Workshop with Purple Noise: #imakenoise – Playing with störfaktors

Workshop by Purple Noise (#purplenoise) members Charlotte Bonjour, Cornelia Sollfrank and Johanna Thompson

While in communication studies and engineering noise has been conceived as unwanted disruption that obscures the transmission of precise information, the concept has made a career in artistic and other cultural practices that appreciate exactly this quality. With a long history in music, where noise has become a genre proper, it also made its way into visual, text and coding practices. Disruption, confusion, obfuscation, unpleasantness are no longer understood as errors that need to be eliminated, but rather as specific to a technology and carrying the potential for new ways of expression.

In this workshop, we will explore the subversive legacy of noise and look at different types of noise, by playing with analog and digital tools. From the sensual level, we will shift to the concept of noise in relation to social media. To noisify social media, we will experiment with manipulative strategies, which, by deliberately interfering or confusing on communication platforms, attempt to obscure or to falsify a message or information for its recipients.

Participants are asked to bring their own laptop. Access to social media accounts is welcome.

#purplenoise is an interdisciplinary technofeminist research group that uses real-life events to explore social media as the arena for large-scale political manipulation. The research methodolody includes intervention, infiltration, manipulation, technofeminist propaganda, poetry, fake news, love and anger.