‘Anyone who types a message in a chat room and hits ‘send’ is calling out for a response. Listening Post is our response’ - Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin, artists of Listening Post (2004) currently on display at the Science Museum in London
In a dark room of the Science museum in London a computer-synthesized voices reader creates the conditions of an eerie, immersive experience to the world of Internet communication. Fragments of thousands of peoples’ messages float in time and space, captured in small screens suspended from thin wires. The florescent green light of the letters maintains the electronic nature of the work, reminding us that this is man-made, whereas the rhythmic sound combinations of the transformation of letters into music, blurs the boundaries between the human and the super-human, the natural and the supernatural, the profane and the sacred. The experience in the gallery is spiritual, an opportunity for quiet contemplation and for escaping from the otherwise hyperactive environment of the museum or of the world at large. The process of un-concealment, of peeling through the everyday realities of thousands of strangers, this opportunity to peer through and gaze at people’s concerns, to get a glimpse of the immensity of human experience as much as of the need to reach out is hypnotizing, soothing, calming. In this room, one is not alone.
