Michael Flynn with his “cooperative phonograph” on Main Street in Chelsea, Michigan for the Sounds and Sights Festival on July 27, 2013. (Photographs by the writer.)

However, in the last couple of weeks, we’ve published two pieces that have included supplementary audio files. One was a write-up of a Ward 3 Ann Arbor city council candidate forum. The audio in that case served the purpose of grounding possible conversation about a she-said-he-said accusation in the actual facts of what-he-said.

The second one was a piece by regular columnist David Erik Nelson – about interviewing Noam Chomsky in the bar of the Campus Inn. The audio in that case served in part to provide a literal sense of what Chomsky “sounds like.” Just as a side note, I would argue that Nelson’s written treatment of the interview actually offers higher fidelity than the audio.

Today’s monthly milestone column also includes some audio. It was recorded from a roughly four-foot diameter “cooperative phonograph” fabricated out of stainless steel by local Ann Arbor inventor/artist Michael Flynn. Flynn had the phonograph on display last Saturday at Chelsea’s Sounds and Sights Festival.

Flynn was set up on Chelsea’s Main Street, just south of the iconic clock tower. He invited passers-by to use cards as “needles” to pick up the sounds from the ridges that he has cut into the edges of the metal disk.

I enjoyed watching as skeptical expressions from parents and kids dissolved into delight – as they discovered how the cards they were holding against the spinning platter were somehow generating music and words.

But an expression of delight won’t pay Flynn’s bills. The work of art took him over four years to develop – and he took on debt to make it possible. So Flynn is looking to sell the phonograph and to make more of them for sale – as a piece of public art or an interactive museum exhibit. That is how Flynn earns his livelihood.

As I watched kids and parents take their turns holding their cards against the edge of the rotating disk, the resulting sounds varied – depending on the size of the card, how tightly it was held, the card’s angle against the grooved metal edge, and a host of other factors unique to the person holding the card.

That struck me as a rough analog to The Chronicle’s journalistic enterprise: We are in the business of creating a permanent record – like Flynn’s phonograph. But in the eye and the mind of different readers, the sound that comes out of The Chronicle will vary. If we’re doing our job well, that variance should, I think, be relatively small.

Compared to human memory, the advantage of The Chronicle’s record is that it’s publicly accessible to anyone with a connection to the Internet or who has a friend with a printer.

She Said He Said

Let’s start with some political noise. Julie Grand asserted during a recent Ward 3 city council candidate forum, hosted by the League of Women Voters, that her opponent, incumbent Stephen Kunselman, had admitted he didn’t come to city council meetings prepared. She indicated to The Chronicle subsequently that she’d been referring to remarks made at a previous forum hosted by the Ann Arbor Democratic Party.

I don’t doubt that Grand’s inner phonograph needle, when dropped onto her mental record of the occasion, played a tune that sounded like an admission by Kunselman. Yet that didn’t square up with my own memory of the forum – and The Chronicle’s report of that occasion didn’t include such an admission.

But just because some remarks don’t appear in a Chronicle report doesn’t mean they weren’t made. So I tracked down an audio recording of the Democratic Party forum, which shows that Grand’s claim about Kunselman’s remarks wasn’t accurate – judged against the standard of the words Kunselman actually spoke on the recording.

I think the analysis of what Kunselman said is simpler if it’s reduced to some example sentences that don’t involve city council politics or the word “admit” – which has its own interesting semantics. (More about the idea of using example sentences in a minute.)

Let’s assume that (1) is true. Now we check to see if (2) or (3) follow from (1).

(1) John said, “I put the $20 bill in my pocket.”

(2) John said that he put the $20 bill in his pocket.

(3) John said that he stole $20.

Even the fanciest semantic analysis – relying on the distinction between extensional and intensional contexts – will boil down to the same thing: Putting $20 in your pocket doesn’t mean the same thing as stealing $20. So while (2) follows from (1), it’s not the case that (3) follows from (1).

For all we know, the $20 bill might belong to John in the first place. And that would make (3) false for two reasons – because there was not any actual event of stealing and John, in any case, didn’t talk about stealing. To claim (3), you’d need access to facts other than those presented in (1).

We’ll continue to strive at The Chronicle to write sentences like (2) based on sentences like (1).

Example Sentences

I appeal to example sentences out of a habit I’ve not shed from linguistics graduate school. The custom in linguistics of employing such sentences is evident in the transcript of Nelson’s interview with Noam Chomsky, which I mentioned earlier. The linguist Chomsky provided (4) as illustrating an important insight into human language – that “closeness” of words, measured by linear order, is trumped by structural relations.

(4) Eagles that fly swim.

Chomsky pointed out that when the word “can” is added to the beginning of the sentence, as in (5), it becomes a question about the ability to swim, not the ability to fly, even though the word “can” is closer to “fly” measured by linear order.

(5) Can eagles that fly swim?

Chomsky’s point is that linear order is not a part of the computational system for human language, but rather an artifact of the way we express thoughts, because “whatever’s going on in our minds has to work its way through the sensory-motor system to get outside.”

Frankly, I don’t remember enough about theories of syntax to be able to say how the following two sentences relate to Chomsky’s claim about linear order:

(6) All you need is love.

(7) Love is all you need.

But examples (6) and (7) actually loop us back to Michael Flynn’s phonograph. One of the tracks Flynn has machined into the metal surface is his own voice saying, “Love is all you need.”

Last Saturday, a father and little girl in Chelsea listened to the repeated phrase, “Love is all you need, love is all you need, love is all you need …” coming from Flynn’s phonograph. The dad gave her a kiss on the cheek and told her, “All you need is love.”

For now I’m counting that as rock-solid evidence that for language, linear order doesn’t matter.

Likewise, the kiss – whether it’s planted on the cheek of your loved one or on The Chronicle – can come before or after the words. [.mp3 of cooperative phonograph]

Closeup of the sound waves machined into the edge of the disk.

A crowd gathers around Michael Flynn’s phonograph at the Chelsea Sounds and Sights Festival. Flynn is standing behind the disk.

A youngster plays music on Michael Flynn’s phonograph at the Chelsea Sounds and Sights Festival.

Dave Askins is editor of The Ann Arbor Chronicle. For the first four years of publication, a milestone column was published every month in The Chronicle. Now the column is only an occasional feature. When the milestone column does appear, it’s on the second day of the month – to mark the anniversary of The Ann Arbor Chronicle’s Sept. 2, 2008 launch. It’s an opportunity for either the publisher or the editor of The Chronicle to touch base with readers on topics related to this publication. It’s also a time that we highlight, with gratitude, our local advertisers, and ask readers to consider subscribing voluntarily to The Chronicle to support our work – because we need more than just love.

The ferrofluid in Michael Flynn’s Magnetoscope forms spiky columns in response to the interplay between magnetic fields and gravity.

In Flynn’s backyard, the inspector had just signed off on the packed sand for a concrete pour that will become the floor of Flynn’s new laboratory space.

So what sort of stuff does Flynn invent? And is there any money in that?

From now through Mother’s Day, visitors to Ann Arbor’s Hands-On Museum can have a look and touch for themselves. That’s where Flynn’s Magnetoscope will be on display. The Magnetoscope exhibit illustrates how ferrofluid – oil, plus iron oxide particles, plus a surfactant – interacts with the forces of magnetic fields and gravity to create spiky columns out of an black pool of liquid. Visitors can manipulate the magnetic fields by cranking a red or a blue magnet closer or further away from the pool of ferrofluid.

At the Hands-On Museum, Flynn’s Magnetoscope is surrounded by red and blue stools that match the red and blue magnets of the display. But the stools aren’t a part of the exhibit. Flynn said that Carol Knauss, who he described as the museum’s director of visitor experience, had matched them up with the exhibit from a set of stools that John Bowditch, director of exhibits, had built. The stools are built with an extra heavy base, to prevent them from tipping over from the force of active kids.

As we were poking around with Flynn in his current backyard laboratory space – a shed-like structure crammed with suitcases of tools and in-progress work – he mentioned that it was exactly a year ago to the day (May 3-4) that Flynn’s Magnetoscope enjoyed its world premiere. The occasion was the Maker Faire in San Francisco. Flynn said that the director of San Franscisco’s Exploratorium had seen it there and had expressed an interest in possibly helping to produce more Magnetoscopes.

The installation of Flynn’s Magnetoscope at the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum is supplied with matching stools built by the museum’s director of exhibits, John Bowditch.

But at that point, Flynn said, the device had no patent protections and he was thus a little reluctant to enter into any kind of business partnership. Now that the device enjoys a pending patent, he’s far more open to the possibility of partnering with someone to produce more of these devices. Licensing the design is one possibility.

But what he’s working on right now is producing at least one more – a production model as contrasted with the prototype that visitors to the Hands-On Museum will see.  What qualifies that one a prototype?

Flynn explained that one example is the openings in the metal, which he hand-routered for that model, but which will be machined with a computer-driven mill on the production model. Another example: The clear plastic hemispheres bolted around the ferrofluid chamber had their bolt holes drilled pretty evenly spaced around the perimeter.

But “pretty evenly” isn’t exact. Though any unevenness isn’t really apparent to the naked eye, the fact that the spacing isn’t dead-on exact means that the holes have to be indexed so that if it needs to be taken apart for cleaning (or if a kid inadvertently gouges a scratch in one), it can be re-assembled easily. For the production model, the holes will be spaced exactly so that the parts will be completely interchangeable.

The other part of the business end of things is selling that production model. To that end, Flynn has been shopping the Magnetoscope around. The Hands-On Museum is a part of that effort. Before the Hands-On exhibit, the device was on display at the Ann Arbor Public Library.  It’s also been at the University of Michigan Work Gallery in Detroit, as well as Lansing’s Impression 5 Science Center.

Flynn has created a video about the exhibit, but says there’s nothing like experiencing it hands on. Next up after Ann Arbor’s Hands-On Museum is the Cincinnati Museum Center as well as the Boonschoft Museum of Discovery in Dayton.

A closeup of the Magnetoscope in action.

In Flynn’s left hand is a lithium ion battery he’s scavenged, which he’ll be using to power a brushless motor, which will power a bicycle. The idea is to either make it go faster (40 mph) or allow it to haul heavy loads.

Flynn in front of his current laboratory space.  At right is the foundation of the new building ready for the concrete pour.

“Everybody should use suitcases to organize their tools,” says Flynn. He likes the fact that they’re lightweight, and they’re just the right scale – about the right amount of stuff you can lift.

What goes in a suitcase with that kind of label?

Inside “Destructo.”

Flynn explains how his demonstration steam engine works. The water chamber is the downward-extending pipe, which gets heated with a blowtorch. The steam comes out of the hole next to his left-index finger.