Nomads chart their courses by strange stars, which might be luminous clusters of data in cyberspace, or perhaps hallucinations. Lay down a map of the land; over that, set a map of political change; over that a map of the Net, especially the counter-Net with its emphasis on clandestine information flow and logistics – and finally, over all, the 1:1 map of the creative imagination, aesthetics, values. The resultant grid comes to life, animated by unexpected eddies and surges of energy, coagulations of light, secret tunnels, surprises. [1]

The Temp DA/LL Network is constructed of three Data Collection and Distribution Architecture Nodes and three diagrams which act as a key to the network. The nodes collect audio and visual data on their specific location and user group. This data is then broadcast to other nodes (mis)using the www.skype.com service. No data is saved by the Temp DA/LL Network.

The Temp DA/LL Network or Temporary Data Wall Network’s nodes are effectively a series of site-specific architectural interventions and the audience when engaged with the Temp DA/LL Network become a preformative body known as a user group. The work intends to provide an example of how data (any/all information) and architecture (both physical and digital) can be integrated into various settings to provide a more socially accessible method of data collection and distribution or broadcast. Websites such as www.youtube.com have started this but their efforts remain in digital space, the Temp DA/LL Network brings the same theories and practices into the physical world.

When two worlds collide, one asks the other, “Who are you and what are you doing in my space?” Usually, the question brings with it an assumption that the questioner has the authority to ask it in the first place, and the confidence or the knowledge that space, and the means of circulation, can also be property. That the “space” is his to enable the asking of the question to the person immediately categorized as the interloper, the encroacher, the not-quite-right-thing or right-person-in- the-right-place.[2]

The Temp DA/LL Network eliminates the not-quite-right-thing or right-person-in- the-right-place by creating a place where the worlds collided and combined, there was no confrontation. The Nodes are the strange stars by which the nomads navigate; they are the resultant grid, like the diamond grid of Hippodamos, they formally embody and clarify a rational social order.[3]

The Temp DA/LL Network maintains a raw aesthetic with materials left in their original conditions and with the cables which power it on show to reference Umberto Eco’s theory of an open work[4], in which it is discussed that the poetics of the ‘open’ work tends to encourage ‘acts of conscious freedom’ on the part of the performer[5]or in the case of the Temp DA/LL Network the User Group.