STATEMENT /

The field of research of "Laps" focus on generating sensible representations of Internet by using it as a space for sound broadcasting. The spatial and geographic properties of the Network are highlighted by broadcasting audio streams that travel and reverberate trough the web. Listening to these audio streams by using specific processes* allows to make audible an infinity of transformations that modify the sound as it circulates on the web. These alterations are comparable to a form of erosion caused by the network space - they are a key to allow different mental representations of this digital topography.
*Very low buffers and no error corrections

PROCESS | A sound is sent out over the network and goes through several locations on the web before coming back to the transmitter.

SOUND MATERIAL | To emphasise the changes caused by the network, the sounds used here are deliberately very simple - digital silence, sinusoidal sounds or white noise.

SPACE | Similar to a physical & resonant space, the Internet network is here used as a broadcasting space where sound gets more elaborated. The audio signal is modified by the inner properties of the network and becomes an acoustic signature of this space.

ERRORS | The audio transmission process used here allows to keep all the distortions of the original material that occurred during the process (artefacts, transmission errors, missing data...)

TOPOLOGY | The geography of the network is in perpetual motion. Web user's actions have a direct impact on the features of this "resonant space" - the sound that one can hear through Laps constantly crystallises the activity of part of the web.

EROSION | As a block of raw material subjected to an erosion, the back-and-forth of the sound on the network gradually shape the original material. The audio stream becomes a real-time sculpture - a potential acoustic portrait of the network.

LOOPS | Some versions of Laps operate in closed loops. Sound goes through data servers in data packets. Captured at the end of a loop by the original transmitter, the sound is played and then resent out with no additional modification through the web.

TOPOGRAPHY | In the audio-visual versions of Laps, the received sound is constantly compared to the one initially sent out, the difference between the two sources of sound is graphically rendered in the form of an imaginary landscape.