The attention garnered by noise and its companions fits very well into the current picture. Following the various turns of the visual, the performative, etc., as offering the leadingguiding perspectives, the auditory now stands at the center of contemporary discourse. But such a focus on sound is nothing new. Is the memory of discourse really so short that it’s once again putting on the theoretical agenda those controversies and upheavals relating to silence and noise that permeated the 20th century since its very beginning? Is there nothing more important and pertinent relevant to our time of political vacillation and the hybridization of art and technology as we face a new era of digital control, a post-human future? How is the power of the culture industry changing within this context, how are its economic and legal-moral assets transforming themselves within the systems of copyright and digital distribution? Perhaps, though, it is in fact precisely such auditory sideshows-stages that are capable of opening up new perspectives on these changesshifts:#A1 the noisy, low-culture music of the disadvantaged, displaced, or forgotten classes, regions, or cultures; the ignored unheard background; the resonance of the body and the unconscious; the silence of the lambs, aware of the position they are in. If we are not to simply naively follow such perspectives, it is important that we remember. What is the role of those 20th-century explorations of noise that form the backdrop to of today’s sonic renaissance? Are their narratives a help, a hindrance, or are they already established as formal and discursive elements?