Published on June 30th 2010 in the second volume of the “Art of Noise” sampler for the ozky e-sound netlabel. These are the requested notes about a reflection on the concept of “noise”.

The definition of “noise” seems to change depending on the perspective anyone tries to focus on it, either in the musical field (acoustics) or in the scientific one (electronics). The avant-garde movements working, starting from the futurist one, tends to undermine beliefs and myths towards those places of the common hearing used to define music and, in general, to represent reality.

In this composition the authors start from the difficulty of framing this term and from the will of considering the entire sound field (musical, concrete or environmental one) till touching the silence. This as a way to make up a microcosm in which all the forces in action cross and overlap themselves in a perspective which John Cage would define “ecological”.

It is interesting to note this perspective seems to link with the Shannon and Weaver’s communication theory one which claims that noise, defined as an interference between the signal coding by the transmitter and the receiving of it by the receiver, can be interpreted as the subtraction or overlapping of a signal to emit.

Bibliography
1. John Cage, “For the Birds” (1972);
2. Shannon e Weaver, “The Mathematical Theory of Communication” (1948 1st edition / 1964 2nd edition).

01. Candriai