N.E.S.T.
Network examination of serendipitous transfer.
A generative software for a degenerative purpose.
by C6.org, Leon Cullinane B.A.
and Benjamin Delarre BSc.
Currently studying atMSc at Chalmers, Goteborg, Sweden.
e-mail: nest@c6.org
Abstract
Nest
is a distributed
network application that shows the effects of continual data transfer and
degradation. The data’s change is due to corruption produced over a circular
online network. Audio data is passed around the ring of users maintained by a
central server. This ring of data and
users’ geographic positions are mapped in an effort to chart the audio’s path
around the globe.
C6
Ben Delarre & Leon Cullinane are two of several
artists working under the collective name of C6. We are a small cell of like
minded artists operating since 1997 to produce counter productive art works in
both real and virtual exhibition spaces.
Introduction to Nest
N.E.S.T. (‘Network Examination of Serendipitous Transfer’) is
a cross-platform application which examines corruption and disorder
in virtual network communications. Data from an audio file is passed around the
Nest network by the means of the U.D.P. protocol. The Nest application’s method
of communication allows several factors such as net congestion, high traffic or
poor quality connection and the inherent unreliability of this protocol to
affect and degrade the original signal. Users of the application are invited to
watch and listen to this process, while being engaged in a search for
serendipity as the message gradually declines towards detritus.
The saving of a particular moment of the audio’s
change and the visual representations are made possible by the use of the
programs snapshot facility which saves the audio from the buffer as .raw file.
These serendipitous moments can then be emailed to C6 and compared with other
results returned by other users. This community is then mapped and each node and path of its broadcasts is
displayed on a website, along with statistics and individuals comments on their
findings in the Nest forum.
Inspirations
Nest is inspired by two works: One is SETI’s [1] distributed search for extraterrestrial life; the
other, Usman Haques ‘Japanese Whispers’ [2] where audio was passed around a
ring of mobile phones. There is an irony in fusing the aesthetics of a
scientific work and the function of an artwork.
Looking for an event of serendipity in something
deemed as detrimental produces a contrast between function and goal, as the
aesthetics of SETI map the dysfunction of a network.
Like Usman’s work, Nest relies on its mediums
transfer effect as well as on the quality of the connection in order to produce
changes in its audio signal. The Nest network was constructed following Usman’s
arrangement of mobiles, with each user being placed next to his nearest
neighbour geographically as they login.
Protocols
Conventional TCP/IP communications does not allow the
type of environmental damage and degradation we wished to occur during the
data’s journey around our network. TCP/IP has a 98% probability that the data
sent is valid and is the same as the data sent. In order to increase the error
probability we implemented the input/output part of the system using UDP. UDP
makes no guarantees like TCP does, and the level of corruption received is
entirely dependent on the connections involved in sending the data and various
other factors such as data congestion heavy traffic and its transfer through
old outdated networks and telephone lines, meaning that the rate of corruption
is different for every connection.
In this way the UDP data transfer mirrors the
corruptive and generative atmospheric disturbances experienced through the
Japanese Whispers ring of connected transmitters and receivers. By choosing UDP
several other considerations presented themselves. The main issue being that
many firewalls (software or hardware devices that block traffic to the internet
for security reasons) block most UDP traffic.
The exclusion of users is a dilemma for producers who
have traditional ethics of web accessibility. Unfirewalled users are more
likely to be home users, these lower bandwidth users would be particularly
significant in successfully creating corruption within the Nest network. The
obvious exclusion of the corporate and reliable connections in preference for
poor and more amateur home use, gives Nest a political aesthetic that is in
keeping with the ethics and practices of C6 [3] .
Network Mapping
The
network ring is represented in the geographic visualisation on a Mercator
projection world map. As users join and leave, their connections need to be
created with their nearest neighbours leading to a depiction of a flow of the
data around the network rather than it criss-crossing. This was desired for
both visual and conceptual reasons. Nests primary concern is the circular
nature of its data. The mapping of users onto a world map structured the
development of the Nest server protocols and the database entries of all users.
Network objectives
The act of joining a network primarily involved in the degredation and corruption of its initial signal is the primary objective of Nest. This involvement makes accomplices of its participants in the destructive data subversive. Users are asked to return their results by use of a snapshot facility. This, in turn, could be seen as the end result which allows the end user to decide when a specific moment of serendipity or instance of interest has occurred at their machine. However, Nest’s ‘art’ seems to appear between the two, each cycle of data a binary performance.
Website
The visualisation of the global Nest network as well
as statistics, bulletin boards and information on installation, running and
goals of the project are of a premium importance. Nest sets out to create a
community of degenerates and uses several methods to enforce that sense within
the community. By encouraging communication between users, the website will
provide a cross-pollination of diverse views on the subject of corruption. The
visualisation of the Nest network in a world map view is the primary tool for
creating this community. Users can check theirs and their neighbours’ position
within the Nest ring.
As an addition to this map, the community is backed up
with bulletin boards where users can talk and discuss findings with each other.
Comments from the press and public have been encouraging leading us to believe
that the network and community will grow in the future.
“Nest's manufactured entropy is intended to imply a re-evaluation of the
nature and function of data. 'Nest is a resistance to the control that insists
on purity and so negates the chance of random serendipitous moments,' says C6.
Maybe. There is more than one way of looking at this. Digital artists'
obsession with noise or interference reflects the traditional creative tension
between the Apollonian and Dionysian. Noise is unbounded dissonance; it is
Dionysian. Information which is structured and rendered directly meaningful by
IT protocols is Apollonian. Nest poses an interesting problem because its
entropy is manufactured - in inimitable anarchic fashion, C6 is playing with
the boundary between boundedness and unboundness. 'In the virtual space of strict rules of exchange,' says C6, 'the
corruption of data can be seen as a form of electronic terrorism.' Or is Nest a
new and alternative system of exchange?” [4]
[1] SETI Search for Extra Terrestrial
intelligence
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/
[2] ‘Japanese Whispers’ Usman Haques Japan 2000 http://haque.org
[3] C6
http://c6.org
[4] Peter Carty Mute magazine 2004 http://www.metamute.com/