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Hello everyone,<br>
<br>
Fascinating thoughts so far, I'll see if I can add some noisy
interferences to the conversation.<br>
<br>
I'm with Michel Serres when he writes in <i>Genesis</i> that noise
is the background of the universe, and that the task is to describe
how the <i>rare</i> moments of order are made manifest. Thus while
there are arguments that noise is fundamentally anti-establishment +
that it needs to be corralled and controlled + that it is
fundamentally disruptive in a positive sense + that it is painful
and dangerous + that we should celebrate it in the sounds of warfare
+ that we can control it + that we can easily separate a signal out
of it + that we should valorize the "natural" above it + that it has
more information than signal + that it can break us out of
cybernetic ruts...I agree with David that we ask a lot of noise. I'm
content to try and follow the machinations of noise as a material
property of the world, seeing how it continually exceeds our
abilities to pin it down.<br>
<br>
One of the things that I've written about in the past is the role of
noise in financial markets, which was published in my book <i>How
Noise Matters to Finance</i>. The "matters" part of the title
matters, drawing from Jane Bennett and Karen Barad. I followed how
noise (sonic and informatic) came to be a matter of concern to
finance, as financial economists realized that they had to take into
account the noisy behavior of markets that exceeded their bounded
equations. Thus the shouts of the trading floor could be used to
predict how the market might move, or algorithms could attempt to
disrupt other algorithms through spoofing and creating fake, noisy
trades. A few years ago there were some left accelerationist
arguments that suggested that the noisy behaviors of algorithms
would potentially cause the markets to fail, spiraling downward,
thus precipitating the development of whatever comes "after"
capitalism. But as I looked into the markets more deeply, I saw that
for every algorithm that tries to pull the market down, there's
another that tries to pull it back up. So every automated "crash" of
the market is followed by an automated recovery. Noise can't be
counted on to disrupt the market, as the market is fundamentally
built upon a negative feedback (stabilizing) system that was
championed by Norbert Wiener so many decades ago, as opposed to a
positive feedback system (disruptive) that would potentially spiral
downwards or upwards out of control. Noise in the market becomes
something that can be fed upon in small, minuscule, perturbatory
doses.<br>
<br>
Of course noise has its uses, as many of us know and have been
involved in over the past decades. Sometimes these uses are for
liberatory ends, and sometimes they are not. We can shout and be
disruptive and be heard. We can upload alternative ideas and
obfuscate. We can let the speaker cabinet rattle our bones as we are
lost in euphoria of the electronic sounds, or lose our hearing as we
are blasted by the LRAD. We can create hoaxes or fake news. We can
get a reporter to say that Dow will pay for the Bhopal disaster, or
that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, or that a certain pizza
joint in Washington, DC is a den of villainy. I think it behooves
us, during a moment where many call for "authenticity" and for a
distinction between "fake" and "real" news, to ask what might be
lost as we try and scrub our media of noise. Who gets to make the
distinction between signal and noise? What powers are reinforced as
we aim for authenticity? This is not a call for anything goes
relativism. Rather it's a call for skepticism in the face of
attempts to stabilize the boat. Noise has a way of overflowing it.
Might we be better served in learning ourselves, and educating
others, in how to follow the machinations of noise? <br>
<br>
Best,<br>
<br>
Nick<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 3/19/2018 11:05 PM, Noralyn Neumark
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:084C8AE9-035B-4568-A6E0-EA1639D53B88@mac.com">
<pre wrap="">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------</pre>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -70.1pt;">Hi Junting and
all</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -70.1pt;">Thanks for
inviting me into this fascinating discussion. I’d like to
provide a bit of background to my thinking and work with noise —
from the 90s to present day. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -70.1pt;">(Sorry the
formatting seems to have gone a bit dirty… no sooner spoken of
than enacted!)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -70.1pt;">Noise first
appealed to me as a dirty antidote to ‘modern’ aesthetics of
clean, bright, white, mono-cultural future and all the
ecological and political problems that has evoked. In the sound
world that included the early digital promises of ‘clean’ sound.
Historically cleanliness has been a way to distinguish the
clean, white, proper, and quiet bourgeois self from the dirty,
messy noisy, carnally excessive, sexually out of control working
class and colonials (great book about this was Peter Stallybrass
and Allon White, <i class="">The Politics and Poetics of
Transgression</i> l986). I liked how this history
complicated the pleasures and political effects of "clean"
sound. Perhaps someone might comment too on the cultural
specificity of this take on dirt and noise – a Chinese friend of
mine in Australia pointed out to me that where she came from
noise is a sign of happiness and prosperity.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -70.1pt;"><o:p class=""></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One of the things I got interested in to
listen differently, in a more messy and polyphonic way, was
alchemy – a practice of knowing and doing. Looking into the
seven gates of the alchemical process, I really responded to
putrefaction: putrefaction and fermentation. The moment of
putrefaction is bodily. All your senses are assaulted. This is
a moment resonant with Julia Scher’s “dirty data” (1995 <i
class="">Danger Dirty Data </i><a
href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/54044338?q&versionId=67005692"
class="" moz-do-not-send="true">https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/54044338?q&versionId=67005692</a> )
The alchemist smells decomposition, hears the noise of the dung
beetle, recalling the stench and noise of the transformative
process within ourselves. Putrefaction undoes the clean and
proper, noiseless bourgeois subject’s body.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p class=""></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It is during the <i class="">nigredo</i> of
alchemy, which might occur at any gate, that you come most
thoroughly and noisily unstuck. A moment of deepest despair so
familiar and resonant for most artists. You are plunged into
something awful, but essential. There is a raucous cacophony of
pain/noise -- beetles, ravens, green lions -- human/inhuman
caterwauling that echoes, redoubles and exceeds the noise of
Michel Serres in his most multiple unpredictable turbulent
moment. The <i class="">nigredo</i> is an intensity of
matter/ing, of meaning/meaninglessness, of noise and
information, an intensity so great and terrible that there is
nothing left but to do the Work. (I made a radio work with
Alchemy, <i class="">Separation Anxiety</i>, for ABC in
Australia and New American Radio in the US – that was a long
time ago but this discussion has made me think about it again
now.)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -70.1pt;"><o:p class=""></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I hadn’t thought about dirt much lately til
recently working with the ultimate decomposers/composers --
worms -- and attuning to a noisy collaborative voice together. <a
href="https://workingworms.net/" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">https://workingworms.net/</a> <a
href="https://vimeo.com/247735081" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">https://vimeo.com/247735081</a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p class=""></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In another register, recently as I’ve been
thinking about voice and new materialism I’ve been noticing the
voice of nausea – which recalls the opening points for this
month about noise and nausea. In <i class="">Voicetracks</i> I
wrote about Kathy High’s wonderful video work <i class="">Domestic
Vigilancia </i>from<i class=""> Everyday Problems of the
living</i> -- the voice of her vomiting cat that gave me so
much to think about. Since he alerted my senses and thinking to
the vomiting voice, I’m hearing it all over the media. Does
anyone have any ideas on why so many films have scenes of nausea
and vomiting lately? It’s like vomit has replaced sex as the
required transgressive gesture. The gut speaks…</p>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">all the best</div>
<div class="">Norie</div>
<div class=""><a href="http://www.out-of-sync.com" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">www.out-of-sync.com</a></div>
<div class=""><a href="https://workingworms.net/" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">https://workingworms.net/</a> </div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div>
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">On 19 Mar 2018, at 1:51 PM, Junting Huang <<a
href="mailto:jh2358@cornell.edu" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">jh2358@cornell.edu</a>> wrote:</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
<div class="">
<div class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned
space----------------------<br class="">
Thanks to Eleonora, Wenhua, and Joo Yun for your posts!
I’m sorry about the slow pace in the second week, but
please feel free to follow up on their posts anytime. The
annual meeting of Society for Cinema and Media Studies
ended today in Toronto, and we are back in week 3. I am
excited to introduce the guests for this week. They are
Nicholas Knouf, Norie Neumark, Ryan Jordan, Sarah Simpson,
and Gianluca Pulsoni.<br class="">
<br class="">
————————<br class="">
<br class="">
Nicholas Knouf<br class="">
<br class="">
Nicholas Knouf is an Assistant Professor of Cinema and
Media Studies at Wellesley College in Wellesley, MA. He is
a media scholar and artist researching noise,
interferences, boundaries, and limits in media
technologies and communication.<br class="">
<br class="">
His recent book, How Noise Matters to Finance (University
of Minnesota Press, 2016), traced how the concept of
“noise” in the sonic and informatic domains of finance
mutated throughout the late 20th century into the 21st.
His current research project, tentatively entitled At the
Limits of Understanding, listens to how we have tried to
communicate with both ghosts and aliens.<br class="">
<br class="">
His current artistic research explores the re-presentation
of signals from the cosmos. Projects in this vein include
they transmitted continuously / but our times rarely
aligned / and their signals dissipated in the æther
(2018-present), a 20 channel sound art installation with
speakers made from handmade abaca paper and piezo electric
elements, with sounds collected from satellite
transmissions; PIECES FOR PERFORMER(S) AND
EXTRATERRESTRIAL ENTITIES (2017-present), event scores
laser etched into handmade translucent abaca paper; and,
On your wrist is the universe (2017-present), generative
poetry about satellites and the cosmos for your
smartwatch.<br class="">
<br class="">
Norie Neumark <br class="">
<br class="">
Norie Neumark is a sound/media artist and theorist. Her
radiophonic works have been commissioned and broadcast in
Australia (ABC) and in the US. Her collaborative art
practice with Maria Miranda (<a
href="http://www.out-of-sync.com" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">www.out-of-sync.com</a>) has been
commissioned and exhibited nationally and internationally.
Her sound studies research is currently focused on voice
and the new materialist turn. Her latest writing on voice
is Voicetracks: Attuning to Voice in Media and the Arts
(MIT Press, 2017). She is an Honorary Professorial Fellow
at VCA and Emeritus Professor, La Trobe University,
Melbourne, and the founding editor of Unlikely: Journal
for Creative Arts. <a href="http://unlikely.net.au"
class="" moz-do-not-send="true">http://unlikely.net.au</a><br
class="">
<br class="">
Ryan Jordan<br class="">
<br class="">
Ryan Jordan creates powerful audio-visual performance
experiences explicitly attempting to access portals into
the psychedelic reality matrix. These are explored through
experiments in Possession Trance, retro-death-telegraphy,
hylozoistic neural computation and derelict electronics.
Recent projects include engram_extraction, a hypothetical
experiment into extracting and recording the biophysical
and/or biochemical imprints of events on memory; and
several failed attempts at breeding basilisks, mythical
reptiles with a lethal gaze or breath, hatched by a
serpent from a cock's egg. He disseminates these
experiments via his noise=noise / nnnnn platform for live
events and workshops currently based in Ipswich UK, and
via a PhD thesis being completed at the School Of Creative
Media in Hong Kong.<br class="">
<a href="http://ryanjordan.org/" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">http://ryanjordan.org/</a><br
class="">
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://nnnnn.org.uk/">http://nnnnn.org.uk/</a><br class="">
<br class="">
Sarah Simpson<br class="">
<br class="">
Sarah Simpson holds as Master's Degree in the History of
Art from University College London and a Bachelor's Degree
in both Art History and Archaeology from Cornell
University. Originally from Binghamton, NY, she currently
resides in Brooklyn, NY. Sarah has held a range of
positions in the art world including Curatorial Assistant,
Gallery Manager, and, most recently, Publicist. She's
worked in The Whitney Museum of American Art, BRIC, Didier
Aaron, and Blue Medium. Sarah has a personal blog, as
well, where she writes about exhibitions and theoretical
concepts that strike her interest, such as museum gift
shops (which are absolutely fascinating):
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://ecloart.wordpress.com/">https://ecloart.wordpress.com/</a> <br class="">
<br class="">
Gianluca Pulsoni<br class="">
<br class="">
Gianluca Pulsoni is a Ph.D. student in the Romance Studies
Department of Cornell University (Italian section). He
holds an MA in Cultural Anthropology from the University
La Sapienza in Rome, Italy, with a thesis on Gianikian and
Ricci Lucchi's cinema and exhibitions. He is a
contributing writer to the Italian newspaper, Il Manifesto
-- its cultural pages and weekly, Alias. Also, he has
experience working with digital companies and publishing
houses in Italy as editor and translator.<br class="">
<br class="">
all the best<br class="">
Junting<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
_______________________________________________<br
class="">
empyre forum<br class="">
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a><br class="">
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a></div>
</div>
</blockquote>
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empyre forum
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a></pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Nicholas A. Knouf, Ph. D.<br>
Assistant Professor, Cinema and Media Studies Program<br>
Wellesley College, 106 Central Street, Wellesley, MA 02481<br>
Office: JAC 357A Office Phone: 781.283.2105 Fax: 781.283.3647<br>
PGP: 0xAB50A0D9<br>
<em><a
href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/how-noise-matters-to-finance">How
Noise Matters to Finance</a></em> available now!</div>
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