Internet Soundscape

Exhibitions

Soundmaps For The Dreamers II
Digital album, international
One of thirty-seven artists selected from the Sound Maps for Dreamers project (see below)
Curated by Harry Sumner
Released 26 January 2018
Tracks alongside their corresponding maps

Soundmaps
Juried exhibition, international
Sound Maps for Dreamers
Sonospace
7 December 2017-present
A 10:00 edited version, entitled Internet Galaxy, prepared for this online exhibition.

Curated by Harry Sumner for Sonospace, the Sound Maps for Dreamers exhibition invited international sound artists to link audio recordings and compositions based on field recordings to small, non-related historic paper maps, with a clear and specific target area. Sonospace is a sound archive and audio publisher founded in London focused on the research and documentation of field recording and sound art.

Move, Touch, Feel.
Invited exhibition, national
Nouspace Gallery & Media Lounge
Vancouver, Washington
5-26 December 2014

Echoes #3: What does the Internet sound like?
Juried broadcast, international
Stress.FM
Lisbon, Portugal
30 November - 1 December 2013

Curated by Nuno Torres in collaboration with Echoes and Stress.FM. Submissions were encouraged to explore the sound(s) of electronic life, daily experiences of/with/in the worldwide networked digital communications system.

Echoes was a transdisciplinary art project in Lisbon, Portugal, July 2013-March 2014. Coordinated by the art collective Osso for the city of Lisbon, with a focus on thoughts, experiences, and interventions regarding listening and place, Echoes aimed "to put together thoughts, experiences and interventions on the relationship between LISTENING and PLACE."

Echoes was divided into four parts, presented over four weekends every two months July 2013-March 2014. Each Echoes in the series featured debates, concerts, workshops, soundwalks, film screenings, and radio broadcasts via Stress.FM, London, England. The common theme was how soundscape and aurality contribute to a sense of place. My works were included in each of the four parts of Echoes
Echoes #4: The Stranger That Is Next To Me
Echoes #3: Internet Soundscape
Echoes #2: Paging Greg Lambert
Echoes #1: Ambient Pulsations, Between Sleep and Dreams, and Contact.

Background

I created and submitted Internet Soundscape in response to an international open call for Echoes #3: What does the Internet sound like?, a transdisciplinary art project in Lisbon, Portugal, curated by Nuno Torres. Internet Soundscape was selected and included in the Echoes #3 program.

The conceptual framework for Internet Soundscape was to make the imagined real through sound.

Metadata

Object: audio file
Format: mp3
Bit Rate: 356kbs
Duration: 20:00 (with shorter iterations)
Created: 2013
Modified: 2017
Creator: John F. Barber

Artist Statement

The Internet is a world-wide network of networked computers, dedicated to communication, commerce, and control. We consider the Internet as both real and imaginary. Real in the physical experience of its computers, cables, and other hardware. Real in the believable participation, through its interface, the World Wide Web, with communication and information sharing. Real in the understanding that all this information trafficking consists of on or off electrical states, bits and bytes of packaged energy sent along wires, microwaves, or satellite signals.

Less real, even imaginary, is a sense of this process. For example, if we were to peel back the outer skin of the Internet, the plastic and rubber cable wrappings, the black boxes covering and containing its components, how might we experience the Internet? Could we see and/or hear anything of the constant ebb and flow of information traveling through its circuits and cables, routers and computers? What might the Internet sound like? Internet Soundscape provides an answer, and a sound-based narrative about the process of sharing information globally.