Date: Friday May 17th

Venue: Lecture Room, Floor 5, Richmond Building, University of Bristol

Time: 9:30-17:30

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/noise-form-a-baftss-film-and-philosophy-symposium-tickets-872637190327. 

This symposium will investigate the relationship between screen media and noise, exploring the aesthetic and political dimensions of screen forms within the burgeoning interdisciplinary study of noise. Noise here is not a purely sonic phenomenon, but a concept taken from information theory and cybernetics to describe the workings of channels of communication. Noise is in many respects a formal concept, one which intersects with a variety of fields, including cognitive science, sound studies, aesthetic theory, financial models, and social analysis. According to the philosopher of noise, Cécile Malaspina, “Few notions are more central than noise to the transformation of modern life,” such that the term “has become synonymous with the complexity of our world and its global digitised information networks.” Whereas "noise" is often pitted against "form", or defined as something which destroys and destablises form, this symposium aims to think about the two concepts in tandem, exploring the ways in which noise itself has formal qualities that require analysis and articulation, as well as asking what is noisy about form itself. Noise occurs in films and other screen media in a variety of different ways, including – but not limited to – the use of sound and sound recording techniques (music, speech, foley); artifacts of the medium (scratches, glitches); as well as via formal or rhetorical devices such as intensified continuity. Asking how these aesthetic strategies are connected to the realities of living in an ever noisier digital environment may help us understand more clearly some of the ways in which contemporary conditions are mediated, reflected, and also potentially resisted by screen media.