Anecdote

Imagine yourself in a room full of people; some are sitting, standing, or walking about. Some have their eyes closed, others open. Swirling to and through you are semitonal blips, microtonal bleeps, backed by drones of static and hiss, mixed with dissolving pulses of Morse Code-like patterns sweeping in and out of focus. Pulling back, the sounds gather and coalesce into an assault of noise which invests your entire mind and body — blanketing your skin with a tingling embrace. Then a moment of physical and mental clarity occurs. The noise has transcended rejection and approval, and has taken on a new meaning in itself. Stepping back in, your perceptions of the sounds change, there are messages, information, and data. Suddenly the sounds change, the timbre shifts, and the space is redefined. Everyone modifies their listening perspective, some climb stairs, others lay on the floor, some hug the walls, others continue to move about. Physical reactions: facial, full-body, stance, are tell-tale signs of the perception arc within the changes of frequency, amplitude, and tone. This is at the cusp of a moment, an instance when insurmountable layers of signals, data, and information — or, the absence of — becomes a tool to alter our perception of the material under observation and manipulation.

Our sonic future is thick with history and vastly undefined, what once was perceived as noise can become a signal — what once stood as our signal can become our noise.