The random flow of comprehensible words confronts the visitor with the infinite appearance of words, significations and associations. The aim is not to deliver a limited amount of possibilities equalling a single messages, but to provide endless emergence. The circular installation invites the visitor to plunge into an audio-visual composition within the centre of an auto-poetic machine.

+ What was the inspiration for the piece? Also, what is the message or statement you’re trying to convey?

Our work questions contemporary aesthetics, embracing both formal and semantic issues. Information is a key issue not only on a theoretical, scientific or technological level but also on an aesthetic one. We therefore explore display information technologies, such as nixie tubes, split-flaps and VFD's as much as older communication technologies such as signal lamps, semaphores and shutter panels. These devices incorporate issues such as the materialisation of information, its aesthetics, as its formation, its process and as such the semantics of information. These aspects predestine them for being icons of their time.
For example, the 18th century shutter panels influenced the development of our kinetic light art installation framework 5x5x5. Here its 250 black-white / open-closed frames, its shutters, constitute its kinetic and luminous structure as they form an information device based on a hexadecimal, binary logic as were most of these older communication systems. The beauty of these analogue and code-based, rather than symbol-based communication devices, is that they combine a specific technology with a proper linguistic system. Symbol-based communication devices such as the split-flap displays, on the contrary combine a specific technology with a common language, which explains their enormous popularity and use in the public domain. Their splitting symbols and flapping sounds have shaped, like no other devices, our imagination about globalisation and mobility.

+ What is it about split-flaps that people find so arresting?

The TV series "Lost" featured these to great effect, the movie "A Beautiful Mind" featured a similar kind of setup using a slightly different technology, the travel site Kayak features split flaps prominently in their ads, and even Apple made function: displaying arrivals, departures and delays at airports and train stations, equalling, for many, the idea of travelling, hence adventures and encounters. On the other hand, split-flaps are mainly known for their behaviour: splitting characters and turning flaps, splurging, unintelligible information gradually being rendered understandable. The notion of cracking the code is an inspiring intelligencia intrigue. The split-flaps are understandable devices from an era where technology was understandable. Media archaeology meets vintage fetishism from the Gutenberg galaxy. Their comforting logics are warmly welcome in an era where technology has mainly become incomprehensible.
…What is unique in the split-flap technology is that it's as much visual as sonic. Most people still recall the excitement when the gate number or the arrival hour finally appeared, this optical momentum and sonic call of the spinning letters. It isn't surprising that the most replies on blog posts about our installation are those referring to the soundscape produced by the 512 split-flaps. We could also phrase the fascination provoked by these devices differently: the refreshment of the board takes time - as a ‘slow' technology it attracts our curiosity and attention and imagination. We have the feeling that we assist in the formalisation of information itself. It is this granularity of information, properly a ‘cold' media, which triggers us. Even if McLuhan wouldn't completely agree with this kind of reasoning.
…The split-flap fetishism takes part of growing techno nostalgia, typical for a time of so-called everyday innovation. In the case of split-flaps we face nostalgia towards mid-century positivism of a seemingly mastered global economy and Pan Am world exploration. Those devices are coming from a pre-digital jet age when things were built to last. This naïve nostalgia strikes you immediately when holding a device in hand, one kilo of plain aluminium casing and messing gears; a nostalgia towards the time it represents.

+ How is the system set up? The teaser video shows "Hello World" being spelled out in red letters, but are all intentional words spelled out in red? Does the installation tell a story? Does the "story" change based on the location I'm standing? Is there an aspect of performance in this piece? E.g. I'll only see the whole thing if I spend 10+ minutes inside. Or is it all random?

'Hello World' does not only stand for simple syntax verification within computer programming, but has joined the digital culture. As such, when announcing the artwork this phrase was a proper fit as it also belongs to popular iconography, besides being a geeky joke. The actual process of signalToNoise is based on the combination of two principles: The first principle rules the spinning speed of the characters to create both sonic as spatial patterns within the circular immersive setup. The second principle quests combinations in between each individual character. Here the correlation between data and denotata, message and meaning, finds a literal transcription within an auto-poetic construct. Within an orchestrated fashion of order and disorder, the devices are spinning until a word, a sense, is detected among the non-sense. These are displayed in red and remain static for a few iterations, while the other devices are displayed in white and remain dynamic.

+ The system seems primed for emergent behaviour. I'm curious if in the testing or installation you saw any interesting words appear that weren't programmed, just like the monkey typing Shakespeare? If so, what were the words?

The installation effectively references the Infinite Monkey Theorem and Borges' Library of Babel while questioning combinatory logics within the extraction of meaning. As the title suggests, the artwork questions the ratio between signal and noise; which is one of the most fundamental notions in information theory. Despite meaning's relativity, imperatively, the installation can have as much a dissociative as an associative read. The Infinite monkey theorem is a perfect illustration of this state. The theorem states that an infinite number of monkeys hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely produce the entire human knowledge and most likely even more, even if the amount of noise would be unimaginably big. In literature ‘Gullivers Travels’ and the ‘Library of Babel’ by Jorge Luis Borges witness this infinity of information and the endless and random extraction of meaning. If the task to extract meaning from an apparently chaotic and random mass of information seems impossible, it’s only a question of computational power since for a computer it’s a task like any other. In the installation the spectator is confronted with the extraction of a signal from within the noise, juxtaposing the sonic and visual patterns with the endless stream of random words.

+ Is it difficult to find those split-flap modules? Are there still distributors that sell them in large quantities?

SignalToNoise's split-flaps originate from Bruges' train station, kindly offered to us in return for an artwork. The devices had been stocked for years, in very poor conditions, and had been heavily corroded. Weeks of cleaning followed, at a speed of approximately 30 minutes per piece. It is truly amazing to see the precision these devices still operate at an age of 50 years old. Most of them have been produced in Udine, Italy. The originally producing company, Solari, sent us a recent model with a price tag of 120 Euros, when ordering a minimum amount of a 1000. Unfortunately, the contemporary model is digital and light weight, contrasting the analogue heavy weight with its electro magnet, coil and gears constituting its true beauty.

+ Are there some design details that you're especially proud of in this piece? Things that might not be apparent to the casual observer? E.g. one story about the project noted that the system sounded like rain when running at full speed. Are there more instances like that embodied in the design?

The entire installation is custom tailored using contemporary production methods, including laser-cutting and CNC milling. The entire production process is mastered at the studio, from the pick 'n place population of the boards to the build of the travel boxes.

wired interview