Jan Nieuwenhuis
“[The intruder’s] coming does not stop intruding in some way: in other words, without right or familiarity, not according to custom, being, on the contrary, a disturbance, a trouble in the midst of intimacy” (Nancy 2008: 161).
I walk into the #tweetspace, entering a dark room filled with dim light and intermittent sound. It is an intimate space furnished with beanbags to recline on. The sounds and lights pop up quickly and erratically. Some of the lights are accompanied by hashtags, words that demarcate a topic. The visual and the audible are related to each other and simultaneously produced by tweets. Different sounds and lights are used for different messages or message categories; a reply triggers sounds and lights differing from those of forwarded tweets or trending topics.
The tweets are sonified: data transformed into sounds. The written meaning of the tweet is not conveyed through the sound; rather the sound conveys the underlying structure of the transmitted information. Listening in the #tweetspace is listening to the form of ‘conversations’ on Twitter.
I, however, slowly start to feel uncomfortable in this place. I experience the sounds as foreign; I try to get hold of them, but they disappear too quickly. They alienate me: “The Other appears as a primary intrusion, which calls into question one’s very being” (LaBelle 2009: 15). Although I was the one who entered the space, I feel as if the sounds are the intruders; they force themselves into my ears, and, at the same time, I cannot grasp the meaning of what they convey.
The #tweetspace location functions as conversational content, but as LaBelle argues: “On the other side of this movement […] place also acts as a form to speech: it may not appear directly in what is said or referred to; rather it surfaces in the shape of conversation. To follow this other speech is to partially leave behind the actuality of words, the particulars of description or narrative, and instead to engage the social architectures that shadow conversation” (LaBelle 2009: 11).
If we regard the sonified tweets as a form of speech, the #tweetspace becomes the place that ‘acts as a form to speech’ and sounds the social architecture that is hidden in the virtual shadows of Twitter; it becomes “a contextual intensity that contorts the movements of the tongue, the flow of thought and the breath of speaking, creating fissures and closures of possibilities” (LaBelle 2009: 13). To get a grip on the social architecture, the contextual intensity, of Twitter, one needs to listen in, one needs “to eavesdrop” on the #tweetspace, because “the eavesdropping ear glimpses the dynamics of conversation itself” (LaBelle 2009: 19-20). In this case, the eavesdropping ear picks up the articulations of the social architecture that shapes the flows, the intensities, of the conversation. The sonified data does not convey what is said, but rather the structure of how people relate to each other through Twitter.
Listening is always and foremost relational. When I listen, there is a relation between the things to which I listen and myself. It is not only a strangeness that announces itself with every sound – ‘the other as primary intrusion that questions my being’ – instead, when I listen, sound constructs myself in a constant resonance of becoming. If I listen indifferently and judge a sound as an intrusion, I try to seclude myself from it; I try to deny the constant becoming of myself in relation to the other. “To exclude all intrusiveness from the stranger’s coming is therefore neither logically acceptable nor ethically admissible” (Nancy 2008: 161).
Listening in the #tweetspace as if I am intruded by a stranger is to maintain my defense mechanism, thereby excluding the other. Instead, it offers the possibility of an attentive listening that is not focused on the known, but allows the other to enter. As Marcel Cobussen and Nanette Nielsen state: “Attentive listening means to allow otherness to enter us, to be able and willing to relinquish our usual defense mechanism that all too often lead us to exclude that which appears strange to us” (Cobussen and Nielsen 2012: 155). Listening in and to the #tweetspace requires an attentive and ethical listening. Such a listening paves the way to an audible insight (inhear)[1] into the social architecture of Twitter, in order to remain open to the other – ‘to allow otherness to enter us’ – in a world in which otherness refreshes itself constantly.
References
Cobussen, Marcel and Nanette Nielsen (2012). Music and Ethics. Farnham: Ashgate.
LaBelle, Brandon (2009). “Misplace—Dropping Eaves on Ethics.” In Ros Bandt, Michelle Duffy and Dolly MacKinnon (eds.), Hearing Places: Sound, Place, Time and Culture (pp. 10-20). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Nancy, Jean-Luc (2008). Corpus (trans. Richard A. Rand). New York: Fordham University Press.
Marcel Cobussen
Sonification and visualization – those seem to be the keywords of ‘#tweetspace’. This is how the makers describe their work:
Around the clock, all Twitters in German are transformed into abstract sounds and images – in real time, right after being sent. This happens according to a set of rules: different sounds are assigned to #hashtags (thematic keywords), @replies (personal messages), retweets (forwards) and trending topics (dominant themes). The computer automatically works out a unique characteristic sound for every possible subject.
(http://tweetscapes.de/about/?lang=en)
A program especially developed for the project constantly receives the latest tweets, including additional information related to the topic, the sender, the location, etc. These data are directed to Nehls’ ‘#tweetspace program’ and Barri’s audio-visual sequencing system where they are converted into sounds and pictures using a specially developed algorithm, which implies that the makers have no direct influence on the final sonic and visual composition.
An example: a large number of tweets, posted within a short period of time with the same #hashtag, creates a continuous background sound. In this way a recognizable soundscape is formed, generated by the dominance of one specific topic. Conversely, various topics being discussed at the same time will result in more than one background sound playing simultaneously. Sunday evening tweets usually sound pretty much the same, because everyone is twittering about a particular television program. The sound image of a workday afternoon, by contrast, is often more versatile and indecisive.
By being able to listen to and look at translations in sound and image of the underlying data of Twitter messages, ‘#tweetspace’ offers a new way of accessing this specific social network. In other words, ‘#tweetspace’ makes clear that textual representation is not the only means of processing the complex data structures of Twitter. However, although the makers employ the scientific techniques of sonification and visualization, ‘#tweetspace’ is not simply a research project but primarily an art project, seeking its own aesthetic.
Thus far the explanation of the makers. My experience of ‘#tweetspace’ was quite far removed from the ideas of sonification and visualization. After having entered a dark space of approximately 6x6 meters, I was beset from all sides by sounds, words, and images. Huge tempting fatboys instigated a longer stay in order to get fully submerged in this audio-visual play.
‘#tweetspace’ creates mediametic and atmospheric forces that surround, envelop, enable, and affect. “The atmospheric suggests a relationship not only with the body in its immediate space but with a permeable body integrated within, and subject to, a global system.” (Dyson 2009: 17) Being spatially enveloped, the visitor can no longer take refuge in an aesthetic distance. The sonificating and visualizing technologies enforce a work of art that transforms the visitor into an immersant and creates a (temporary) dissolution between self and environment. ‘#tweetspace’ (re)defines its visitors as embodied human agents; the technologies used here do not disembody the subject but ‘retune’ it as a field of forces that vibrates as it is penetrated by visual, aural, and tactile impulses.
As the makers write: “Twitter becomes ambience; the user becomes part of the data stream.” (http://tweetscapes.de/about/?lang=en)
References
Dyson, Francis (2009). Sounding New Media. Immersion and Embodiment in the Arts and Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Nehls, Anselm Venezian and Tarik Barri. http://tweetscapes.de/about/?lang=en
Sharon Stewart
I enter the darkened, approximately 4m x 4m, exhibition space without reading anything about the exhibit. The four white walls serve as screens for a projected environment: a stylized one with an atmosphere hovering between urban, spaceship, airport, and cyber planet. The four walls are denoted by N – S – E – W in markings on the floor. I wonder vaguely if these correlate with actual compass directions. From the four speakers I hear clicks, whirrs and what I interpret as laser-gun effects. Text, varying in size, color, and velocity and accompanied by various sound effects erupts from different points in the landscape. The text becomes quickly identifiable to me as Tweets. Alongside my slight annoyance at the sounds, which for some reason remind me of gaming sounds, I am intrigued: Why these sounds? Why this virtual environment? Why the explosion metaphor with text bursting from the landscape? Why the text in different sizes, locations, colors, and with differing sound effects?
In other words, for me, this space was not an aesthetic space in which I would have liked to spend a lot of time “enjoying” myself, losing myself in the sights and sounds. It was, for me, clearly a sonification and visualization of something – using the parameters of sound and (projected) size, location, color, and effects, within a nearly square space – and I was becoming curious as to what that something was. I left to glean what information I could from the explanatory text in German by the opening to the exhibit.
Yes, #tweetspace is “a new, sensory mode of access to the Social Web”, an instrument to be played in cyberspace through Tweets… sonification of computer activity… sonification of a social medium… As I have taken part in a few Skype performances and have listened to telematic music performances, I wondered how satisfying participation in this “performance” might be to me. Unfortunately I am not a Tweeter, more due to lack of equipment than personality type, but I imagined myself quickly following the instructions: “simply send a Tweet in German with a #hashtag (e.g. #soundart or #tweetspace) and look and see what happens. The transformation occurs within seconds.” I could Tweet! I could listen and see what happens! I could play this cyber instrument. I could map out the influence, reflections and disturbances of my Tweets in cyberspace. It is now clear for me that #tweetspace hovers, functionally, in between improvisational instrument and data interpretation. More questions arise: How is it to play an instrument where you have no control over the sonic or visual outcome of your action? And, would it theoretically be possible to analyze data, or extract meaning from sonified/visualized data, when you have no idea as to the codes used to translate input to sonic and visual output? And, would the average visitor experience this exhibit as either an interactive composition or as a meaningful interpretation of data, or both? I am still curious.
Vincent Meelberg
Social media are interactive by definition. Social media are all about action and reaction. I twitter something, and I expect others to twitter back. In the networked society we live in it is almost impossible to act without someone else reacting. All our actions are noticed, and hardly go by without some kind of reaction.
In #tweetspace (2011), Anselm Venezian Nehls and Tarik Barri attempt to express the impact of our networked society by incorporating tweetfeeds in their work. They do so by audiovisual means, but the sonic aspect is particularly interesting. They did not simply display the tweets as they are, but sonified them instead. This sonification was not done by reading the tweets out loud, though. Rather, they use more abstract sounds to announce the reception of a tweet. In this way they made the visual audible, but also incomprehensible. As a consequence, #tweetspace emphasizes the impact of tweets, instead of their meanings.
Interestingly, many of the sounds that can be heard resemble whispers: soft, subdued sounds. The visual aspect of #tweetspace could also be interpreted as consisting of a visual equivalent of whispers, as what can be seen is as soft and subdued as the sounds themselves. This forms a stark contrast with the noise one encounters when entering social media. Perhaps the whispers could be interpreted as an indication of the relative futility and meaninglessness of many, if not most, of the messages posted on the Internet.
