“Listening Post (2002-6)” by Mark Hansen, Ben Rubin

Title:

Listening Post (2002-6)

Artist(s) and People Involved:

Exhibiting Artist(s):



• Mark Hansen
• Ben Rubin

Symposium:

• ISEA2006: 13th International Symposium on Electronic Art

Venue(s):

• San Jose Museum of Art , San Jose , United States

Artist Statement:

Listening Post is an artwork that visualizes Internet chatroom conversations. Listening Post uses custom computer programs to automatically collect thousands of chatroom and bulletin board conversations. The conversations are then parsed by the software into smaller phrases that are displayed on a hanging grid of 231 vacuum fluorescent text displays. The displays are hung in a grid format 12 feet high and 21 feet wide, suspended in 11 rows and 21 columns. A text-to speech synthesizer voices some of the phrases as part of the accompanying soundtrack. Writer Adam Gopnik described its soundtrack as “intoning words and sentences one by one in a sepulchral BBC announcer’s voice or chanting and singing them in fugue-like overlay”.

The work is included in the collections of the San Jose Museum of Art and the Science Museum Group collection in the United Kingdom [source: Wikipedia 170620]

Video:

Category:

• Art Exhibition
• Sculptural Objects
• Electronic / Robotic Object
• Internet Art