User:Yoana Buzova/thematic

(lost into) Signal

notes on signal

Signal is a physical quantity which varies with respect to time,space & contain information from source to destination. Signal comes in different flavors – audio, video, analog, digital.

signal is probably the most basic but still abstract form of communication, not only in electronics, but all around us.

I would like to look at signal in terms of the way we receive information. Any form of information is signal. How can we transform, simplify, reduce or decompose any kind of information we communicate every day, into essentials of form and color. Simple visual code. Something we see as an dynamic abstraction, but it actually carries the same signal in a different form. The self-organised pattern that is behind the information.

This derives from my interest in abstraction and the signals it communicates. I take as a reference point the research and work of Oscar Fischinger, Whitney brothers, Norman McLaren, Hans Richter( Rhythmus 21,23,25), . Experiments on graphical sound, early soviet inventions, work of Daphne Oram, and presently Derek Holzer.

Hans Richter talks about the shape of feelings, a notion that relates to Suzanne Langer’s idea that artistic forms have the virtual shape of emotions. Signal, information -- shapes.

Analogy between visual forms, sound and data/signal.

Work of Peter Kubelka /Arnulf Rainer/ Tony Conrad’s The Flicker (1966)

first thoughts

Analog vs. Digital ----- > a question with no answer

Analog video BWPWAP / nostalgia for analog video, overwhelmed by the transition to digital video signal

is analog video signal being made obsolete by digital video signal?

Fascinations for the Obsolete/Old/Dead/Vintage media?

A study on signals, information, patterns

How to link this to my fascination to obsolete, strange machines / it was amazing to see closely the Oramics Machine @ the Science and Technology Museum, London

current resources:

"A Communications Primer," by Charles & Ray Eames (1953)

"A Mathematical Theory of Communication", by Claude Shannon

Dead Media: What the Obsolete, Unsuccessful, Experimental, and Avant-Garde Can Teach Us About the Future of Media - invited talk given by Finn Brunton, Postdoctoral Researcher at NYU, at the 2011 USENIX Federated Conferences Week, held June 14-17, 2011, in Portland, OR.