zhel

What was once the sole language of artists and composers is now the means of communication for everyone. By sharing pictures, music, emoticons, and sounds through social networks, we exchange not only what we "think" but how we "feel" at any given moment. Most people even prefer such communication over traditional methods that include written language.
There is a very practical reason for this shift. Given that on the social networks we are communicating with people from all over the world, this kind of exchange transcends typical “foreign language” obstacles as sounds, songs, and images are mediums we all feel and instantly understand. Some even argue that it also allows us to interpret things more individually. Immediacy trumps accuracy and precision. Given the enormous speed in the development of these new visual/aural hybrid languages, it is not out of the realm of possibility that in the future the written word may be used ever more sparingly. A single question arises: are national languages becoming obsolete in this growing sphere?

Sound expands from its source in one or more directions. The space that contains a soundand in which that sound spreads is not empty: in it exists the noise from the source elements, noise that is created by the interaction between nodal points and sound waves. When the former is hit by the latter, internal vibrations are encouraged (kickstarted).Each element vibrates, that is, resonates in its own frequency and in doing so produces sound. If we were to remove the source of organized sound as well as all the nodal pointsfrom a specific space, and then analyzed the remaining noise (residual noise), we would beable to pinpoint the exact position and shape of the elements that were removed from thatspace.Imagine this relationship in terms of the familiar image of a footprint in the sand; the soundsource and other elements create the footprint while the noise that fills up the space is thesand. Just as the footprint would be invisible without the sand, so all these other elementsare rendered detectable and present because of the sound (vibrating frequency) they produce. Noise is the connective materiality of space. It is not a mere consequence of organisedsound, but exists in space as the result of certain known and unknown physical processes. It encompasses everything from the spraying of water waves and fluctuations in the atmosphere to the relationship between electric fields and magnetic plasma throughout theuniverse. The practical implications of analyses of noise are many. For instance, by examining sound fields in fjords, accurate predictions of the time-frames and patterns of melting ice shelves can be made. All this is now possible because we have a better knowledge of different types and forms of noise. In this vein, more complex geophysical studies recently undertaken (Snieder and Wapenaar, 2010) suggest that simply by analyzing so-called diffuse noise, we can obtain allforms of necessary information about the environments in which that noise resides. Due to its chaotic way of spreading in all directions, this type of noise naturally fills a spacein its entirety. The correct way to view the implications of this is to see noise as not simply aspatial entity but also as a temporal event. The noise in any given area contains crucialinformation about that area, and for all its apparently chaotic arrangement, it is the syntax ofthe primordial language of that space.
Published in 'Covjek i Prostor', July 2015