Voight-Kampff machine

The Voight-Kampff machine or device is a fictional tool originating in Philip K Dick's science fiction novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?". Spelled Voigt-Kampff in the book, it also appeared in the book's screen adaptation, the 1982 film "Blade Runner".

Operation

The Voight-Kampff is a polygraph-like machine used in the film by Blade Runner units to assist in the testing of an individual to see if he or she is a replicant. It measures bodily functions such as respiration, "blush response", heart rate and eye movement in response to emotionally provocative questions.

cquote|Capilary dilation of the so called blush response... fluctuation of the pupilInvoluntary dilation of the iris ::::-Eldon Tyrell

In the film two replicants take the test: Leon (played by Brion James) and Rachael (played by Sean Young). In "Blade Runner", Deckard tells Tyrell that it usually takes 20 to 30 cross-referenced questions to distinguish a replicant. With Rachael it takes more than one hundred. This should be contrasted to the book where it is stated it only takes "six or seven" questions to make a determination.

In popular culture

* In the second episode of the tenth season of "Stargate SG-1", the character Vala Mal Doran takes a psychological profile test. Before the test she was practicing and came across the tortoise question ("You're in the desert, you see a tortoise lying on its back, struggling, and you're not helping -- why is that?") which is originally from the film's Voight-Kampff test given to Leon. Her answer to the question would have been "Because I am "also" a tortoise". In another episode (4x05, Divide and Conquer), the iris analysis while a series of questions are being asked was incorporated as a device to detect whether a person has been programmed with an assassination command. In the episode "Absolute power (4x17)," the zatarc detector used by the Tok'ra Aldwin resembles the Voight-Kampff machine.

* In the 2000 movie "6th Day", a holographic "virtual psychiatrist" starts to ask the main character some questions, one of which regards visualizing a turtle in the desert, a reference to the Voigt-Kampff test taken by the replicant Leon.

ee also

*Android
*Replicant
*Sentience
*Machine intelligence
*Lie detector
*Dystopia
*Turing test

References

*"Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner" by Paul Sammon (Orion, 2004) ISBN 0-7528-0740-4
*"Retrofitting Blade Runner: Issues in Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" and Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" " by Judith Kerman (Popular Press, 2003) ISBN 0-87972-510-9

External links

* [http://www.devo.com/bladerunner/sector/2/voight.html Voight-Kampff entry - Official Blade Runner online magazine]
* [http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=126 Excerpt describing the machine from "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"]