Still the Noise

Rather than propose a unified concept of noise, this chapter examines the complexity of noise and the fluctuating indeterminacy of its conceptualization through different registers of analysis-music, semiotics, literary, philosophical, cultural, historical-for the purpose of mapping conceptual transformations without arriving at a definitive concept called “noise.” The range of aspects and authors covered in this chapter-including musical examples such as Joy Division, Roland Barthes and Michel Serres, the epics of Homer and Gilgamesh, and literary references in Kafka and Rilke-is deliberately fashioned to represent so many tunings on a valve-radio-set, turning the frequency knob left and right, moving up and down across a spectrum of live transmissions, not to capture the Noise and so still the noise, but always still to hear noise, and still some more.