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Murat, and others,<br>
<br>
Perhaps we are partially in agreement. I use the term noise to refer
to the fluctuations of the universe that are beyond our complete
understanding. And I believe that there will never be complete
understanding...we will never be able to predict, for example, the
exact movements of every leaf on a tree in the breeze, the exact
behavior of our cat, the exact results of a decision by a premier.
So "letting noise be noise" means learning to engage with these
unpredictable aspects of the world. Again, quoting Serres in <i>Genesis</i>:<br>
<br>
"Noise is a turbulence, it is order and disorder at the same time,
order revolving on itself through repetition and redundancy,
disorder through chance occurrences, through the drawing of lots at
the crossroads, and through the global meandering, unpredictable and
crazy." (59)<br>
<br>
Or:<br>
<br>
"A philosophy of communications conceives the message as order,
meaning or unit, but it also conceives the background noise from
which it emerges." (110)<br>
<br>
Or,<br>
<br>
"The cosmos is not a structure, it is a pure multiplicity of ordered
multiplicities and pure multiplicities. It is the global basis of
all structures, it is the background noise of all form and
information, it is the milky noise of the whole of our messages
gathered together. We must give it a new name, definitely: it is a
mixture, tiger-striped, motley, mottled, zebra streaked,
variegated, and I don't know what all, it is a mix or a crasis, it
is a mixed aggregate, it is an intermittence. The most global
concept, by good fortune and freedom, is not a unitary one. Order is
never more than an island or an archipelago. In the midst of the
multiple, one finds universe-isles." (111-112)<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
<br>
Nick<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 3/20/2018 5:57 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAC0TkubnK4iLd-Ao0qe4sbm5sbmiXhvPvg0Nq8Kvn5y=XUMhBw@mail.gmail.com">
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<br>
<div dir="ltr">Nicholas,
<div><br>
</div>
<div>"Noise" is not something that exists in the world. It is a
quality <b>we </b>ascribe to the world defined by the degree
of our comprehension. So what does "letting noise be noise"
mean exactly? </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Ciao,</div>
<div>Murat</div>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 4:56 PM,
Nicholas Knouf <span dir="ltr"><<a
href="mailto:nknouf@wellesley.edu" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">nknouf@wellesley.edu</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">----------empyre-
soft-skinned space----------------------<br>
<div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"> 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="m_-2260556836232018740moz-cite-prefix">On
3/19/2018 11:05 PM, Noralyn Neumark wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
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<p class="MsoNormal">Hi Junting and all</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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">(Sorry the formatting seems to have
gone a bit dirty… no sooner spoken of than enacted!)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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>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">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>Danger Dirty Data </i><a
href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/54044338?q&versionId=67005692"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">https://trove.nla.gov.au/<wbr>work/54044338?q&versionId=<wbr>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">It is during the <i>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>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>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">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/" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://<wbr>workingworms.net/</a>
<a href="https://vimeo.com/247735081" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://vimeo.com/247735081</a></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>Voicetracks</i> I wrote about Kathy
High’s wonderful video work <i>Domestic Vigilancia </i>from<i> 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><br>
</div>
<div>all the best</div>
<div>Norie</div>
<div><a href="http://www.out-of-sync.com"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">www.out-of-sync.com</a></div>
<div><a href="https://workingworms.net/" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://workingworms.net/</a> </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>On 19 Mar 2018, at 1:51 PM, Junting Huang <<a
href="mailto:jh2358@cornell.edu" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">jh2358@cornell.edu</a>>
wrote:</div>
<br
class="m_-2260556836232018740Apple-interchange-newline">
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<div>----------empyre- soft-skinned
space----------------------<br>
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>
<br>
————————<br>
<br>
Nicholas Knouf<br>
<br>
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>
<br>
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>
<br>
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>
<br>
Norie Neumark <br>
<br>
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"
target="_blank" 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"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">http://unlikely.net.au</a><br>
<br>
Ryan Jordan<br>
<br>
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>
<a href="http://ryanjordan.org/" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">http://ryanjordan.org/</a><br>
<a
class="m_-2260556836232018740moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://nnnnn.org.uk/" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">http://nnnnn.org.uk/</a><br>
<br>
Sarah Simpson<br>
<br>
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="m_-2260556836232018740moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://ecloart.wordpress.com/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">https://ecloart.wordpress.com/</a>
<br>
<br>
Gianluca Pulsoni<br>
<br>
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>
<br>
all the best<br>
Junting<br>
<br>
<br>
______________________________<wbr>_________________<br>
empyre forum<br>
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</blockquote>
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</blockquote>
<br>
<div class="m_-2260556836232018740moz-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: <a
href="tel:%28781%29%20283-2105" value="+17812832105"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">781.283.2105</a> Fax:
<a href="tel:%28781%29%20283-3647" value="+17812833647"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">781.283.3647</a><br>
PGP: 0xAB50A0D9<br>
<em><a
href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/how-noise-matters-to-finance"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">How Noise
Matters to Finance</a></em> available now!</div>
</div>
<br>
______________________________<wbr>_________________<br>
empyre forum<br>
<a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au"
moz-do-not-send="true">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.<wbr>edu.au</a><br>
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</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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