N.A.G. (Network Auralization for Gnutella) (2003)

software art for Mac OS X and Windows 2000/XP

VISIT THE MAIN N.A.G. SITE AT TURBULENCE.ORG

N.A.G. (Network Auralization for Gnutella) is interactive software art for Mac OS X and Windows 2000/XP which turns the process of searching for and downloading MP3 files into a chaotic musical collage. Type in one or more search keywords, and N.A.G. looks for matches on the Gnutella peer-to-peer file sharing network. The software then downloads MP3 files which match the search keyword(s) and remixes these audio files in real time based on the structure of the Gnutella network itself.

"N.A.G. ...stands as an example of the Web's mind-expanding possibilities."
— Troy Carpenter, Billboard.com, 7/22/03

"I am listening to some of the more fascinating sounds I've ever heard. Further afield than John Oswald's Plunderphonics and mash ups, the "songs" created by Jason Freeman's Network Auralization for Gnutella application are a shadowy snapshot of the sounds between songs. What we'd hear in the narrow spaces between parallel planes of existence. The songs that shadows and static sing."
— Heath Row’s Media Diet, 7/14/03

"Addictive and fun, and when you give it a good set of search terms this fascinating download's aural collage-making is positively unreal."
— USA Today.com, 7/14/03

"The results are strangely haunting, extremely avant garde remixes, dada for the P2P generation."
— Exoskeleton, 7/8/03

N.A.G. has been featured in The New York Times, USAToday.com, Billboard.com, NewMusicBox.org, Neural.it, IllegalArt.net, on National Public Radio's All Things Considered, CBC Radio (Ottawa), German Public Radio, WFUV Radio (New York), WHRU Radio (New York), WKCR Radio (New York), SWR Audio Hyperspace (Germany), reboot.fm (Berlin radio), and Jon Nelson's Some Assembly Required (Minnesota), among others. MacAddict magazine named N.A.G. one of the top 100 freeware / shareware programs for the Mac.

An article I wrote about N.A.G. appeared in the September 2003 issue of The HTV (Amsterdam). Press The Button did a three-hour live radio show on WRWU (Cleveland) improvising live music entirely with N.A.G. in July 2003.

I lectured about N.A.G. at dorkbot in March 2003, presented a pre-release version at cmc.03 in April 2003, and presented works created with N.A.G. at the World Turning Festival (New York) in August 2003. In November 2003 I discussed N.A.G. in conjunction with the Distributed Creativity online forum sponsored by Eyebeam, where I was an invited guest. In February 2004 I presented an audio collage created with N.A.G. at Akademie Schloss Solitude's Interference event in Stuttgart, Germany. In June 2004 an audio collage created with N.A.G. was presented at the Recontres Musiques Nouvelles in Lunel, France. In October 2004, I demoed N.A.G. at the ACM Multimedia Conference in New York. And in November 2004, N.A.G. was exhibited at the Viper Festival in Basel, Switzerland, where it has been nominated for an award. In December 2004, Netzspannung, Whois, and the Fraunhofer Institute published a new book, Digital Transformations, which includes a discussion of N.A.G. in a chapter by Thomas Goldstrasz (in German only). An audio collage created with N.A.G. was released in January 2005 by Comfort Stand Records on the album People Doing Strange Things With Electricity Too.

N.A.G. (Network Auralization for Gnutella) is a 2003 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (dba Ether-Ore), for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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