Listening Post

Listening Post is the fantastic new long-term exhibition at the Science Museum.

Listening Post is a 'dynamic portrait' of online communication, displaying uncensored fragments of text, sampled in real-time, from public internet chatrooms and bulletin boards.

Artists Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin have divided their work into seven separate 'scenes' akin to movements in a symphony. Each scene has its own 'internal logic', sifting, filtering and ordering the text fragments in different ways.

By pulling text quotes from thousands of unwitting contributors' postings, Listening Post allows you to experience an extraordinary snapshot of the internet and gain a great sense of the humanity behind the data. The artwork is world renowned as a masterpiece of electronic and contemporary art and a monument to the ways we find to connect with each other and express our identities online.

Listening Post features uncensored fragments of text from live chatroom data. It may occasionally include content that is unsuitable for children or which some visitors may find offensive. The material is not produced or solicited by the Science Museum, so the Museum is unable to accept responsibility for the nature of the content that the work may extract from these sources.

The exhibition runs from Tuesday February 19th 2008 to Thursday February 19th 2009. The Science Museum is open daily from 10am to 6pm excepting December 24th, 25th and 26th.

Find out more about the Science Museum.

How to get there

The closest underground station is at South Kensington.

If travelling by bus the 14, 49, 70, 74, 345 and C1 all serve the area.