Noise Matters Noise Matters Towards an Ontology of Noise GREG HAINGE Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 175 Fifth Avenue 50 Bedford Square New York London NY 10010 WC1B 3DP USA UK 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, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. 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,