SITUATION #111

In Network Study I, VII & VIII, the London-based collective Network Ensemble explores the invisible communications infrastructure that permeates urban spaces and thus our everyday lives. Using a specially developed programme they gather, compile and analyse data from nearby digital networks (e.g. WiFi) and convert them into sonic signals – a diffuse hissing or clicking that varies according to the nature and intensity of the data as the locality is explored. This data is also used to manipulate and modulate images they appropriate from the internet – like an invisible layer of information that parasitically inscribes itself into the images. The collective’s studies focus on infrastructural intersections, such as public or religious institutions and places of large-scale network exchange: embassies, the Vatican, ports. The product of these supposedly objective, technological recordings is no less abstract than the source material, but by breaking them down into audiovisual components they convey a vague yet dark sense of the streams of information that surround us.

SD cards of Selected Network Studies are available in the Fotomuseum shop for 30 CHF.

They include one hour of video material and 45 minutes of sound material. Accompanying this is visual and written documentation of both the hardware and software built for network exploration, as well as details of the data collection and performance sites.

More by the Network Ensemble: networkensemble.com

Kindly supported by Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne.