Wolfgang von Kempelen, scholar and administrator in the court of Maria Theresia, left many humble traces in history, the most memorable of which are his Talking Machine and his chess-playing android. In 1769, Ke pelen presented a mechanical chess-player, dressed in an oriental costume. The ‘Chess Turk' became one of the great technical sensations of the 18th century. However, only ostensibly had an automaton taken control of rationality, for on the inside, a man was hidden. In contrast, Kempelen 's Talking Machine was based on the ideas of enlightenment and was supposed to give an audible voice to deaf people. The construction resembled the human apparatus of articulation, and Kempelen's 1791 publication about the mechanism of human speech marked the beginnings of experimental acoustics. The event mainly revolves around the presentation of the ‘Kempelen Box’ with reconstructions of both machines, which were developed and built at the University of Applied Art Vienna between 1999 and 2001.