Noise and signal as ground and figure: Emergence and interference in media ecologies

The paper addresses how to conceptualize noise within media ecologies to better understand art and information as intensive, relational processes rather than purely quantitative measures. Beginning with the ambiguity between signal and noise (e.g., Penzias and Wilson’s discovery of the cosmic microwave background), the author proposes three senses of noise—linked to pure chance, form, and information—to clarify common confusions and to show how signals emerge from a noisy ground. Drawing on Gilbert Simondon’s figure-ground framework and Aden Evens’ sound theory, the study positions noise as the ecological ground from which signals (figures) emerge, emphasizing the co-dependence of signal and noise across media and the importance of an intensive notion of information for critical studies of art and communication.

The paper synthesizes debates around noise and information across cybernetics, information theory, philosophy, and media studies. Key contrasts include Wiener’s identification of information with negentropy (strict opposition to disorder) versus Shannon’s formulation equating information with entropy/uncertainty, allowing some forms of disorder to be informational. Malaspina’s work is central for parsing the transdisciplinary ambiguity of noise (bridging thermodynamics and information theory, and their metaphorical transfers across domains) and for framing noise as a relation between contingency and control. The review touches on Gestalt psychology’s figure-ground schema (via Simondon’s generalization to ontogenesis), Bateson’s “difference that makes a difference,” and examples from literature and music (Joyce’s Finnegans Wake; Cage; Attali on the political economy of noise). It also references complexity and self-organization (von Foerster’s order-from-noise; Atlan’s self-organization and the balance of redundancy and variety), along with critiques by René Thom of overemphasizing randomness. This contextual groundwork informs the proposed triadic distinction of noise and its application in media ecologies.

This is a theoretical-conceptual study. The author develops an analytical framework distinguishing three modes of noise—noise as pure chance (disruption/interference), noise of form (material-historical traces of mediation), and noise as information (irreducible margins of indeterminacy necessary for signaling). The method involves: (1) conceptual clarification through close engagement with Simondon, Malaspina, Shannon, Wiener, Bateson, Gestalt psychology, and complexity/cybernetics literature; (2) transdisciplinary synthesis to extend the figure-ground schema to media ecologies; and (3) illustrative case analysis using Nam June Paik’s Magnet TV and other art/media examples (e.g., vinyl crackle, feedback, glitch) to demonstrate how the three modes of noise manifest across media practices and infrastructures.

• Three distinct modes of noise are delineated: (1) noise as pure chance (chaos, disruption, interference) that can perturb systems and sometimes generate new order or responses; (2) noise of form, the selective material-historical traces embedded in transmissions that index their contingent production chains and can themselves be expressive/informative; (3) noise as information, the irreducible margin of indeterminacy co-natural with any transmission, necessary for intensive signaling.
• Signal and noise relate as figure and ground: signals emerge against and from a noisy ecological background, aligning with Simondon’s emphasis on background dynamisms as generative of form; forms participate in their background rather than in other forms.
• Shannon’s formulation correlating information with uncertainty introduces a productive ambiguity wherein certain forms of disorder can be maximally informative, contrasting with Wiener’s negentropic opposition; this underpins the generative reading of noise in media.
• Order-through-noise mechanisms and receptivity to environmental fluctuations (von Foerster; Atlan) highlight how disruptions and errors can be integrated as organizational factors, while critiques (Thom) caution against overstating randomness.
• In artistic practice, noise can bind and contrast signals (Evens), with media artifacts bearing genealogies of their production networks; Paik’s Magnet TV exemplifies how interference produces new forms and foregrounds the medium’s inner operations, including indeterminacy.
• Cultural domestication of noise/glitch demonstrates the shifting boundary between disruption and normativity; figure-ground reversals occur as filtering parameters change, revealing how interference can be reclassified as form or information (e.g., CMB discovery; vinyl crackle; feedback; digital glitches).

By distinguishing noise into chance, form, and informational indeterminacy, the paper clarifies how signals in media ecologies are materially and historically grounded and why noise cannot be reduced to mere error or absence of meaning. This addresses the research aim of providing an intensive, generative account of noise that avoids conflations across domains. The findings underscore the co-naturality and tension between noise and information: signals are metastable configurations emerging from noisy grounds, and shifts in attention or parameters can reclassify interference as form or information. For media and art studies, this reframing legitimizes the analytical focus on artifacts’ material traces, infrastructural contingencies, and the productive role of disruption, while maintaining conceptual rigor to prevent overgeneralization. It offers a schema to interpret artworks and media systems as ecological assemblages where figure-ground relations and signal-noise boundaries are dynamic, historically contingent, and generative.

The paper proposes and substantiates a triadic framework for noise—chance, form, and informational indeterminacy—arguing that signals emerge as figures from a generative noisy ground. This figure-ground reversibility aligns with Simondon’s ontogenetic view in which backgrounds harbor the dynamisms that produce forms. Case analyses (e.g., Paik’s Magnet TV) demonstrate how interference can yield form and how material contingencies become expressive and informative. Building on Malaspina and the primacy of the abnormal (Canguilhem), the paper positions noise as preceding and conditioning normativity: certainty arises as islands within pervasive uncertainty. Future research can apply this framework across diverse media and scales (from sonic/visual glitch to infrastructural and socio-political ecologies), map figure-ground shifts in cultural and technical systems, and investigate how different media layers and operational constraints modulate the margins of indeterminacy that enable creative formation.