Revisiting the Technical Achievements of Listening Post Ten Years On
Wes Modes · 2014
At the turn of the 21st century, a collaboration between a Bell Labs statistician and an experimental sound artist resulted in a mesmerizing visualization of real-time data that resonates still, in equal parts for its conceptual strength, cohesive aesthetics, and technical brilliance. Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin debuted Listening Post at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2001. The work is a dynamic collage of live conversation drawn from online sources in a room-sized installation featuring 231 small text displays mounted in a grid overlaid with dynamically-generated sound, music, and voice. Much has been written about the beauty of the piece, the rhythms, visuals, and sound, about the conceptual intersections of wired online existence, privacy concerns, and surveillance, and about adding big data to the mix of art and technology that is new media. However, with the exception of some early writings by the artists, little has been written about the still-impressive technical achievement. That the piece is still fresh is proved by a permanent installation of a similar work by Rubin and Hansen in The New York Times Building in New York City just two years ago. Additionally, Listening Post is a living piece that Hansen and Rubin have maintained to keep up with the times. In this paper, I will examine the technical details of Listening Post, as much as possible in Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin's own words culled from papers on the piece, conference proceedings, workshops, and interviews. Beyond its far-reaching influence in new media art, and despite the ten years of rapid technological change that have passed since it was debuted, Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin’s 2002 installation Listening Post remains an outstanding engineering and aesthetic achievement in the realms of data visualization, internet-connected sculpture, and real-time data mining technology.