IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB881861566

Representing noise: stacked plots and the contrasting diplomatic ambitions of radio astronomy and post-punk (2023)

British Journal for the History of Science
Volume: 56
Issue: 2
Pages: 225-245
Publication date: 2023
Language: English

DOI: 10.1017/S0007087423000122

URI: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-for-the-history-of-science/article/representing-noise-stacked-plots-and-the-contrasting-diplomatic-ambitions-of-radio-astronomy-and-postpunk/085E6BEDC4FD45EE330E23395E387F3F

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Telecommunications Music Radio astronomy Political science Science and technology studies (STS) Foreign relations; diplomacy Visual representation; visual communication 20th century, late

Sketched in 1979 by graphic designer Peter Saville, the record sleeve of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures seemingly popularized one of the most celebrated radio-astronomical images: the ‘stacked plot’ of radio signals from a pulsar. However, the sleeve's designer did not have this promotion in mind. Instead, he deliberately muddled the message it originally conveyed in a typical post-punk act of artistic sabotage. In reconstructing the historical events associated with this subversive effort, this essay explores how, after its adoption as an imaging device utilized in radio astronomy, the stacked plot gave representation to the diplomacy agendas of two distinct groups. The post-punk reworking of the stacked plot exemplified the ambition of this artistic movement to attack the images associated with social conventions and norms by amplifying their ‘semantic noise’, and, in so doing, seeking to negotiate a social space for those sharing these subversive goals. Conversely, radio astronomers used the stacked plot to display the presence of interfering radio transmitters in the frequencies exclusively allocated to astronomical research, thus advocating the removal of this electronic noise in the context of international telecommunication negotiations. The article thus shows how the representation of different types of noise through similar images shaped contrasting ambitions in the separate domains of science diplomacy and everyday diplomacy.

...More

Included in

Article Simone Turchetti; Matthew Adamson (2023) Introduction: Power to the image! Science, technology and visual diplomacy. British Journal for the History of Science (pp. 135-146). unapi

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB881861566

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Matthew Adamson; (2023)
Showcasing the international atom: the IAEA Bulletin as a visual science diplomacy instrument, 1958–1962 (/p/isis/citation/CBB936966617/)

Article Sebastian V. Grevsmühl; Régis Briday; (2023)
Satellite images as tools of visual diplomacy: NASA's ozone hole visualizations and the Montreal Protocol negotiations (/p/isis/citation/CBB271480121/)

Article Maria Paula Diogo; Paula Urze; Ana Simões; (2023)
Cartoon diplomacy: visual strategies, imperial rivalries and the 1890 British Ultimatum to Portugal (/p/isis/citation/CBB863745510/)

Article Simone Turchetti; Matthew Adamson; (2023)
Introduction: Power to the image! Science, technology and visual diplomacy (/p/isis/citation/CBB207975137/)

Article Gordon Barrett; (2023)
Picturing Chinese science: wartime photographs in Joseph Needham's science diplomacy (/p/isis/citation/CBB913696876/)

Article Beatriz Medori; (2023)
The visual diplomacy of cancer treatments: the mediatic legacy of the Curies in the early transnational fight against cancer (/p/isis/citation/CBB190342466/)

Article Brogi, Alessandro; (2012)
Ambassador Clare Boothe Luce and the Evolution of Psychological Warfare in Italy (/p/isis/citation/CBB001213838/)

Book Junker, Detlef; Gassert, Philipp; Mausbach, Wilfried; Morris, David B.; (2004)
The United States and Germany in the era of the Cold War, 1945-1990: A handbook (/p/isis/citation/CBB001180295/)

Article Jaume Sastre‐Juan; Jaume Valentines‐Álvarez; (2019)
Fun and Fear: The Banalization of Nuclear Technologies Through Display (/p/isis/citation/CBB152621793/)

Article Herrala, Meri Elisabet; (2019)
Challenges for Soviet-American collaboration in the Cold War: The capitalisation of pianist Sviatoslav Richter for American musical markets (/p/isis/citation/CBB707486248/)

Thesis Guy Jano Trangoš; (2021)
Fortress Science: The Spatialities of Radio Astronomy (/p/isis/citation/CBB194032912/)

Article Mackinnon, Lee; (2014)
Toward an Algorithmic Realism: The Evolving Nature of Astronomical Knowledge in Representations of the Non-Visible (/p/isis/citation/CBB001201295/)

Article Hugo Silveira Pereira; (2017)
The technodiplomacy of Iberian transnational railways in the second half of the nineteenth century (/p/isis/citation/CBB700807464/)

Article Arapostathis, Stathis; Léonard Laborie; (January 2020)
Governing Technosciences in the Age of Grand Challenges: A European Historical Perspective on the Entanglement of Science, Technology, Diplomacy, and Democracy (/p/isis/citation/CBB096460466/)

Book Laura Ephraim; (2017)
Who Speaks for Nature?: On the Politics of Science (/p/isis/citation/CBB675060155/)

Article Sheila Jasanoff; Hilton R. Simmet; (October 2017)
No funeral bells: Public reason in a ‘post-truth’ age (/p/isis/citation/CBB195941349/)

Article Cecilia Passanti; Marie-Emmanuelle Pommerolle; (2022)
The (un)making of electoral transparency through technology: The 2017 Kenyan presidential election controversy (/p/isis/citation/CBB699607308/)

Article Kate Crawford; (January 2016)
Can an Algorithm be Agonistic? Ten Scenes from Life in Calculated Publics (/p/isis/citation/CBB277129253/)

Article Fletcher, Amy L.; (2002)
France Enters the Information Age: A Political History of Minitel (/p/isis/citation/CBB000200134/)

Article Bissell, Chris; (2004)
Models and “Black Boxes”: Mathematics as an Enabling Technology in the History of Communications and Control Engineering (/p/isis/citation/CBB000551186/)