Cryptography
Noise invites decoding. There is an innate need to make meaning out of noise since noise challenges our relation to the world and to identity. Noise also becomes a deep concern of the military, because within noise can be hidden messages. Noise can have an intelligence, be it the intelligence of espionage or of extraterrestrial life. In the earliest days of widespread radio and telegraph communication, a government agency called the Black Chamber was established to decode the oceans of gibberish floating in the air. The anxieties concerning national security that a radio-wave saturated atmosphere engendered a form of military-literary semiotics (many cryptographers pulling a government check were Shakespeare or Poe experts).In Episode 9 of Twin Peaks, Bobby Briggs' normally reticent father, acting on the advice of the "log lady," delivers to Special Agent Dale Cooper a message from deep space . . .
Following this segment, Laura's closest relations sing one of the series' many "ethereal" musical numbers. In some ways, it is the ideal of non-noise, the exact opposite of "space garbage." But because of the effects placed on their voices, there is a sense that the voices do not belong to the bodies, or if they do, they are already on their way across the airwaves into deep space. There they will either dissolve into fragments or return to some ideal origin of all meaningful sound. The outerspace loop in the journey of the lost voice is more the hallmark of the radiophonic than it is of the acousmetre.