Noise Matters: Towards an Ontology of Noise

309 Pages·2013·4.577 MB·English

by  Greg Hainge

Noise Matters

Noise Matters
Towards an Ontology of Noise
GREG HAINGE
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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www.bloomsbury.com
First published 2013
© Greg Hainge, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
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No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on
or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be
accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hainge, Greg, 1971-
Noise matters : towards an ontology of noise / by Greg Hainge.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4411-6046-1 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-4411-1148-7 (pbk. :
alk. paper) 1. Noise (Philosophy) 2. Noise--Psychological aspects. 3. Noise in art.
4. Noise music. I. Title.
B105.N64H35 2013
155.9'115--dc23
2012031990
ISBN: 978-1-4411-5286-2
Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
Manifesto 1
Turn it up 2
Noise matters 7
What noise has been 8
What noise might be: Towards an ontology of noise 11
Where noise will (and will not) be found 23
PART 1
35
1 The (Not So) Noisy Elephants in the Room 37
Sound 37
Fury 39
Signifying 45
Nothing 52
2 Noisea 67
Haiku 67
Nausea and noise 67
Where Nausea’s noise is not 69
Black noise 71
Vinyl noise 74
Grey noise 77
vi CONTENTS
3 Noise, Horror, Death 85
Do you see what I see? 85
Scream 85
Poltergeist 88
Death 92
White Noise 95
The Ring 99
Abject? 104
PART 2
113
4 On the Difficulties of Attending to Noise 115
On failing to see noise 115
On failing to get rid of noise 123
On failing to identify noise 128
On noise failing to remain noise 136
5 On the Difficulties of Listening to Noise 145
Punctum 147
Grain 151
V/Nois/ce 157
Concrete 162
Against the grain 166
PART 3
175
6 On Noise and Film. Planet, Rabbit, Lynch 177
Eraserhead 179
INLAND EMPIRE 184
Noisy interlude 1 190
Metarabbit 191
Digital noise 195
CONTENTS vii
Plus ça change … 198
Noisy interlude 2 198
Resolution? 201
7 On Noise and Photography. Forest, Fuzz, Ruff 209
nm 07.1 210
nm 07.2 214
nm 07.3 220
nm 07.4 224
nm 07.5 227
nm 07.6 231
8 On Noise and Music. Concrete (reprise), Woolly
Mammoth 241
Noise 241
Musique 247
Concrete (reprise) 252
Bridge 257
The woolly mammoth in the room 258
Noise music 260
Conclusion 273
Bibliography 279
Index 293

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Without wanting to give my whole game away in advance, one of
the major contentions of this book is that noise is medial, which
is not only to say that it is related to a medium, but also that it
arises in and as an artefact of the expression that takes place in the
in-between of a communicative act passing between different poles,
subjects or sites. In this respect, this book itself is excessively noisy,
because it has arisen out of so many different conversations with
so many different interlocutors. These conversations have often
taken place through personal contact and been conducted both
face to face and/or electronically, but not exclusively. For there are
many interlocutors who have had a profound effect on this book in
absentia thanks to their work, both creative and scholarly (which
is not of course to say that these are mutually exclusive terms in
either direction).
Over the past decade or so, there have been a large number
of excellent scholarly works that have appeared on the
subject of noise and related matters; many of these seemed at the
time of their publication like the book I was trying to write, but
they always made me realise that their authors had done a much
better job than I could have done and thus forced me to think
differently about what it was that I wished to say. Many of these
books are discussed in the pages to come, but in some cases these
works have been so important, that regardless of whether I know
their authors personally or not, I feel their scribes deserve to be
acknowledged here.
In addition to this, the ever-changing face of music production
and distribution has provided a consistent source of inspiration
and frustration simultaneously, more and more music that fired
my neurones in increasingly challenging ways becoming more and
more available with every passing year. In the end, this book has
ended up being much less about music than I thought it would be,