NetSon is a prototype perceptual monitoring tool that uses sound and moving image to display features of an organization’s network. As an Art & Technology project it is a polymedia work that exists in the fuzzy boundary between transcendental expression and as tool for prediction, problem solving and action. Its pragmatic use is to assist people to peripherally monitor the activity the individual parts of a network–the ways in which they converge and interact–or of the network as a whole system. This can help them understand the operational characteristics of the network in real time and while engaged in other tasks.

NetSon can be used to monitor and display an organization’s network in a number of configurations: as an IT operational support tool, as a multichannel installation in a building’s foyer, or as a streaming audiovisual webcast (in explicit or data-protected versions) from an organization’s web- or intranet-site. The techniques used are equally applicable to other Big Data monitoring and exploration challenges.