GHost Noise at Greenwich Noise Colloquium
GHost Noise at Greenwich Noise Colloquium.
Sarah Sparkes and Phillip Raymond Goodman
Venue: University of Greenwich, Stockwell Street Building
- 21st – 22nd Mar 2015
- 11:00am – 9:00pm Saturday; 11:30am – late Sunday
event website
In 1948, Claude E. Shannon proposed a theory of information in which transmissions of intended/expected data are categorized as ‘signal’ and the unintended or unexpected as ‘noise’. Jane D. Marsching and others (Jeffery Sconce, Erik Davis for instance) have noted how ‘noise’ in information transmission, such as static on radios or visual distortions on television or computer screens, have been identified as paranormal phenomena. In digital media this ‘noise’ is identified as the ‘glitch’. Noise and glitch disrupt the coherent information in the signal between transmitter and receiver. Often this interference comes from an unseen source, a ghostly presence (or absence) if you like. In the absence of decipherable information, the human mind reaches within noise to find meaning. Patterns and voices are imagined to create form to the formless. Some artists have exploited this uncanny potential in noise to create artworks which affect the spectator with a sense of otherworldliness.
A Poltergeist is a type of ghost which manifests through disruptive noise – knockings, rapping’s, rattling. The word poltergeist is Germanic in origin, a composite of polter (to make noise) + geist (ghost). A poltergeist could be seen as a disembodied heckler, disrupting proceedings with noise or through the violent movement of objects.
GHost manifesting through, Sarah Sparkes and Phillip Raymond Goodman, proposes to haunt the conference, like a heckling poltergeist, with a number of noisy ‘disruptions’
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