The Nature of Internet
New Media Art Piece
“The Nature of Internet” is an art piece that makes use of LEDs, Arduino programming, custom circuitry and Processing code to bring necessary attention to the increasing environmental cost of bandwidth-heavy internet use. The centerpiece is a USB-connected unit which in its default state cools the literal mini iceberg inside. However when the user of the connected computer visits a website requiring significant bandwidth, the device switches to heating mode, causing the iceberg to quickly melt. As it melts into the lower electronics, water eventually accumulates to the point that a simulated short circuit is triggered, rendering the connected computer inoperable. In this way the device also illustrates the self-destructive nature of environmentally unfriendly activity. And to make the entire message explicit, a connected display streams the raw data being sent and received, pulled from a network tracker interfaced with a Processing sketch.
