Flesh Network is a live demonstration (35-45 minutes) that presents a history of the Internet as a sound technology, focusing on the ways that disability influenced the design of communication systems.

Random audience members are invited to work as Operators, who follow instructions on a computer interface to manipulate the body of the Host, configuring his body as a node in a network. Their actions, conflicting and interrupting the Host's speech, demonstrate how technical thinking turns the body into an instrument.

Through successive stages of connection, the Host's body becomes further abstracted as an instrument: the first stage is a 'Handshake,' based on a classic technique for communicating with deaf people, likened by its developer to playing a person's hand like a piano. This intimacy evolves into more visceral manipulation, such as the one imposed by the inventor of the telephone on his pet dog, or against the 'Hello Girl' telephone operators who fell ill from the intensity of their work.

Each stage of connection dissects the sounds of modems and dial-up tones into atomic pieces, recomposing them into breakbeat and downtempo compositions that float between fiction and embodied force.

All of the props and materials used for this performance, including the chairs and CRT monitors, are currently stored in Berlin and can be transported to any site upon request. The installation requires a 2x2 meter space, as well as a soundsystem that accepts standard outputs: XLR or 1/4in. Although the live installation depends on 2 audience members volunteering to participate, an 'arcade' mode can be played with while the performance is not in session. The game is web-based, runs on a local computer, and is compatible with any operating system and browser, but is fully tested on updated macOS.