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Underground > Laboratory >

White is Noise - Noise is White

23:31 / 30.01.02

Ok just wondering if anyone else has seen how Grant Morrison has used the term " White Noise ". I've just noticed it in Doom Patrol #54, it was on the cover of a Swamp Thing that he guest wrote hence the title, and I believe it was used several times towards the end of The Invisibles series.

To me even before I read any of Grant's stuff I had experienced something that I myself and/or spirit dubbed WHITE NOISE. This feeling is a feeling of extreme bliss. I will be doing just about anything and all of the sudden the " white noise " will hit me. It starts with a feeling of fluidity (i.e. Being underwater ) yet floating at the same time, following that every sound becomes amplyfied, I begin to hear what appears to me as being whispers, and total calm. It is quite similar to the states attained in meditation, but happens in every day life.

What I'm getting at here is...Does anyone know what Grant meant by white noise or is there a book that he got it from for reference or is it just a state of awarness heightened...to see the truth. I'm open to any insights on the subject. Also if you can help decipher the White is Noise,Noise is White meaning.

Thanks...

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

07:15 / 31.01.02

I may be missing the point entirely here, but...

White noise is a noise used to describe noise with a flat spectrum - ie with equal energy across every bandwidth. It's noise without harmony - the noise you get when you tune your TV or radio to no station. So, "white noise" is theoretically meaningless, noise without signal, but also in the terms in which it is most commonly encountered interstitial - it divides, in frequency or time, packets of information. It's distinguished from "pink noise", the equation for which I can't remember but which has tonal relationships like music.

[ 31-01-2002: Message edited by: He said he had a horrible Haus ]

07:55 / 31.01.02

I guess 'white' because it equates with white light, which is what you get when all the colours of the light spectrum are combined equally?

Pink noise is what you get when you drop the power by a certain amount with each increase in frequency. I think. So you've still got all the frequencies, but some are louder than others. It generally sounds 'lower' pitched than white noise. There's a more techie description here:
http://www.cim.mcgill.ca/~clark/nordmodularbook/nm_noise.html

The other commonly used one is brown noise (brown as in Brownian motion), which... ah, it's all on that site. I know them from sound editing software which allows you to generate white, pink and brown noise. Each one sounds like a lower pitched version of the last. The above site explains that the reason for doing it is to take into account the human ear which 'favours' higher frequencies over lower ones.

Fish around on the web and you'll find definitions for orange, blue, green, black noises etc.

I bet this isn't helping at all, is it? Lemme think... I've heard it said that, with the right filters, and white noise covering every frequency audible to the human ear, you could 'sculpt' any sound imaginable. Which is nice. Thinking about the experience you describe above - you could probably cobble some theory together about white noise as information, and what it would be like to be exposed to 'all possible information' or 'all possible sensations'... urgh, I'm rambling.

[ 31-01-2002: Message edited by: Saveloy ]

Rollo Kim, on location

07:57 / 31.01.02

The persuit of bliisssssss.... aint it what life's all about?

07:57 / 31.01.02

Actually, noise comes in many 'colours', and as Haus suggests, coloured noise is noise with slightly dominant frequencies: however, white noise shouldn't be considered meaningless. All audible frequencies are present in white noise (just like white light contains all visible frequencies) though they may not all be apparently present at a given time- it's chaotic, and sound is slow enough that we can percieve a given instant of white noise to be any number of 'colours.' Depends on how fast your ears are I guess.

When I was a kid I used to drift off into what I now think was an alpha brain-state in which I could hear music in white noise sources- I particularly remember hearing music in the wind noise on long car journeys. It's definitely possible to hit a state in which one's own consciousness acts as a sort of prism, refracting noise into sense (extracting sense from noise is something we're all good at- witness Barbelith on a Monday morning.) Spontaneously conjuring this effect in silence is a neat trick though- possibly a question to ask the Magick bods.

Bookswise, there may be something in 'New Soundscape' by R Murray Schaefer. (it's Barbeamazon time!) You'll have to read between the lines though.

The Planet of Sound

07:57 / 31.01.02

What about 'brown sound', the FBI's secret experiments to develop a subsonic sound of such power that it would lead immediately to rectal prolapse? Supposed to have been tested on soldiers and stuff.

(White-out-white-light-white-heat-white-noise... just a bit of free association.)

14:07 / 31.01.02

quote:Originally posted by The Planet of Sound:
What about 'brown sound', the FBI's secret experiments to develop a subsonic sound of such power that it would lead immediately to rectal prolapse? Supposed to have been tested on soldiers and stuff.

Happens occasionally to people who rig their cars up with 10 tons of amps and such. They'd be driving around deafening the neighborhood and all of a sudden lose sphincter control...I heard that's where the FBI/guv'ment learned of it. I may be way off but I thnk the specific frequency is around 10 Hz.

If anyone is interested, I have a list of frequencies used in magic, with a different feeling or altered state of consciousness associated with each one. There are shareware programs that will generate tones of frequencies you specify. I've meant to experiment, if I ever get off my lazy ass and fix my boot sector at home.

14:16 / 31.01.02

I fucking love this noise/colour crossover concept...

Black Noise!

Green Noise!

Red Noise!

How can I make them?

14:28 / 31.01.02

If you put the following in to Google, you'll find the formulas somewhere:

"white noise" pink brown

Thing is, they'll all just be variations on SSSHHHHHSSSHHHSSHHHH.

17:11 / 31.01.02

I learned that "white noise" is that relaxing ocean shhush that Sharper Image markets in its relaxation gizmos, that "pink noise" is an actual tone like you hear from, well, tone generators used to calibrate audio equipment, and "black noise" was that awful "kkkauuutcch" kind of static. White = straight lines, pink = wavy lines, black = spiky lines.

Could've been totally inaccurate though.

As a literary conceit, "White Noise" would also refer to Don Delillo's novel of the same name. Which is sort of about information overload.

17:26 / 31.01.02

This site has wonderful charts and instructions on how to make pink, brown, and white noise using a spreadsheet program.