Soundbeam: A Platform for Sonyfing Web Tracking

Government spying on internet traffic has become ubiquitous. Not to be left out, the private sector tracks our online footprint via web beacons and cookies. Web services such as Google track our progress as we surf the net and click on links. The Mozilla plugin, Lightbeam (formerly Collusion), shows the user a visual map of every site to which a surfer’s data is sent. An interconnected web of advertisers and other otherwise invisible data-gatherers quickly builds during normal usage. We have modified this plugin so that as the graph builds, its state is broadcast via OSC. We will act as translational agents in a process of live data sonification. The collected data is the material with which we will develop a set of musical gestures based on patterns we may discover. The findings of our data collection and the developed music will be presented in the form of an audiovisual live performance. Snippets of collected text and URLs will both form the basis of our audio interpretation and also be projected onto a screen, so an audience can voyeuristically experience the activities of governments and advertisers.