Giuseppe Torre

The notion of communication system as presented in many works in the humanities is rooted in engineering and the seminal work of Claude E. Shannon titled “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” - published in 1948. In all, the narrowness of a mathematical understanding of communication, as presented by Shannon, presents severe limitations but also, as it will be shown, possible openings, directions or bridges towards the non-mathematical. In particular, the analysis presented here depicts any notion of communication as being inseparable from any noise. In fact, moving at or beyond the clearly defined mathematical limits that are explicit in Shannon’s theory means to invalidate the very possibility of a communication system at all. It is by looking at these limits, it is argued, that a discourse between a theory of communication and aesthetic theories of digital arts can be renewed. This is not least because in that dialogue might be found a plausible explanation for the ever-growing love of random functions and statistical modelling by many digital art practitioners.

I argue that, from the performer’s perspective, there are significant differences between analogue and digital instruments. The unique nature of the relationship with digital instruments transforms the performer’s practice in ways that aesthetic discourse has yet to fully address. From a post-phenomenological perspective, I will demonstrate how this relationship differs from that with analogue instruments, prioritizing reading over bodily sensations. In contrast to post-phenomenological accounts, however, I will also argue that the concept of digital instruments as extensions of the human body remains ambiguous and is even further removed from traditional notions of skill and virtuosity. Although this analysis focuses on musical instruments, I emphasize that the argument applies to all artistic practices that engage with digital tools. In this respect, the article will be of interest to theorists of digital media, digital art practitioners, historians, and philosophers of technology.

In the digital realm, noise is at once fought and sought, hated, and loved. We may wish to reduce noise in communications, but we require it to encrypt the very content we communicate. We may wish to reduce noise when recording sounds, but in fact noise is of paramount importance for the achievement of high-fidelity recordings. The catch is that noise is not always the unwanted, obscene, unpleasant, or unwelcome side of an otherwise coherent, pleasant, and delightful set of circumstances. We need noise, badly. And we do so, not only when concerned with the efficiency of our technological instruments but also when concerned with the experience we derive from them. In today’s increasingly technological world, all efforts to minimise noise make our demand for it ever more pressing. The case of digital art practices is perhaps the most blatant example of how our (experiential) need for noise increases the more we try to suppress it. Odi et amo, noise. The main contribution of this chapter is not to argue whether a phenomenology of noise is possible or not. Rather, the aim is to illustrate how an adversarial stance towards noise leads to an impoverished experience. The case of digital technology will be our main guide. The claim is that if the inextricable relation between noise and experience is missed, excluded, or bypassed, then any phenomenology is impossible, let alone one about noise.

This volume’s aim is to stimulate philosophical interest in the experience of noise. There are at least three important open questions about noise. First, how should the relationship between noise as a scientific phenomenon and as a type of experience be understood? Is the one to be understood in terms of the other, and what implications may be drawn from this? Second, are experiences of noise strictly limited to perceptual states or to one type of perceptual state – for instance, to acoustic experiences? E.g. is there noise that is visual or tactile? Is there noise that is cognitive, affective, or evaluative? Third, how can philosophy make sense of noise in the first place? Should noise simply be relegated to the hither side of the explananda of philosophy, as the mere leftover of whatever philosophy sets out to account for; meaning, being, totality, etc.? Or may noise be understood as a positive phenomenon in its own right, which has its own distinctive features and content, difficult though they might be to pin down? This volume will contribute to the burgeoning philosophy of noise by highlighting how contemporary philosophical perspectives with a phenomenological or experiential bent – the latter under both broad and narrow construals – can make inroads to these questions about a fascinating yet little understood quarter of human experience.

Digital art practitioners work under the constant threat of a medium – the digital – that objectifies the self and depersonalises artistic identities. If digital technology is a pharmakon in that it can be either cure or poison, with regard to digital art practices the digital may have in fact worked as a placebo that has allowed us to push back the date in which the crisis between digital and art will be given serious thought. This book is hence concerned with an analysis of such a relationship and proposes their rethinking in terms of an ethico-phenomenological practice informed by an in-depth understanding of the digital medium. Giuseppe Torre engages with underground cultures such as Free and Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) and its ties with art discourse. The discussion is informed by various philosophical discourses and media theories, with a focus on how such ideas connect back to the existing literature in performance studies.