As a highveld storm rumbles and cracks its way across the darkening sky, the camera, placed on my studio roof to capture the moment, gradually loses its source of signal - light - save for the intermittent flashes that illuminate the rooftops and mines of Jozi south. Interestingly, the lightning, a long-time symbol of chaos, slowly becomes the main source of signal to the camera’s sensor. Dimly aware that there might be some symbolic significance to be mined from the confluence of the storm and the fading of daylight, I also record the audio of the thunder, the wind, and a cricket, singing to the riotous sky, inspired.

I am thinking about the idea of ‘signal to noise ratio’, originally conceived of in the world of audio tech. Using old-fashioned records as an example, ‘Signal’ would be the uncanny replication of the sound of a symphony orchestra playing Beethoven’s 5th, produced by a needle scratching on vinyl. ‘Noise’ in the same context could be the crackle of static on the record, or perhaps the inner workings of the microphones used to record the orchestra, or more conceptually, any noise recorded that doesn’t have anything directly to do with Beethoven’s 5th: a cough from the audience, a rustle of sheet music, or even a bum note. Signal generally means desired information. Noise generally means undesired information.

I (a musician by trade) want to send a signal out into the universe: a composition. I tinker with the inner workings of my piece in software I am dabbling with called ‘VCV rack’, designed to emulate not only the sounds, but also (to a limited extent) the workflow of old-fashioned analogue synthesis (as pioneered by such varied musical luminaries as Karlheinz Stockhauzen through Giorgio Moroder). Purists in the world of analogue synthesis (and audio gear in general) tend to think of software emulations of analogue gear as being pale in comparison to the real thing, but for surprising reasons: analogue gear is imperfect, controlled by actual bolts of electricity, running through transistors and tubes, oscillators and filters, translated through coils (‘mortal coils’, if you’ll forgive the pun) into imperfect analogue sound (or synthesis), each of the components with its own idiosyncrasies. As humans, we intrinsically understand that it is to some degree the imperfect signal path that gives the analogue gear its unique voice. Like the various traditions of imperfect perfections across history, to some extent the medium truly is the message. Perhaps unsurprisingly, analogue gear is also very expensive, so sadly I’ll be sticking with the digital format for now, which of course brings its own set of distortions, biases and/or noise profiles.

Signal and noise have also become a key concepts in the world of statistics - applied to phenomena as diverse as climate change, data-mining, financial indices and trend forecasting. Experts, politicians, AI networks, youtube personalities, and chat-room opinionistas alike interpret the incoming signal like latter day shamans modeling the universe, using our limited tools to go through the bones of science, hearsay, figures and instinct, picking at the data for patterns in the chaos.

Noise can creep into signal in surprising ways, on potentially limitless levels. Invariably, signal is affected by the medium through which it travels. All media are subject to their own peculiar kind of entropy, and of course, things don’t happen in isolation. Traveling through the medium of a zoom call, examples of noise profiles could be: the limitations of the language being used; the limitations of the speaker; ditto on the receiver; how well the sound carries through the medium; how many media the speech needs to pass through (neuron, vocal chords, oral cavity, air, microphone, audio to digital converter, wifi signal, computer speaker, air, ear, neuron); whether the speaker (or listener) had one cup of coffee or five that morning, etc etc, before we even get to more complex concepts like personal, cultural, gendered or even species-specific bias. In a very real sense, it’s a wonder that we make sense of anything at all.

These are not new ideas (although I do hope to frame them in a novel way): cultures across the world have found interesting methods of using chaos (as a proxy for entropy?) within sense-making practice, from the ancient practice of throwing bones to the Tarot to the Qabalah to the I-Ching. There is an argument for the notion that the only way to gain new understanding is to submit, at least partially, to chaos as a creative force. Some may even call this an act of faith.

So the storm flashes across Joburg: in the foreground the tableau of my studio roof, the neighbor’s TV aerial (pointing stoically at the thundering sky), and the little Greek Orthodox Church across the road (cross facing the heavens), I am transfixed by the unfathomable, chaotic, fearsome beauty of it all, like a cricket singing to the stars, inspired.