EIM 2019 / LISTENING ANGLES :: SOUND PIECES IN PUBLIC SPACE / PHILLIP DAVID STEARNS / HERE BE DRAGONS

Opening reception : Saturday, July 27, 2019 ‑ 17h

Here Be Dragons (2019) – Real-time sound piece for 15 speakers

Here Be Dragons is a real-time sound piece that converts malicious intrusion attempts on wireless networks into sound. “Honeypots” – Raspberry Pi computers disguised as enterprise servers – are exposed to the open Internet, attracting unsolicited network traffic. This data is collected, analyzed and translated into audio events, providing audible access to the Internet as a vulnerable “body” subject to hostile activity.

Today, low-intensity cyber conflicts account for a significant portion of Internet traffic. While we are protected from much of this activity by firewalls built into our routers, misconfigurations can expose devices on our home networks to the open Internet and attract the attention of malicious actors.

Honeypots, combined with other security measures such as intrusion detection and prevention systems, represent a kind of autonomous nervous system of the Internet that is similar in complexity to our own bodies. Could our experience and knowledge of connectivity be in the process of becoming a form of embodied understanding?

Listening angles :: Sound pieces in public space

Two artists have been invited to create an audio work each for an outdoor sound device of 15 speakers specially designed for EIM 2019. Installed along a self-supporting triangular structure, the sound sources are arranged to generate a very specific spatialization of sound. The audience is invited to take a seat in the center of the device for a continuous listening session where the pieces are diffused in alternation – one being a composition while the other is a generative piece.
With this sound presence in the heart of the city, EIM takes the decision to meet the public and to infiltrate – in a way – the common space where the unexpected can still happen. The works presented put forward issues of infiltration/intrusion/transmission related to the digital world, amplified by our constant connectivity. The boundaries between fiction and reality, those crossed by “fake news” (Pierre-Luc Lecours) and invasive attacks on public networks, open and vulnerable (Phillip David Stearns), are the issues explored here and put into sound.

Pierre-Luc Lecours (QC-CA) –Illusory Truth Effect (2019)
Phillip David Stearns (US) – Here Be Dragons (2019)