In collaboration with the net art group UBERMORGEN, LIA created the generative visual system for The Sound of eBay.
The project featured a “composition robot” developed by Stefan Nussbaumer that generated songs derived from eBay user accounts. LIA developed the software using Macromedia Director to translate this live data into generated visual patterns. Due to the reliance on real-time data streams that no longer exist, the work is now preserved only through documentation.
The project received a Special Mention at the CREAM International Festival for Arts and Media in Yokohama, Japan (2009) and was reviewed by Rhizome.
The Sound of eBay (2008), documentation of the generative software.
The Sound of eBay (2008), generated visual output.
Exhibition at Rencontres Internationales, Madrid (2008)
Installation views of the generative projection.
Project Statement
First there was silence…
Then there was data…
But there was no story…
Just images and sounds…Cities were built and a grid was laid on top of the topography.
Within this global grid a company named eBay became the largest marketplace, with very local marketspaces. eBay is romantic and seductive, not like the local fleamarkets in Paris (Le marché aux puces de Saint-Ouen) but sexed up a million times bigger and spherically transcended, much more effective and thoroughly commercialized. We love it! The Sound of eBay is the affirmative high-end low-tech contribution to the atomic soundtrack of the new peer-to-peer hyper-catastrophic shock-capitalism.
The sound is cool, the machine produces masses of songs and replicates millions of times throughout the networks – flooding the net, a bubbling sea of artifical songs visualized in CONTEMPORARY teletext – a continental drift within a macromusic universal urban scape. Trash-Radio.
Forget the technology,
its lustful entertainment, baby!
Text by UBERMORGEN
Project Details
Year Created: 2008
Medium: Net Art / Generative Visualization (Macromedia Director)
Credits
Concept & Direction: UBERMORGEN
Visual System: LIA
Sound Coding: Stefan Nussbaumer
Theory: Grischinka Teufl
Scripting: Erich Kachel
Exhibitions & Recognition
CREAM International Festival for Arts and Media, Yokohama, Japan (2009)
Special Mention
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain (‘Rencontres Internationales’, 2008)
Press & Reviews: Rhizome, BoingBoing, SPEX
