape and supported by a framework of sturdy brass front and back, brass that curved down to provide four feet. There was no plate at the back of the clock, its arbor is being seated in strips of brass that curved in beautiful shapes from the main framework.

15:09Despite the largeness of the clock, it was built to delicate proportions. The wheels were all narrow rimmed and the pallets that engaged the escape wheel were long and curved like the fingernails of a woman. It was as if the mechanism of an ordinary domestic clock had been magnified to a great degree. There was none of these solidity and conversiveness of the turret clock here. I discovered to my surprise that this clock was powered as most domestic clocks by a spring. However, this spring was immense and must have exerted a tremendous pressure to operate the mechanism. Although the whole movement was surmounted by the escape wheel and anchor which perched on the apex of the triangle, the pendulum was disproportionately short, stretching down a little more than six feet. The slow tick of this enormous clock was lacking in the lower partials and as a consequence was not disturbing.

16:10As the clock was so large, motion could be seen among the wheels which moved each to a varying degree with each tick of the clock. This was a fascinating sight and I stayed watching the clock for a considerable period of time. I wish that I could have seen the clock illuminated by a strong morning sunlight from a window. A machine of death. There is darkness in this part of the hall. Straight light illuminates black, pitted metal. I can see little of the machine of death. It is to my right and is a bleak, high wall of metal. The end of a thick chain extrudes here, turns and punches back into the metal wall. The chain is a foot wide and four inches thick. The only other feature of this machine is a waste pipe which is sticking out from the wall. Underneath this pipe is a channel set in the floor which conducts the waste to a nearby drain.

17:20The all pervasive stink of this drain makes breathing difficult. The pipe is pouring blood into the channel. The next machine is the mother. This machine is standing in isolation surrounded by space on all sides. It is extremely large, standing almost a hundred feet high. It is shaped like any elongated onion tapering at the top to a high spire. From one side of the machine from about ten feet up, a flexed rubbery tube hangs down and outward to a ground level. The onion belly of the mother is completely featureless and light catches its curves, the tube is of a dull red shade. There are sounds coming from inside the metal body, soft but constant. But then abruptly they stop and all is silent.

18:24At the top of the tube a bulge becomes apparent swelling outward all the time. Slowly this bulge begins to travel inside the tube away from the machine and down to the ground. While all of this is going on one obtains an impression of supreme effort and strangely pain. Perhaps it is because the whole process is so slow. The object creeping down the tube will eventually reach the end and emerge into the light. One realizes this and feels in almost clustered with public impatience with the slowness of the event. There is a feeling also of compression and relaxation and one finds one's own muscles clenching in time to the imagined contractions. Eventually the bulge reaches the end of the tube at ground level. This is where the wheel struggle begins. One becomes aware that the end of the tube is beginning to dilate slowly and rhythmically.

19:25The belly of the machine is as smooth and unifocative of any emotion as ever. But it is impossible for the observer not to feel that agonies are now being endured. One realizes that the process is completely irreversible, that there is no way of forcing the bulge back up the tube and inside the metal shell again. Wider and wider grows the aperture at the end of the tube, affording one an occasional glimpse of shiny moisture within. A blink of metal is now and then apparent. The tube dilates to its fullest extent and a metal form has suddenly revealed covered in gripping brown fluid. The rubber slides over its surface, releasing it more and more by the second. A abruptly adverse free and a wash of emniotic foil. All is still. The oil begins to drain away and the new machine stands there motionlessly as the liquid drains from its surfaces.

20:34It is a small mechanism on caterpillar tracks with various appendages at its front end. It seems to be designed for working metal or stone. With a word jerks into action and moves softly away from the great mother. There's a click from the parent machine and the noises inside begin again. I have watched this mechanism for long periods and it appears to create only two kinds of machine. They are both on the same basic design. But one appears to be made for erection, the other for demolition. The mother has probably been working with us for hundreds of years. Now electric machines stare at me with warm green eyes. I see nothing but bright plastic surfaces in set with pieces of glass. These are still machines active but unmoving and in my ears is the faint home of their life.

21:41The only movement here which indicates that the machines are in operation is the kicking of meters in the occasional jog of an empty tape spool. Their function is not apparent. They work here at the nameless tasks, performing them all with electronic precision and smoothness. There are wires all over this room and their bright primary colors contrast strikingly with the overall pastel tones of the plastic bodies. In a small chamber to the rear of the room of electric machines, there are some more of a different kind. The door to this small room is of wood. The square glass set into it. The room appears to have remained undisturbed for many years. They line three walls of the chamber and are covered with switches and meters. They home in strange configurations of sound and appear to be making electric music together.

22:44Death of machines won. In this part of the hall, all is still. Spiked mounds of time rise around the their hoax and crusted with brown decay. The floor is totally covered by a soft carpet of rust. Its accurate order stings the nostrils. A piece detaches itself from one of the tall machines and drifts to the floor of flake of time. Many such flakes have fallen here in this part of the hall. Time burns fire in my eyes and I turn my head looking for escape. But everywhere I see seconds and hours frozen into these red shapes, here is a wheel that's in completely eaten through. There are pistons that's movable parts now fixed in a mechanical rigor mortis. A wheel of wire has been thrown into a corner ages in the past and all that remain are at circular traces in the dust. My feet have left prints in the rust carpet.

23:47Death of machines too. I had come into the hall with my girl and we had spent a long time wandering about hand in hand when we suddenly came on the remains of a machine. It stood about six feet in height and I could see that at one time it had been of great complexity. For some reason my girl was not very interested and went off to see something else, but I found that this particular machine made me feel very sad. It appeared to be entirely composed of needles of metal arranged in a thick pattern. The largest of these needles was about three inches long and there appeared to be no way for the machine to hold together. My guess is that when it was made the needles were fitted in such a way that the whole thing is struck in internal balance. The machine was now a little more than a gossamer aware of rust. It must have had tremendous stability to have remained standing for such a long time.

24:49It was fascinating to look closely at its construction to see the red lines splitting together so densely. It was like looking into a labyrinth, a system of blood and red caves. With every movement of my head a whole new landscape was presented to me. I called my girl over and we stood hand in hand looking at the dead machine. I think that it must have been our body heat for neither of us made an excessive movement, but at that moment the entire construction creaked and sank a few inches. Then there was a sigh and the whole thing dissolved into dust about our feet. Both of us felt very subdued when we left the hall. I hope that the above information has enabled you to gain an impression of this very exciting hall. There is little that I can add except for the following point.

25:53You will remember from one of the accounts I gave you the one giving details of the creation of new machines, the following lessons. It is a small mechanism on caterpillar tracks with various appendages at its front end which seem to be designed for working metal or stone. It appears to create only two kinds of machine. One appears to be made for erection, the other for demolition. These two passages together with some material that I have not published suggest an interesting point. I believe that the machines mentioned here are the same as those described in another account in which the writers stood by one of the outer walls of the hall. He watched one set of machines building a wall about six inches further out than the old wall which was being torn down by the other mechanisms. This seems to be a process which is going on all the time, all over the hall.

26:55A new wall is built slightly further out and this in turn will be demolished as another wall is put up. I believe that the hall has been from the time of its creation and always will be increasing in size. However only more research will be able to establish this radical ideas and incontrovertible fact. The story tonight was the hall of the machines from the book The Eye of the Lens by Langen Jones. This is Michael Hansen speaking, production engineering for Mindwebs by Steve Gordon. Mindwebs is a production of WHA Radio and Madison, a service of university of Wisconsin Extension. The Eye of the Lens by Langen Jones.