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Listening Post

Listening Post by Fenchurch!.
This was so mesmerizing, I could have stayed here all day, ignored Escher, and sat on the couch just listening to the ticks, clacks, and computer voice wash over me.

“What would 100,000 people chatting on the Internet sound and look like?” In the year 2000, this was the deceptively simple question that motivated sound artist Ben Rubin and statistician Mark Hansen to collaborate on what you are currently hearing and seeing.

Listening Post analyzes all the text—typed just moments ago—by tens of thousands of people in Internet chat rooms around the world. It presents them as six different “movements,” combining musical tones, sound effects, synthesized voice, and scrolling text. For example, in the first movement, Listening Post monitors and displays a randomly typed text beginning with “I am.” It then searches the Internet for related phrases, creating a simultaneously funny, sad, nonsensical, pathetic, yearning, quotidian, and ultimately mesmerizing tonal poem of identity in the Internet age.

For centuries, the soaring buttresses, vaulted ceilings, and luminous stained glass of cathedrals, along with hymns and chants, have transmitted that which is beyond expression. Using algorithms, software, and data mining, Listening Post generates a similar experience around what sometimes seems beyond comprehension. Hansen and Rubin’s art facilitates a human-level connection to the immeasurable scale, vast content, and nano-immediacy of our communications universe.


For more info, go here and here.


Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin.
Supporting hardware and software, 146 x 233 x 31 inches.
2005-2006. 

Comments

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sawall  Pro User  says:

That exhibit was incredible.
Posted 33 months ago. ( permalink )

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bokchoyboy  Pro User  says:

Very cool image. The exhibit sounds cool!
Posted 33 months ago. ( permalink )

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Fenchurch!  Pro User  says:

Thanks! I cannot reiterate how captivating this is!
Posted 33 months ago. ( permalink )

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Nat W  Pro User  says:

Totally amazing piece, and great photo of great art
Posted 33 months ago. ( permalink )

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Fenchurch!  Pro User  says:

Thanks! Have you seen it before? If not, you should! :)
Posted 33 months ago. ( permalink )

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digivangelist says:

Seen it, was totally engrossed by it and wanted to go back again but it's one now. I know what you mean by wanting to spend the day there.
Posted 31 months ago. ( permalink )

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mrwilloby  Pro User  says:

You know what I just realized. Mark Hansen is my professor right now. I missed the week in class that he talked about this project.
Posted 30 months ago. ( permalink )

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sawall  Pro User  says:

Aw, too bad. I'd be curious to know what he had to say about it. It is a really awesome piece.
Posted 30 months ago. ( permalink )

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Pikntdlk says:

It looks like a bee hive. Mesmerising indeed.
Posted 28 months ago. ( permalink )

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Rozwithart says:

Hi, I'm an admin for a group called Media Me, and we'd love to have your photo added to the group.
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

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ToastyKen  Pro User  says:

I totally thought about The Listening Post during a certain scene in The Dark Knight. I used this photo in my blog post about that (spoiler warning).
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

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sqala  Pro User  says:

Excellent "Installation" I use it t illustrate a post about CRM, as a different way to listen customer ( clickable picture : i-marketing.blogspot.com/2009/07/les-sources- de-valeur-du...
Posted 5 months ago. ( permalink )

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