January 23, 2004

Noise and nonsense

Posted by Chris

The “Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy” is organizing a conference with the nonsense title of NOISETHEORYNOISE#1 although NONSENSETHEORYNONSENSE might be more appropriate. The “theme” of the conference is described thus:

Noise is an unprecedented harbinger of aesthetic radicality: no-one yet knows what it is or what it means. This non-significance is its strength rather than its weakness. Noise is ‘non-music’ not because it negates music but because it affirms a previously unimaginable continuum of sonic intensities in which music becomes incorporated as a mere material.

And further elaborations include:

Where a ‘new aestheticism’ might present itself as a resistance to pragmatic instrumentality, postmodern academicism continues to adopt theory as ballast: works are mere pretexts for ostentatious displays of theoretical chic. But in what way could noise change the conditions of theoretical possibility, not to say intelligibility or even sensibility?

In what way indeed? Explanations on a postcard please …. (or in comments).

Posted on January 23, 2004 10:51 AM UTC
Comments

“Works are mere displays of intellectual chic”… oh yes, this calls for meta-contextualization through noise-reduction/redaction tactics of blogtheoryblog.

Posted by Ghost of a flea · January 23, 2004 11:08 AM

Man, that’s not just crap, it’s dated crap. All the cool kids (and me) were doing the post-Attali noisenik aesthetic in, like, the late 80’s. (See Simon Reynold’s “Noise Annoys” in Blissed Out - a collection of stuff mostly originally published in Melody Maker and none the worse for that.)

“Noise” is that which blocks signification; any attempt to tame it and recruit it to an agenda simply turns it back into non-noise. Otherwisefully stated, the rest of us soon hipped ourselves Barthes’s jouissance as a better account of the disruption of a semiotic framework, and turned to other sonic, um, pleasures, although anyone who saw the great free-jazz/mega-volume arsequake collective God in their prime will not soon forget it. (In my case, not least because my ears never stopped ringing afterwards.)

Posted by des · January 23, 2004 11:11 AM

hey cool. I wondered if the papers in this genre would cite Fischer Black’s AEA Presidential address entitled “Noise” and they did.

Posted by dsquared · January 23, 2004 12:01 PM

Yeah, this all sounds a bit like punk theory. We’re all post-punk now.

Besides, everybody knows that algorithmic information theory has revolutionised our conception of noise by making it synonymous with incompressibility. Noise is merely that which cannot be expressed algorithmically and there is no longer any need to refer back to signification in a discussion of it. Our signifiers can go back to pointing to themselves and we can return to a neatly Derridean conception of them. Modern computational cognitive science has simply reified the Plato’s shadow problem by positing that all cognition is algorithmic. Instead of theorising that cognition - and therefore aesthetic judgement - takes place on the edge of chaos (which isn’t true anyway), we can more honestly situate ourselves as living in the chaos directly, surrounded by noise. Incompressibility means that any experience we can’t sublimate into something else - anything truely genuine - is by definintion noise. In this way, we take noise completely out of our theoretical schema by positing that if it isn’t noise, then it isn’t meaning, music, genuine, or anything else anybody might want to get out of bed for. So, there is ultimately no problem posed by noise and no new intelligebility or theoretical possibility to be explored there. It’s all noise anyway. There is no spoon. Duh!

This all lends itself well to stylish references to The Matrix - which, of course, are no longer stylish since everyone has been there and the sequels were such crap - and lets you sprinkle your bibliography with introductory texts in mathematics, particularly Shannon, Turing and Kolmogorov alongside a bit of Marx on alienation and Debord on what crap Disneyland is. Does all that fit on a postcard? :^)

Posted by Scott Martens · January 23, 2004 12:30 PM

Fantastic stuff, Scott, and a clear example of how a dense paragraph isn’t necessarily Bad Writing.

But a minor slip from the master of Pedantry:

Noise is merely that which cannot be expressed algorithmically

Simple transcription is an algorithm, so you mean “cannot be expressed by an algorithm of shorter length than the original”. I think the rest goes through.

Posted by dsquared · January 23, 2004 12:37 PM

Damn! Another perfectly good bit of theory shot down just because it conflates several mathematical concepts with things that they have nothing to with. :^)

Hmmm… I suppose it depends on what you think “expressed” expresses. If cognition is algorithmic, then comprehension needs to be synonymous with a kind of algorithmic compression, otherwise all we’re doing is memorising sequences uncomprehendingly - turing ourselves into nothing more than behaviourist drones. (As a sign of just how addicitive this sort of thing is, I can actually think of a serious cognitive science paper by Barsalou that heads in that direction.) To comprehend is to internalise, and since cognition is algorithmic, internalisation effectively entails compression. (Worse still, this is not only almost identical to the claims of a serious school of machine learning, it’s the school of machine learning that I’m paid to work in.) Thus, I might instead of saying “cannot be expressed algorithmically” have said “isn’t worth expressing algorithmically”, which is basically what you said, but brings us back into the very realm of aesthetic judgement that I think I was denying we ought to be in, if I am reading myself correctly.

God, I had better stop before I find myself submitting a paper.

Posted by Scott Martens · January 23, 2004 01:07 PM

well, noise actually has some philosophical importance, especially in the philosophy of information… it might be worth your time to look at some of michel serres work on the topic, or to look up luciano floridi’s work which deals with it.

Posted by jeremy hunsinger · January 23, 2004 01:14 PM

Ever heard of ‘spread-spectrum’ communication? It’s a way to encode a signal so that it looks like noise. Basically, you spread the signal over a bandwidth that’s much larger than necessary. BTW, one of the inventors of the spread-spectrum method was Hedy Lamarr (yes, the actress), who, evidently, was beautiful and not a dope.

Posted by Matt · January 23, 2004 01:29 PM

The most profound noise-music you will find is on the fantastic, newly opened Bleep website.
(There’s a ‘play’ option so you can sample a lot without having to buy…)

Posted by Matthew · January 23, 2004 02:40 PM

With regards to noise as “non-music”, I can only echo the immortal words of Masami Akita (better known as Merzbow):

“If ‘noise’ means uncomfortable music, then pop music is noise to me.”

Posted by cd · January 23, 2004 04:00 PM

From the papers:

“noise is noise noise is noise noise is noise noise is to me noise noise is to me noise noise is to me noise to me noise nose is to me noise nose is to me noise to me noise is noise to me an unprecedented unprecedented noise is to me an unprecedented noise is to me unprecedented harbringer an unprecedented harbringer of noise is noise is to me noise …”

I guess I see how that is as good as the theoretical approach.

Posted by anon · January 23, 2004 05:57 PM

“postmodern academicism continues to adopt theory as ballast”

Please make it stop.

Posted by sidereal · January 23, 2004 07:57 PM

No, I find it refreshingly honest in its self-referentiality!

Would that other pompous nonsense-emitters be so honest…

Posted by robin green · January 23, 2004 11:32 PM

If cognition is algorithmic, then comprehension needs to be synonymous with a kind of algorithmic compression, otherwise all we’re doing is memorising sequences uncomprehendingly - turing ourselves into nothing more than behaviourist drones.

Could one of the names of this algorithmic compression possibly be “narrative”?

Posted by Marco · January 24, 2004 05:27 AM

If cognition is algorithmic, then comprehension needs to be synonymous with a kind of algorithmic compression, otherwise all we’re doing is memorising sequences uncomprehendingly - turing ourselves into nothing more than behaviourist drones.

Could one of the names of this algorithmic compression possibly be “narrative”?

Posted by Marco · January 24, 2004 05:28 AM

Sorry, that repeated on me.

rude noise

Posted by Marco · January 24, 2004 05:32 AM

Scott, was this intentional?

If cognition is algorithmic, then comprehension needs to be synonymous with a kind of algorithmic compression, otherwise all we’re doing is memorising sequences uncomprehendingly - turing ourselves into nothing more than behaviourist drones.

Posted by Mark · January 25, 2004 02:54 AM

Doesn’t this load of crap translate as “we need more academic jobs and we must publish?”

Noise-shaping, incidentally, is used in digital recording, but don’t ask me to write a dense paragraph on it. Yes, I know you weren’t going to.

Posted by Dave F · January 26, 2004 01:06 PM

Mark - no, that was a tyopHHpo.

Posted by Scott Martens · January 29, 2004 03:04 PM
Followups

→ Noise Annoys.
Excerpt: The Centre for Research in Modern Philosophy is hosting a conference on Noise Theory. Not intentionally a joke, we must assume. What, you ask, is "noise theory"? Beats me. You'll have to attend NOISETHEORYNOISE#1 to find out. If you're in...Read more at Dr. Frank's What's-it

This discussion has been closed. Thanks to everyone who contributed.