This free, open source project was initiated by Lyon with the goal of making visual representations of metaphysical spaces. The data represented and collected here serves a multitude of purposes: modeling the Internet, analyzing wasted Internet protocol (IP) space and distribution, detecting the result of natural disasters, weather, and war, and aesthetics or art.
Gallery label from Design and the Elastic Mind, February 24–May 12, 2008.
Lyon initiated Mapping the Internet—a free, open-source project—with the goal of making visual representations of metaphysical spaces. The data he has collected and represented serves many purposes: it models the Internet; it analyzes wasted Internet protocol (IP) space and distribution; and it detects the result of natural disasters, weather, and war. The 2003 image (left), Lyon has explained, “was based on a technology called ‘traceroute’ which actually goes over every sequence of the Internet and creates a visual trace. It would be like driving each road in the world systematically and then drawing that out.” The 2011 image (right) is based on data he gathered from the Internet’s core backbone routers: “What’s great is that feed comes from hundreds of backbones . . . and that information is then compiled into a single view. . . . It’s derived from living breathing routers. Going to that data collection method is one step in being able to generate movies of the Internet’s activity. The goal would be to do quick snapshots and render videos of the living Internet, and this method would allow that to work.”
Gallery label from Applied Design, March 2, 2013–January 31, 2014.
The Opte Project is Barrett Lyon’s free, open-source initiative to create a visual representation of the metaphysical spaces of the internet. In this image from the project, each line plots the communication between two internet protocol (IP) addresses. The length of the lines denotes the delay between the two nodes. Lyon explains that the image “was based on a technology called ‘traceroute,’ which actually goes over every sequence of the internet and creates a visual trace. It would be like driving each road in the world systematically and then drawing that out.”
The color-coding of the lines indicates the location of the IP space. For example, red lines correspond to Asia and the Pacific Islands, while dark blue indicates North America. The result is an otherworldly image of the internet, a worldwide network that is now integral to our everyday lives. Lyon’s visualizations can also detect the affects of natural disaster and war, as indicated by large-scale internet service outages.
