TwttrGraph: I Wish to Speak with You. A Telegraphic Sound Installation

The representations that real-time, always-on, data-driven technologies will enhance society like never before promotes an historical inattention that ignores the entangled genealogy of contemporary social media. As we live our lives increasingly in the public realm of social media, we are not only exposed to a human gaze. What happens when we slow down the present through the past? Using a media archaeological research approach, this paper presents Twitter and the telegraph as related forms of social media. Developed by the first author, TwttrGraph, an object-based sound installation utilising obsolete media technology, is presented as an audio-visual representation of a genealogy of connections between past media technologies and contemporary social media. TwttrGraph can be considered a return to the material representation of media through the physical re-presentation of Twitter messages transported as invisible digital media through the physical materiality of the telegraph key. By enabling the ability to hear the present through the past, TwttrGraph reconfigures the existence of the telegraph within a broader history of social media.