output = translate(deafness, through=glitch(process(signal)), into=connection)It didn’t start with a sound. It started with a question.
Can deafness be music? Can glitch be expression? Can noise be meaning?
I. ORIGIN FREQUENCIES
The project began not as an album, but as a philosophical itch. At Narrata.io, I’d been exploring poetry, language, and perception through speculative verse — playing with dualities, light vs dark, silence vs signal. Somewhere in the feed, a thread caught:
“I hear noise without signal. If I can’t see someone’s lips, language dissolves into static.”
That line — half-poem, half-confession — became the seed of Signal // Noise.
At first, the idea was to write more verses around the theme of limbo: being caught between worlds. Between deaf and hearing. Analogue and digital. Signal and noise. It was deeply personal — and deeply systemic. Something clicked.
And then it became sound.
II. THE SOUND OF LIMBO
Signal // Noise is a concept album built from that liminal space — born not of clarity but of fracture. Of captioning. Of glitch. Of misunderstood syllables and moments of misfired connection.
It’s a paradox, of course. An album about deafness. Music built from the absence of sound. But that’s the point. Deafness isn’t silence — it’s distortion, delay, overload, reassembly. It’s trying to decode life with corrupted files.
For me, it’s literal. I wear a hearing aid on one side, which amplifies analogue sounds. On the other, a cochlear implant — digital, processed, piped directly to the auditory nerve. One ear hears deep, murky tone. The other hears high, synthetic clarity. Between them: a chasm.
Even my hearing is in limbo.
III. PROCESS // ZINE
Out of the music came vision. The project expanded, naturally, into a zine. Not as merch. As medium.
Because I hear by seeing.
Process Issue #00 documents the creation of the album — but also the failure of language, the edges of captioning, the violence of being misunderstood. It’s a visual diary. A glitch archive. A graphic act of translation.
The zine gave Signal // Noise its mirror. What one ear hears, the other sees. What music can’t capture, images can. And what neither can hold, the process reveals.
IV. PLATFORM + COMMUNITY
The Tumblr feed processzine-org.tumblr.com emerged as the project’s real-time diary — a documentation of glitches, drafts, captions, design ideas, and broken signals. But that wasn’t enough. Not for something this personal.
So Deaf Process was born: a community Tumblr space for other Deaf, Hard of Hearing, APD, tinnitus, and misophonia artists to contribute. A chorus of fractured voices. A liminal collective.
It’s not about platforming — it’s about resonance.
V. FROM DIGITAL TO ANALOGUE
The final phase is material.
Signal // Noise will launch a Kickstarter campaign. Not for profit. For translation.
- The digital album will become cassette and vinyl. Tangible noise.
- The digital zine will become a printed object. Captioned, bound, and held.
Why? Because deafness is already too abstract. We live in captions. In liminal gaps. This is a way to restore physicality to our signal.
VI. WHY IT MATTERS
This isn’t just a personal project. It’s a system map.
Living with auditory processing disorder, I constantly misread — sometimes in quiet rooms. Occasionally one-on-one. Since my cochlear implant, even those safe zones are in danger. I interpret less than before. And I withdraw further.
As an INFJ, my core need is connection. Meaning. Being seen. Being understood. But that becomes impossible when the signal doesn’t reach. This project is, in some ways, a response to that collapse. A way to say:
We’re not broken. We’re between signals. And we’re still transmitting.
VII. EPILOGUE // NOISE REMAINS
Signal // Noise is more than music. It’s a philosophy in waveform. A record of what happens when technology tries — and often fails — to translate human experience.
It’s a work in process. It’s ongoing. And it’s open.
You’re invited. Even in the noise.
Leave a Reply