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Generative Aspects of Noise Workshop

Workshop on the Generative Aspects of Noise

23-25 June 2025 | Varna, Bulgaria

(Vattenfall’s Horns Rev wind farm off Denmark, Source: Recharge News,  2 November 2019)

Sha Xin Wei and Muindi F. Muindi will co-convene with Yagmur Denizhan, Cécile Malaspina, and Alicia Juarrero a Workshop on the Generative Aspects of Noise as part of the 2025 Summit of the International Society for the Study of Information.

The notion of noise traditionally designates undesirable, disruptive and even destructive factors that inevitably exist in any real system. In that sense, noise typically refers to what needs to be eliminated or at least reduced in order to retrieve what is considered as the useful, meaningful and functionally relevant content of any signal or process. However, we cannot take the underlying assumptions or definition of usefulness, meaning, or functionality for granted.

Our theme “generative aspect of noise” suggests that disruptive factors can lead to the discovery or invention of new regimes that constitute a basis for novel functionalities. In light of these novel functionalities it becomes possible to speak of information and meaning.   This three-day workshop brings together scholars from diverse disciplines to elaborate on the referential character of information and noise, and on the mechanisms affecting the emergence of frames of reference.