Listening Post |
Entering a darkened space, you find the work flashing and flickering as texts appear and disappear over grid of over 200 small electronic screens. There are seven ‘scenes’ and at intervals there is darkness and silence before Listening Post enters the next cycle of movement.
The sampled words and phrases are accompanied by ambient mechanical sounds. Combined, the work produces a form of mechanical poetry or music. The result presents a ‘sculpture’ of the ‘content and magnitude’ of online chatter.
"By sampling text from thousands of online forums, Listening Post produces an extraordinary snapshot of the ‘noise’ of the internet, and the viewer/listener gains a great sense of the humanity that sits behind the data. The artwork is world renowned as a masterpiece of electronic and contemporary art and a monument to the ways we find to connect with each other and express our identities online." Curatorial statement
We Feel Fine |
But whilst Listening Post has an air of industrial dystopian menace it is essentially passive. The ability to interact with the data in We Feel Fine presents a friendlier, more inclusive view of online chat.