In a 1987 lecture entitled &ldquo\;What is the Creative Act?\,&rdquo\; delivered to the FEMIS film and television production school in Paris\, Gilles Deleuze makes the following enigmatic claim: &ldquo\;A work of art does not contain the least bit of information. In contrast\, there is a fundamental affinity between a work of art and an act of resistance.&rdquo\; In this short phrase Deleuze crystallises two major themes at work in his later philosophy &ndash\;but which\, we may well argue- spread out across his \;oeuvre \;more generally. On the one hand\, there is his profound antipathy to the concept of &ldquo\;information\,&rdquo\; which\, in his terms\, functions by way of an apparent &ldquo\;neutrality&rdquo\; in order to impose highly interested imperatives\, fundamentally imbricated with capitalistic and neo-liberal operations of \;control. On the other\, there is his valorisation of the work of art\, as an intensive event which might open up new &ldquo\;lines of flight&rdquo\; for thought and sensibility\, eschewing the habitual and the authoritarian in favour of experimentation\, creativity and the invention of new modes of life.
\n\nBut it appears that the so-called &ldquo\;digital age&rdquo\; within which we now find ourselves problematizes this Deleuzian formulation. Today\, our experience of art is invariably &ldquo\;informational\,&rdquo\; be it in the form of the digitally produced films we stream to watch on our laptops\, the digitally recorded music we listen to on telecommunications devices\, or the &ldquo\;new media&rdquo\; installations we might view in a contemporary art gallery. All of these forms and practices\, insomuch as they take digital encoding as their materiality\, are in a sense &ldquo\;informational&rdquo\; &ndash\;using &ldquo\;information technologies&rdquo\; as their substrate or interface. Does this therefore mean\, if we follow to the letter Deleuze&rsquo\;s claim\, that &ldquo\;art\,&rdquo\; having become &ldquo\;informational\,&rdquo\; is no longer art at all?
\n\nIn this paper\, I hope to suggest a contrary position\, identifying functions within the very concept of &ldquo\;information&rdquo\; &ndash\;which\, as we shall see\, is no simple designation- that might continue to afford potentialities for &ldquo\;art&rdquo\; in the Deleuzian sense. In pursuing this contention\, I will elaborate two distinct senses of the concept of &ldquo\;noise\,&rdquo\; which\, I argue\, are brought into unique resonance by digital technologies. Firstly\, in terms not dissimilar to those of Deleuze\, there is the 20th \;century avant-garde&rsquo\;s conception of &ldquo\;noise\,&rdquo\; as a chaotic\, aleatory &ldquo\;outside&rdquo\; to human semantic structures\, an externality which nevertheless serves to creatively open these structures to radical new potentialities. Secondly\, there is &ldquo\;noise&rdquo\; as conceived by &ldquo\;information theory&rdquo\; -that is\, as a statistically determinable\, aleatory presence within transmission channels\, which telecommunications technologies and engineering endeavour to ameliorate.
\n\nBut what happens when art comes to populate these channels? When art becomes &ldquo\;informational&rdquo\; and\, in so doing\, valorises the &ldquo\;noisy\,&rdquo\; aleatory presences which information technologies strive to exclude? In order to tease out the implications of such an encounter\, in the latter part of this paper I will turn to a work of &ldquo\;digital cinema&rdquo\; -David Lynch&rsquo\;s 2006 film \;Inland Empire- identifying the ways in which this film serves to entwine these two distinct senses of noise\, in such a way as might problematise Deleuze&rsquo\;s own thinking on information\, and advance his broader conception of art into the 21st \;century.
ORGANIZER;CN=Jack Alan Reynolds: METHOD:PUBLISH END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR