So-called information culture is pre-occupied with the distinction between of “signal” to “noise ” - what seems like meaningful communication on one hand, or simply distracting “background” on the other. We tune across spectra of sensory and semiotic inputs and interfaces, seeking opportunities for moments of true contact.
“There then is the origin. Noise and nausea, noise and nautical, noise and navy have the same etymology...Noise is not a phenomenon, all phenomena separate from it, figures on a ground, as a light in the fog, as any message, cry, call, signal must each separate from the hubbub that fills the silence, just to be, to be perceived, sensed, known, exchanged. As soon as there is a phenomenon, it leaves noise, as soon as an appearance arises, it does so by masking the noise. Thus it is not phenomenology but being itself. It is set up in subjects as well as in objects, in hearing and in space itself, in observers and observed...” (Michel Serres, SubStance, 1983).
Browse here, and also put your ears to a micro-archive of sonic samples