This is a seminal film. It is the work of a leading International design team, and it is the first attempt to create a primer or introduction to modern communication theory (ie it is based on the work of Claud Shannon – A Mathematical Theory of Communication, 1948) – it is a multimedia work by two designers at the height of their ideas, and ready to hone their skills using film, graphics, typography and voice-over monologue. An inspirational film that still looks ‘contemporary’ today. The Eames (Charles’ wife Ray was the film-maker) use a variety of media and a range of perspectives to introduce Shannon’s basic theory – the idea of signal and noise in the transmission of any signal from its source to its recipient – clearly to a general public, and without using any complex mathematics. They make Shannon’s then rather obscure theory relevant to everyday communications – only 5 years after Shannon and Weiner (Cybernetics – Control and Communication in Man and Machine, 1948) had established the theoretical and mathematical basis of modern telecommunications.