As the world continues its journey through history, it is unavoidable that it becomes a more frenetic place. As population rapidly increases, the amount of available resources just as rapidly decreases. As technology changes to allow nearly instantaneous access to information, the ability to filter and process that information becomes increasingly difficult. As economic and political globalization begin to take hold, those in power appear to become increasingly distanced from the populations they seek to represent.

In this rapidly changing age of uncertainty, it becomes increasingly important for groups of like-minded individuals to congregate in spaces designed to help facilitate discussions, share ideas, criticize, or temporarily escape the "outside world" of the Other. Sonic Network Analysis seeks to document and reinterpret such spaces or zones in a two-part net.exhibition, culminating in a live performance during the Version>04 : invisibleNetworks conference and festival taking place throughout Chicago in April of 2004.

In Stage 01 of the net.exhibtion, 14 artists have contributed documentary evidence of current zones of critique or escape. Ranging from massive gatherings to small pockets of conversationalists, these works depict ordinary slices of life around the world: a famous museum's great hall, two small parks, a warm cabin, a place of employment, an earthwork on the border of a desert; these places are utilized by multitudes of people in numerous ways.

Yet the spaces included here are not all so tangible: a former speaker's corner now replaced by a shopping mall, a boat trip, a temporary art installation, two musical performances, Ground Zero in New York, and a protest resulting from the aftermath of that terrible calamity display the importance of temporal-specific gathering spaces. Even this medium, the Internet itself, becomes an important virtual gathering place, a "place" without a physical location.