Alcatel-Lucent has joined forces with best selling author Douglas Coupland and Paul Humphreys, a founder member of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, the UK electronic music pioneers, to produce an artistic portrayal of 24 hours in global Internet traffic.

The partnership, timed to coincide with Alcatel-Lucent’s annual review, represents one of the first attempts at translating data into art. The work, entitled Electric Ikebana, uses network tracking systems to compile a series of images, reflecting peaks and troughs of Internet demand over a 24 hour period, in this case: Earth Day, 22 April 2012.

“The new dividing line of the human race is between those who believe that the Internet is the real world and those who still don’t acknowledge it is the real world,” says Douglas Coupland. “We live in the golden age of data visualization, I hope this project pushes us deeper into the beauty of data and the ways in which it can be made to come alive.”

Data imagery is combined with music composed by Humphreys, available to online users through an interactive application that changes with each playing. The project, which makes its debut  today atannualreview2011.alcatel-lucent.com, celebrates new technologies by converting digital “traffic” into a new artistic medium.

Electric Ikebanais a collaboration between Douglas Coupland, Paul Humphreys, Alcatel-Lucent, digitally realized by Helios Design Labs. Music supervision is by David Hayman, produced by Chris Nanos from Radke Films and telecommunications data provided by the Alcatel-Lucent 9900 Wireless Network Guardian.