Listening Post (artwork)

Listening Post is an artwork that visualizes Internet chatroom conversations.[1] The work was created between 2002 and 2005 as a collaboration between the artist Ben Rubin and the statistician Mark Hansen.[2][3]

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.[4][5] The displays are hung in a grid format 12 feet high and 21 feet wide,[6] suspended in 11 rows and 21 columns.[7] A text-to speech synthesizer voices some of the phrases as part of the accompanying soundtrack.[8] 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".[9]

Listening Post has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art,[10] the San Jose Museum of Art,[11] the Brooklyn Academy of Music[12][13] and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.[14]

The work is included in the collections of the San Jose Museum of Art[14] and the Science Museum Group collection in the United Kingdom.[15][16]

References
  1. Simanowski, Roberto (2011). Digital Art and Meaning: Reading Kinetic Poetry, Text Machines, Mapping Art, and Interactive Installations. ISBN 9780816667376.
  2. Eleey, Peter. "Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin". Archived from the original on 2019-10-09. Retrieved 2019-10-09 – via frieze.com.
  3. "Exhibitions + Collection". San José Museum of Art. December 21, 2009. Archived from the original on October 9, 2019. Retrieved October 9, 2019.
  4. Antonelli, Paola (2011). Talk to Me: Design and the Communication Between People and Objects. ISBN 9780870707964.
  5. "Ben Rubin". July 5, 2006. Archived from the original on October 9, 2019. Retrieved October 9, 2019.
  6. Knight, Cher Krause (2011-09-23). Public Art: Theory, Practice and Populism. ISBN 9781444360615.
  7. Neumark, Norie (2017-05-12). Voicetracks: Attuning to Voice in Media and the Arts. ISBN 9780262339841.
  8. Carlson, Thomas A. (2009-05-15). The Indiscrete Image: Infinitude and Creation of the Human. ISBN 9780226093178.
  9. Gopnik, Adam (2010-06-18). Through the Children's Gate: A Home in New York. ISBN 9780307369277.
  10. "Whitney's 'Listening Post' a Fly on Chat-Room Walls". NPR.org. Archived from the original on 2019-10-09. Retrieved 2019-10-09.
  11. "The Arts in San Jose, CA | 'The Listening Post' at the San Jose Museum of Art's 'Edge Conditions Part I'". Archived from the original on 2019-10-09. Retrieved 2019-10-09.
  12. Smith, Roberta (2003-02-21). "ART IN REVIEW; Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin -- 'Listening Post'". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2019-07-22. Retrieved 2019-10-09.
  13. Losh, Elizabeth Mathews (2009). Virtualpolitik: An Electronic History of Government Media-making in a Time of War, Scandal, Disaster, Miscommunication, and Mistakes. ISBN 9780262123044.
  14. Baker, Kenneth (August 4, 2007). "'Listening Post' brings the Internet into view". SFGate. Archived from the original on October 9, 2019. Retrieved October 9, 2019.
  15. "Listening Post | Science Museum Group Collection". Archived from the original on 2019-10-09. Retrieved 2019-10-09.
  16. "National Art-Collections Fund Review". 2007.
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