International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, Volume 1 Number 1. Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/padm.1.1.5/1. © Intellect Ltd 2005. At the Listening Post, or, do machines perform? Philip Auslander Georgia Institute of Technology Abstract Listening Post, a collaboration between statistician Mark Hansen and media artist Ben Rubin, samples conversations from public Internet chat sites. The sampled texts are displayed on small LCD screens while an artificial voice reads them aloud. The installation also generates music algorithmically from the data it samples. There are many ways one could describe or categorize Listening Post: as a highly specialized computer, as an electronic sculpture, or as an installation, for example. In some of my recent work I consider the implications of calling such pieces performances. To create a context for a discussion of Listening Post, I briefly summarize some of my thinking on performances by machines with particular attention to the questions raised by identifying machines as performers and the issue of liveness in performance. You walk into a dark, quiet room. Suspended from the ceiling are pairs of wires from which hang over 200 tiny screens. The screens are stacked above one another between the wires, like ladders; collectively they form a grid. Against a background of New Age-sounding music, sentences flash onto the screens one by one. A synthetic male voice with a vaguely British accent reads each sentence out loud as it appears on a screen, occasionally mispronouncing an idiomatic word. When the grid is full, the process starts afresh. The environment is restful and meditative; the ever-changing spoken and written messages are alternately touching, amusing, and dis- turbing. This is Listening Post, a collaboration between statistician Mark Hansen and media artist Ben Rubin, which I saw at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City (17 December 2002-9 March 2003). It samples conversations from public Internet chat sites then sorts and dis- plays the results according to variable criteria: ‘sometimes passages are chosen for their common length, other times for a shared subject, word, or turn of phrase’ (Griffin 2002). When you enter the room, you may see and hear sentences that all begin with ‘I love’ (‘I love you’, ‘I love meat’, ‘I love chatting’); at another moment, you may be offered numerous meditations on an entirely different subject or no single subject at all. The installation also generates music algorithmically from the data it samples. There are many ways one could describe or categorize Listening Post: as a highly specialized computer, as an electronic sculpture, or as an installa- tion, for example. In some of my recent work (Auslander 2002a, 2002b, 5 PADM 1 (1) pp. 5–10. ©Intellect Ltd 2005. ISSN 1479-4713. Keywords performance machine Internet liveness installation sample