Catalog accompanying the second part of a diptych exhibition in S.M.A.K., Ghent, curated by Martin Germann and Tanja Boon. The first chapter, Other Pictures , questioned the special potential of the still image. In Signal or Noise the gaze is turned inwards and explores the camera as a metaphor for human existence. Photography is to a large extent produced by machines. The reading of an image thus also requires knowledge of the technological development of the discipline, especially because photography has gradually anchored itself in the social sphere. The more images and their environment merge, the more signal and noise become interchangeable. Readable, manipulated and hidden information are increasingly difficult to distinguish from one another, yet are of equal importance in our visual culture. The myth of photographic transparency seems to be irreversibly lost in a mass of pixels, bits and algorithms.