Xenofuturism

: the noise of art

Abstract

Moving away from frameworks based on the individual judgement of sound and associated tropes of musical disciplinary transgression, this thesis, and the digital portfolio that accompanies it, examines the theoretical and practical openings that arise when noise is reconceptualised as a germinal territory for the production of knowledge. Engaging with recent thought within the contexts of epistemology and cognition (Malaspina, Wilkins), and setting up a dissonant, interdisciplinary encounter between key ideas from sonic noise art theory (Thompson, Brassier), noisy ontologies (Serres, Moten), and critical theory (Berardi, Fisher, Jameson, Srnicek), an expanded notion of noise is developed as a theoretic framework that can guide the development of methods for making impactful art in a noisy world. This expanded notion is also proposed as a novel and relevant lens for the analysis of cultural production within the wider socio-cultural milieu; a globalised technological media landscape the thesis terms an ecology of noise.
Engaging with contemporary artworks in tangential, generative juxtaposition to its own practical research, the thesis contributes an expanded conception of noise in art practices beyond the sonic subjective. Subsequently, this conception is used to investigate how contemporary art practices might dissolve calcified regimes of knowledge from the outside in (Fisher, Negarestani, Sutherland). This extra-sonic figure is put to work in (re)considering contemporary art as a site of fugitive knowledge production; speculative territories where artworks engage in the modulation, destabilisation and revision of predetermined ideological structures that actively define the socio-cultural norms that constrain thought and action. As such, the written thesis becomes a parallel site (a para-site) to artworks that are parasitical upon it. As these two alien registers refract and collide in their shared mission to crack open the future, a xenofuturist transit is enacted: moving away from listening to the art of noise, toward thinking (and feeling) the noise of art.

Date of Award	Nov 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Brighton
Supervisor	Stephen Mallinder (Supervisor), Mr Luke Pendrell (Supervisor) & Frauke Behrendt (Supervisor)