Ben Hansen and Ben Rubin, The Listening Post (Artist 5)

Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin have created a very astounding and magnificent piece of art using the Internet as their content. Unlike their most common predecessors, Mark and Ben transferred the outside people’s words into their own. So their picture, actually their artwork, definitely consists over a 1000 words, which is cumulatively called the Listening Post. The Listening Post uses segments of text which were written by people in unrestricted Internet chat rooms, blogs, and a variety of other internet public forums, as their content. The content is formed and foregrounded into a suspended grid of 200 plus small electronic screens. With the use of a voice synthesizer, the content is sung while being displayed across the screens. There are content is displayed through six movements like pieces of a symphony. Each movement has different: visual arrangements, audio enhancements, music elements, and data processing logic; each movement evoking a separate emotion. Initially, I thought Ben and Mark’s work is handicapped by the lack of innovation because they couldn’t create their own content and instead used the Internet as a crutch to find their content. However, after youtubing their work, I thought their work was a unique marvel. “I am”…amazed.