TRANSMISSION ART ARCHIVE
Broadbandit Highway
2001
Ambient Information Systems
Comprised of hundreds of live traffic surveillance streams, Broadbandit Highway is a self-generative video work with a staggering duration of 42,000 hours. The project, which was authored by Manu Luksch and Ilze Black, utilizes JavaScript to cull forty-second intervals from hundreds of traffic cams located around the world and assembles them for a closed-circuit television broadcast. It has been exhibited at galleries, festivals, and online. Each time a camera stream is disabled or retired, a black segment is visible as Broadbandit Highway cycles through the array of its sources. In April 2006, nearly five years following the project’s inception, the final remaining traffic cam source ceased and Broadbandit Highway reached its conclusion. Broadbandit Highway premiered with a live soundtrack performed by Kate Rich and Sneha Solanki at “Please Disturb Me,” a group exhibition at the Great Eastern Hotel in London, 2001.