Noise and signal as ground and figure: Emergence and interference in media ecologies

This paper proposes an interdisciplinary and generative understanding of noise that can be useful for thinking critically about art across different media ecologies. This notion of noise would be the counterpart of an intensive concept of information, such as the one presented by Gilbert Simondon. Unfolding a remark made by that author, the paper proposes three distinct notions of noise, as correlated to “pure chance”, “form”, and “information”. The noise of “pure chance” describes events of chaotic disruption and interference. The noise of “form” describes an index of the materiality and historical contingency of any transmission. The noise of “information” describes the irreducible margin of indeterminacy that is present at every layer of informational transmission and reception. An artwork created by Nam-June Paik is taken as a concrete demonstration of these three different kinds of noise. More generally, following sound theorist Aden Evens, an argument will be made for a speculative understanding of the signal in artistic practices as an emergent configuration from a ground of noise. To expand this idea for all media, we will explore the figure–ground relationship in the philosophy of Simondon as a scheme for the generation of forms from latent structural potential in a field. The work of Cécile Malaspina is used throughout the paper to clarify some confusions around the concept of noise and lay down the groundwork for fertile and rigorous interdisciplinary research across different media. The ambiguity of the concept of noise should not let us turn it into a night where all cows turn to greyscale. Instead, we should regard noise, in its distinct modes, as a marker of the granularity, speed, and resolution of any actual transmission and reception of information.