Is it just me, or does the Science Museum’s new bit of cyber candy have an Orwellian ring to it.

Listening post is the ultimate Big Brother, pulling in live and unedited natterings from thousands of chat rooms across the Internet and plastering the content over hundreds of screens for all to see. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever head along from tomorrow to see and hear the Internet in all its glory and banality.

The museum spent a £110,000 Art Fund grant to acquire the piece, by artists Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen, for two years. You may have seen it previously in New York, or during a recent US and European tour.

According to the PR:

The result can best be described as a ‘dynamic portrait’ of online communication…The text fragments are accompanied by the rhythm of computer-synthesized voices reading, or ‘singing’, the uncensored and unedited words which surge, flicker, appear and disappear over the screens.

See if you can spot any excerpts from Nature Network amongst all the references to cats, Star Wars and celebrity breasts.

Image courtesy of the Science Museum/David Allison.