jeroen vaan loon materializes a glass internet filled with smoke signals
(above) how would the internet look like if all data were temporary and ephemeral?
all images © gert jan van rooij
jeroen van loon is an artist based in the netherlands, interested in the intersection of technology and contemporary culture. his fascination revolves around the impact, or lack of it, of digital technology in our society, documenting and visualizing it, both online and offline. for his latest piece ’an internet’, the artist’s motivation was a simple question: how would the internet look like if all data were temporary and ephemeral? the project results in a vision of such a future internet, with a radically new type of data: smoke.the project results in a vision of such a future internet, with a radically new type of data: smoke
today’s internet consists of glass fiber cables that stretch across the ocean floor, connecting the continents, and thereby creating a worldwide network. all the cables have names, such as the ‘asia africa europe-1 (AAE-1). these cables ensure that, wherever you are on the planet, you will always have access to the same data. data, whose main value is that it can be saved and stored for later.
[“Source-designboom”]
