Noise, Form, Art

Abstract

The concept of form is of the most exciting notions that human consciousness has created, developed and manipulated. It is, in the words of Colin Cherry, one of those rare bridges between science and art [1]. The concept of form, in the broadest sense of the word, is reduced by computer scientists to a lack of randomness within an organised set of elements. By this measure, the fundamental property of form is a negative one: nonrandomness. Computer scientists have tried to determine the features that distinguish form from randomness, or noise, which is itself a complex notion. Objectively, noise is defined as a set of elements distributed randomly within well-defined parameters. Thus, a set of elements according to the Gaussian distribution, with average m and variance v, is called white noise. There are several other 'colours' of noise, such as pink and gray. On the other hand, it is much more difficult to define noise subjectively. A. Moles [2] thinks that Beethoven's Ninth Symphony becomes noise for someone who wants to understand what his neighbour is saying, while for the person who is listening to the music, the neighbour is making noise. To avoid confusion over the word 'form', many scientists prefer to consider the detection of twoor three-dimensional objects. Obviously, nothing is gained by this for our purposes, since the concept of object is at best a specific, highly constrained instance of form (for which the concept of boundary is essential as well). We are back where we started.