Physicists are now referring to the stuff the universe is made from as ‘information’, as apposed to ‘matter’ which was the favourite for quite some time. This interests me as, of course, information is the very stuff I’m trying to get to grips with in net.weight.
The theory states that the universe is determined by indestructible information. This information is contained within matter - which can be broken down. It’s all described in a lovely article about pushing an elephant into a black hole, and what happens to the poor thing during and, possibly, afterwards. (read the article here)
It’s relevance to net.weight is less cruel. Information cannot be destroyed - does this mean that the volume of information grows? Continually multiplies like bacteria?
I’ve already mentioned that photons (which carry the information of the net) have no, or at least a practically immeasurable, mass. I make the assumption then that this information also takes up a practically immeasurable space. It is only measurable by the information you read from it - or rather, the amount of information it holds i.e. bytes.
According to the Big Bang theory ‘all the matter and energy in the universe was at an immense temperature and density’. All matter? Does this mean that all matter - and therefor all information - already exists in the universe, just hanging around wanting to be discovered and quantified by man?
The Deterministic view would be that yes, all this information had been held there and, at the moment of the Big Bang, got flung out across the expanding universe. Deterministic philosophers would have us believe that the path of this information is already set, that the moment each photon, electron, neutron etc… was released from that infinitely dense mass its direction would determine its fate. Causality would ensure that as particles collide their directions would alter, ensuring they would collide with other particles and so on. John F Sowa suggests that the laws of causality (such as they stand) do not apply to the atomic level - but that it is more a combination of random, semi-random and deterministic conditions.
However, I quite like the idea that everything that exists now always existed (in some form of basic information) from the very beginning of time, and that it has been hurtling towards its end along a path which was decided by its position at the moment of the Big Bang. This could mean that the weight of total information is a constant and a percentage of this is the data of the internet. This percentage changes as the internet grows. Where does the other information go, the information that was lost to make room for a thousand new flickr accounts?
Is there a limit to human knowledge? Will there come a time when we, collectively, have amassed all the information we can possibly perceive?
Although we are discovering new things all the time, and finding new ways of using things, will there come a point at which we have exhausted our senses (and those senses that we have invented) and we will have detected all we can detect, measured all we can measure and devised all we can devise?
Will this happen, or will we continue to learn - to collect more and more information?
I believe (though not pessimistically) that we will reach a plateau of understanding. this of course will not happen for a good long while yet. We’re capable of adapting and enhancing our senses with technology, and this lets us continue to explore our world. What I foresee happening is a more cerebral problem - that there is a limit to what we can comprehend, a limit to the information we can perceive.
So just how big is the internet? That is, how much physical space does it actually use? Having still not discovered the answer to the question ‘how many photons does it take to carry a byte?’ (plus the fact that photons have no mass and are pretty small) I’m quite far from being able to measure such a thing in any physical sense.
We can make many assumptions based upon what we know about the amount of data in the internet, but this is not a true physical volume - we can say that it is such-and-such amount of terabytes, but what does that really mean? How big is a byte, and how much space does it take to store it?
The physical size of storage devices also gives us little to go on. Computer memory systems get smaller all the time. Perhaps there will come a time when they can get no smaller - a point when all the data that can possibly be squeezed into a specific space will be reached? This would then dictate the size of computers and the amount of all data that it would be possible to store (or at least the size and/or number of computers that can hold vast, all-encompassing amounts of data). What if, in order to store all the possible data in the universe, the storage system had to be bigger than the universe?
Perhaps data could be more like a space removed from a vast finite block of blank matter. Instead of ‘adding to’ each time we store data we take away, and the complex shape of this space dictates the nature and content of the data? When all storage is consumed we are left with a massive empty space that is, paradoxically, full of information.
Sculpturally and architecturally this is an intriguing idea. A large space can be as impressive and affecting as a large, solid mass. Perhaps a space as large as the internet is as good a way of representing its volume as any? This space would be unfathomable to us. Like with the internet we would need a device to interpret the information it holds. We can use our senses to experience the scale of the space but we cannot detect minute fluctuations in pressure or temperature, or the invisible boundaries between data.
Sal Randolph’s reply to the introduction caused me to think about the differences and similarities between these two words so I thought i’d post this as a new thread.
I, for one, view sculpture and architecture as the same thing. But this is more to do with my approach to sculpture (which has more to do with reacting to, and interacting with, space). Sal points out that architecture is a space that you actually use, and I would agree with this. And although a sculpture does not always create a space that you use, the space around a sculpture can very often be affected by it’s presence. this in turn affects the actions of viewers of the sculpture.
This is the space that I am interested in, a sculptural space - an architectural/spatial manifestation - in the internet that affects the viewer’s perception.
I would like to quickly point out that I am not looking for ‘virtual’ spaces in the sense of 3D worlds or 3D representations of networks that you can explore. This ground has been quite thoroughly covered and there is a quantity of people who work in the field of data visualisation and create online artworks about the manipulation and representation of information. What I’m looking to define is a sculptural/architectural approach to perceiving and creating net-based art. It is this approach that is important to the definition of the work. Further-more I am not trying to drag net art back into the realms of ‘traditional’ art by using labels like sculpture, I just feel that this is an avenue of net art thinking that would benefit exploration. I would hope that it is beyond the discussion of ‘what to call’ the artwork and more to do with ‘how it happens.’
Things to think about:
- The spatial/architectural nature of website navigation.
- The spatial/architectural nature of interaction between user, hardware, software and information.
- The dynamics of the screen.
- Mass of information (both in terms of scale and physical property).
net.weight is initiated and administrated by Rich Ehite.
Its purpose is to act as a sounding board for ideas about the internet as a sculptural entity.
Discussions could revolve around such topics as the size and mass of the internet, sculptural visualisations (literal, metaphorical etc...) and the sculptural methods used in creating net-based artworks.
