Nicholas Knouf

Nicholas Knouf is a PhD candidate in information science at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. His research explores the interstitial spaces between information science, critical theory, digital art, and science and technology studies.

His dissertation, entitled Noisy Fields: Interference, Elusiveness, and Embodied Temporality in Sonic Practices, critically examines the ways in which the trope of "noise", functions within a set of sonic contexts such as early electronic music, contemporary finance, and artistic robotics projects, and "noise" music.  Responding to recent tendencies to force noise to conform with either revolutionary potential or negative disruption, the dissertation is especially attuned to the ways in which noise is both enclosed by processes of accumulation, while also exceeding any singular attempt to restrain its potential. I argue that historical and contemporary sonic experience cannot be understood within a binary of noise and silence, but rather noise must be understood in its full equivocality, possessing aspects that can easily be captured but still retaining currents that flow unabated.