El ruido como artificio

Abstract

Noise is a very diffuse term. However, it has also been a musical practice within a specific tradition. What first attracted me to noise was the possibility for pushing the limits of what was acceptable: sonically, culturally, conceptually and socially. However, noise is not always disruptive. In order to be disruptive it needs to encounter negatively a set of expectations. Once the tropes of noise have been understood, then its critical negative effect is no longer valid. Here I will identify some of the potential that noise- as musical practice- has for producing alienation and estrangement. In order to do this I want to use noise as a device in a similar way that the Russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky used his concept of 'ostranenie' (estrangement or defamiliarisation), and in so doing I will argue that noise needs to be understood both historically and contextually.