The image above was made whilst listening to the sound of rainfall in earphones. Rainfall is considered to be a natural source of white noise. The adjective ‘white’ is used to describe this type of noise because of the way that white light works. White light is made of all the different colours (frequencies) of light combined. White noise is all of the frequencies of sound combined.

I was attempting to break down the gap between ‘reception’ and ‘transmission’ by transcribing as neutrally as possible the rhythm of rainfall into a sort of graph. The words ‘graph’ and ‘graphite’ come from the word ‘graphein’ which means ‘to write or draw’. The resulting image is like a visual form of white noise: a screen of static.

Complete text by Emma McNally at Southbank Centre