ListeningPost4

Image Caption: Listening Post (2001-2003), a media installation by Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen shown here at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in December, 2001.

Credit: Photo courtesy of The Office for Creative Research.

 

Listening Post (2001-2003)

Media installation by Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen.

Development of Listening Post supported by Lucent Technologies, Rockefeller Foundation, On the Boards Seattle, and The Whitney Museum of Art.

 

Short description:

An art installation that culls text fragments in real time from thousands of unrestricted Internet chat rooms, bulletin boards and other public forums.

 

Abstract:

Listening Post is an art installation by Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin that culls text fragments in real time from thousands of unrestricted Internet chat rooms, bulletin boards and other public forums. The texts are read (or sung) by a voice synthesizer, and simultaneously displayed across a suspended grid of more than two hundred small electronic screens.

 

Listening Post cycles through a series of six movements, each a different arrangement of visual, aural, and musical elements, each with it’s own data processing logic. Dissociating the communication from its conventional on-screen presence, Listening Post is a visual and sonic response to the content, magnitude, and immediacy of virtual communication.

 

Listening Post can be seen at The London Science Museum and The San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, Calif.

 

Project on OCR’s website: o-c-r.org/portfolio/listening-post/

 

Artwork and photo © 2012 The Office for Creative Research, all rights reserved.

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