artworks

A-Z of Noise

A-Z of Noise, 1999

A sound recording of the 20th Century played in 60 seconds

1999
01:20
SD single channel
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.

A to Z of Noise was an early process based experiment. The initial starting point consisted of one second of pure white noise audio and one second of pure black video. Noise reduction was systematically applied to each media. As there was no noise to clean up in the black video it introduced artefacts and as there was nothing but noise in the sound it removed everything. This was repeated 60 times to make one minute. Finally the audio was reversed so that the silence of the removed white noise corresponded with the pure black video clip.