Noise: tone, paramedia and multiplicity

'Noise: Tone, Paramedia and Multiplicity' explores the influence of Michel Serres' writing around noise, along with Dick Higgins' concept of intermedia, on Fluxus artist Yasunao Tone's work. Here I discuss Tone's audiovisual performance at the UTS Music.Sound.Design Symposium in 2008, drawing on my own discussions with the artist as well as his writing and that of Higgins and Serres. I show not only that Tone's use of noise in performance is based on Serres' theory of the parasite but, further, that his work serves as an exemplar of Serres' metaphysics of noise. In his book Genesis (1982), Serres proposes a metaphysics of noise that emphasises multiplicity. He argues that noise - a particular use of the term that he coins and I will explain - forms a backdrop to all that is meaningful. This is demonstrated in Tone's performance, which involves the artist copying Chinese characters at random using a WACOM tablet, his transcriptions projected before the audience and used to indeterminately influence a Max/MSP based software system producing audio through an eight channel surround system. Further, I argue that Tone's work can best be understood as a performed encounter with noise.