An IT guy, Ed Konowal, wanted to bring a bit of the analog world back to his office; he stared at computers for too long every day. So, rather than tracking his clients’ Internet usage on digital graphs for hours on end, he created a system called the Internet SteamGauge, to let him track bandwidth on an antique steam pressure gauge that he found on eBay. That way, he could break up the time he spent staring at his screens. “When the Internet SteamGauge makes an unexpectedly large move, the subtle sounds it makes while moving are enough to attract my attention and find out what happened to cause the large change in our network traffic,” Konowal says. This past week, SIGGRAPH’s art gallery displayed Konowal’s steam gauge at its annual conference in Vancouver, having beat out other arts submissions.