Art in cyberspace: The digital aesthetic
Mark R. Andrejevic · 2004
If art is a creative, expressive way of organizing information of all kinds, from words and images to body movements, the Internet provides artists with a vast new palette of possibilities. Consider. for ex.ample, a collaborative artwork called 'Listening Post' that transforms the streams of data generated by thousands of people typing away in chat rooms. online forums and search engines into a symphony of sounds that pulse in time with the flow of data. Thanks to sophisticated algorithms, 'computers analyze the chatter and convert that mass of statistical data into dense chords or a resonant drone that represents the underlying patterns in the online communication' (Mirapaul, 2001a). The result is that someone clacking anonymously at a keyboard becomes an unwitting participant in the creation of a data-driven musical composition. Designed by a New York artist and a research statistician, 'Listening Post' encapsulates several (but by no means all) of the characteristic elements of the digital aesthetic: interactivity, the ability of digitization to transform one medium (words) into another (sound). and the open-ended and evolving form of the final work.