Noise Is the Presence of the Medium

Abstract

Michel Serres also turns to hearing as a ‘model of understanding’. Sound reveals the productive capacity of our milieu. We hear multitudes of sensations congealing into wholes that are neither simply unified nor fragmented. These are structures that Serres, like Bergson before him, calls ‘multiplicities’. In Genesis, he gives many beautiful examples of some kinds of life that have this layered, interwoven and open quality:

A flight of screaming birds, a school of herring tearing through the water like a silken sheet, a cloud of chirping crickets, a booming whirlwind of mosquitoes ... Crowds, packs, hordes on the move.¹