Lanhouse Concert is an audiovisual installation for computers connected in a local area network (or LAN, commonly used in internet cafes). The work arose from experiments undertaken during audio and interactive video workshops and hacklabs conducted in free internet access areas throughout Brazil.
Considering the computer as a tool that brings together different media (metamedia), and capable of articulating sound, light, and machines in a metadata flux through the LAN, Lanhouse Concert introduces the notion of the LAN as a metainstrument. The building of this metainstrument can be understood as a handicraft work analogous to the work of a luthier. The digital ‘luthiering’ would take place on a plane combining hard and software, the computer network, and audiovisual programming environments such as Pure Data.
The installation was programmed and composed in two parts. The first part combined the lights of monitors and the sound from computer speakers spread around the room to create an interplayed game of sound, illusory movements, and synchrony. In the second part, color variations were used in an extended intertwining of “horizontal temporal arrangements.”
The installation conceptualizes the local computer network as a kind of “media performance.” Lanhouse Concert is a small aesthetic “performedia” exercise and also a modest tribute to the 108,000 internet cafés currently (2010) spread across Brazil.