The Aesthetics of the Signal: Noise Research in Long-Wave Radio Communications
Daniel Gethmann · Osiris · 2013
This paper is based around two radio-reception experiments, which both originated as research on long-wave radio and serve to illustrate, from alternate perspectives, the constitutive role that noise plays in communication. The projects of Karl Guthe Jansky and Charles Francis Jenkins opened new research perspectives. The two experiments both ensued from acoustics research, but in different ways, turning disruptive noise into material for a new scientific research approach and even going so far as to investigate any information it might contain. Philosopher Michel Serres suggested that noise, forming the basis of all communication and signal or message transmission through space, might in fact help to reconceive communication and to foster a renewal of the concept of transmission. This article traces the history of Serres’s suggestion.