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Sculpture to Reflect Campus Wireless Traffic

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the six-kinds-of-cool dept.

prostoalex writes "Ball State University, the top unwired school in the nation according to Intel survey, is set to unveil a sculpture that will reflect the wireless traffic on the campus network. From the article: 'Beginning Tuesday night at 8 p.m., as people log onto the Internet via Ball State's network, their online activity will appear as sound, color, patterns and images projected onto giant screens set up around the base of Shafer Tower, located in the middle of campus on McKinley Avenue.'"

15 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. sculpture? by morscata12 · · Score: 2

    I've never thought of a set of projection screens as a sculpture before..but I guess they haven't created an amorphous blob that's supersensitive to wireless transmissions yet :( One day!

    1. Re:sculpture? by Gentlewhisper · · Score: 3, Funny

      Any chance that my internet traffic will look like naked women?

      --
      Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
    2. Re:sculpture? by spectre_240sx · · Score: 2, Interesting

      True, this really is more of an installation.

  2. I fail to see... by Gobelet · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...how patterns projected on a screen could be qualified as a sculpture. Still it'd be nice to see it going all noisy and red on the next worm attack.

    1. Re:I fail to see... by robson · · Score: 3, Informative

      I fail to see... how patterns projected on a screen could be qualified as a sculpture.

      This project could probably more accurately be filed under "installation", but it's not uncommon for sculpture to be a catch-all for anything that's not painting, video, photography, or craft work.

      You can find some good contemporary installation coverage here.

  3. Toldja! by TheTrueELf · · Score: 4, Funny

    FTFA:

    "It should make everyone's surroundings more interesting because that's the purpose of public art," he said. "To exist and engage the people who are passing by."

    See, officer, I told you she's not a hooker. She's a Performance Artist!

    -ELf
    --
    Si tibi te corpus pulchrum habere narrem, habeasne id contra me?
  4. wow by popeguilty · · Score: 2

    I go to Ball State and this is the first I've heard of it.

    I'll see if I can borrow my folk's digital camera and take pictures.

  5. Eavesdropping possibilities by CRCulver · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If the NSA can get usable info from blinking LEDs, what are the security risks of this scultpure? Nearly everyone knows that radio communications can be freely spied upon, we've all seen scanners that let you listen in to police band radio, but other methods of intercepting communications rarely come to the mind of Joe Average. TEMPEST and NONSTOP attacks have been well-researched for decades, but the closest they've gotten to general public knowledge is Neal Stephenson's use of the concept in Cryptonomicon .

    1. Re:Eavesdropping possibilities by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Anyone who considers unencrypted traffic passing over the internet as 'private' is naive. If the RIAA can look at your downloading habits, then there is little reason to expect the CIA, FBI, or your neighbor Alice isn't also looking at them. If people are worried about privacy then maybe this will help them realize they are not doing things in secret. There are things you can do to mitigate this, like using encrypted chats or proxy servers, so if it is really important there are things you can do to avoid a silly little sculpture. It is the other guys that you should really be worried about.

      --
      Qxe4
  6. Wow... by bepe86 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If they make it so that it shows what exactly people are downloading, they can probably relabel it as a XXX cinema...

  7. Shows Images, eh? by whitehatlurker · · Score: 2, Funny

    I hope that they're not sampling images from the wireless data streams, though it might be interesting to watch the Pr0n on their "sculpture".

    --
    .. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
  8. packetbomb by apostrophesemicolon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    how does a port scan or packet flood show on the sculpture?

  9. Wall of Sheep! by gknoy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It would be interesting if they made it a wall of sheep (like at Defcon), but I imagine the backlash from said sheep (administration, professors, etc) would be significant.

  10. Giant Goatse by sinij · · Score: 2, Funny

    Taking goatse to whole new level!

  11. First sculpt! by XnavxeMiyyep · · Score: 2, Funny

    Sorry, I just had to take a chisel at this one.

    --
    I put the 't' in electrical engineering.