Connectivity, 2008
Sea Art Festival: Voyage Beyond Boundaries, Busan Biennale
As a performance and installation, Sara Schnadt constructed a network of string, thread, twine, and wire between two maps across the exhibition space. By connecting these maps - one, a text-array map presenting large quantities of popular internet search terms, and the other, a geographical map plotting internet access around the globe - Schnadt created a low-tech visualization of the internet. Using a wide range of found and donated fiber and wire she metaphorically celebrated web 2.0 - the many types and sources of content on the web and its publicly accessible, free exchange of knowledge.
Despite the internet’s perceived universality, Schnadt’s world map illustrates an inequitable distribution of global internet access. It plots internet exchange points (IXPs), the physical infrastructure of the internet which serve as regional entry points to the web. It also plots global distribution of IP addresses. While efforts are being made to increase IXPs and IP addresses allocation in developing nations, internet access predominantly clusters in industrialized areas and is sparse or nonexistent in other areas. Nevertheless, Schnadt’s map of popular search terms and community assigned tags (categorization topics) from thousands of global internet sites and blogs illustrate how vast, varied, and dynamic the internet has become.