Discussion
At Foyer Stage
The ‘off.networks’ mailing list started as an attempt to bring together researchers, activists and artists that work on the idea of an offline network, operating outside the Internet. Such networks could range from artistic projects (eg. deadrops or wifitagger) and “personal networks” (eg PirateBox.cc or subnod.es), to community networks (eg commotionwireless.net, nethood) and large city-scale mesh networks (eg. guifi.net, freifunk.net, awmn.net.). The first assembly of off.networks took place at the CCC last month. In their second scheduled meeting during transmediale Festival, the members of this network wish to make their first effort to build a diverse and dynamic community around the design, implementation and deployment of offline networks in different contexts. They wish to reflect critically on the role of such local networks in shaping the evolving hybrid urban space and in addressing the threats which are posed by internet corporations and surveillance states on citizens’ privacy and freedom of speech. In other words: How can the under construction “offline networks” allow us to join forces in reaching our common visions without sacrificing pluralism and independence? The answer might not be so simple as offline networks are subject to hybrid design and therefore require the collaboration between people with different expertise; they are context-specific and thus need to be easily installed and customised by non-savvy users; they have to compete with more and more ambiguous commercial initiatives that now pop up claiming a similar logic.
The session will open by short presentations by existing members of the off.networks community: Aram Barholl, Jeff Andreoni, David Darts and Matthias Strubel, Andreas Unteidig, Sarah Grant, Panayotis Antoniadis and Ileana Apostol. Other artists and practitioners taking part in transmediale will also join and an inclusive and open-ended mode of discussion will follow. The stage will be given to participants from the audience who will have 2-3 minutes each to present their thoughts and ideas forming a big round table.
The off.networks community (international)
The offline networksor ‘off.networks’ community has started as an attempt to bring together researchers, activists and artists that work on the idea of an offline network, operating outside the Internet. Such networks could range from artistic projects (eg. deadrops or wifitagger) and “personal networks” (eg. PirateBox.cc or subnod.es), to community networks (eg. commotionwireless.net) and large city-scale mesh networks (eg. guifi.net, freifunk.net, awmn.net). In their second scheduled meeting during transmediale Festival, the members of this network wish to make their first effort to build a diverse and dynamic community around the design, implementation and deployment of offline networks in different contexts. They wish to reflect critically on the role of such local networks in shaping the evolving hybrid urban space and in addressing the threats which are posed by internet corporations and surveillance states on citizens’ privacy and freedom of speech.
Panagiotis Antoniadis (ch) DIY Networking
Panayotis Antoniadis is a senior researcher at ETH Zurich. He has an interdisciplinary profile with background on the design and implementation of distributed systems (Computer Science Department, University of Crete), Ph.D. on the economics of peer-to-peer networks (Athens University of Economics and Business), post-doc on policies for the federation of shared virtualized infrastructures (UPMC Sorbonne Universités), and an on-going collaboration with urban planners on the role of ICTs for bridging the virtual with the physical space in cities (project nethood.org). Panayotis is currently active in the organization of various interdisciplinary events that aim to bring together researchers, practitioners, and activists from various fields around the participatory design of hybrid urban space with a focus on wireless and peer-to-peer technology. In this context, his personal conviction is that there is an urgent need for a global social learning framework, a toolkit, that will allow citizens to build their own local networks for supporting local interactions, and claim their right to the (hybrid) city.
Aram Bartholl (de)
Aram Bartholl‘s work creates an interplay between internet, culture and reality. The versatile communication channels are taken for granted these days, but how do they influence us? According to the paradigm change of media research Bartholl not just asks what man is doing with the media, but what media does with man. The tension between public and private, online and offline, technology infatuation and everyday life creates the core of his producing.
Sarah Grant (us)
Sarah Grant is a Brooklyn-based artist, technologist, and educator. She is a former artist in residence at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center and is currently a Technical Lead at The Barbarian Group in NYC. As an artist, she has been experimenting with both the practical and expressive properties of mesh networks for connecting people together in ways that encourage participation with your immediate geographical location. She is also an Adjunct Professor at NYU Polytechnic in Digital Media.
Hot Probs is a simple chat room designed to run on a Raspberry Pi and within the subnod.es platform. To join the chat room, visitors need to connect to the ‘HOT PROBS’ wireless network, open up a new browser window and navigate to hotprobs.com.
Subnodes is an open source initiative that facilitates the process of creating a portable local area network and a mesh node for anonymous, local communication. Its source code can be found on github.
Telekommunisten (de)
Telekommunisten is a Berlin-based collective whose work investigates the political economy of communications technology. Core themes include the incompatibility of capitalism with free networks and free culture, and the increasing centralisation and enclosure that results, as well as the potential for distributed producers employing a collective stock of productive assets to provide an alternative economic basis for a free society.
deadSwap 2.0 is an android app which lets you coordinate a clandestine communications and off-line sharing network. The technique is the same as the old classic spycraft one of ‘dead drop’, Participants share a flash memory archive, e.g. a USB stick, hiding it in public space. Participants are informed about the current location of the archive through SMS on their cell phones. The deadSwap 2.0 system allows anyone to initiate a distributed sharing session which continues until all members of the network have found the memory device.
Most participants remain ‘sleepers’ who become activated by SMS to go look for a hidden memory device. When they are activated, they become ‘rabbits’. Once they successfully find the hidden device they become ‘agents’ and, after completing any necessary operations on the device (such as copying or adding data), they must hide the device again and inform the system of the new Swap location.
Participants in the network can contribute whatever data they like to the sharing round by simply copying it onto the deadSwap storage device. For the transmediale edition, deadSwap 2.0 comes pre-loaded with DATAFIELD3, as special selection of Henry Warwick’s massive offline shared archive.
David Darts (us)
David Darts is an artist, technologist, and Associate Professor of Art at New York University. His work focuses on the convergences between society, technology and contemporary art and design. He is Co-Director of the NYU Artistic Activism Working Research Group and former Curatorial Director of Conflux, the annual art and technology festival for the creative exploration of urban public space.
Matthias Strubel (us)
Matthias Strubel is the Lead Developer for the PirateBox. He is known for his work on the PirateBox Forum where he provides support for users and developers from around the world. Matthias works as a freelancer for several projects, focusing on software-Integration across different technical systems (i.e. Mainframe and Web). He also provides technical support for the LibraryBox project and actively participates in several open source communities.
In an era of mass-surveillance programs, filtering, and censorship, offline data sharing and communication is becoming more and more important for freedom of communication. The PirateBox is a DIY anonymous offline file-sharing and communications system built with free software and inexpensive off-the-shelf hardware. The system creates offline wireless networks designed for anonymous file sharing, chatting, message boarding, and media streaming. You can think of it as your very own portable offline Internet in a box! PirateBox has been featured in over 175 international online and print publications, including New Scientist, Le Monde, Ars Technica, and Wired Italia.
Participants will build and experiment with PirateBoxes and will also learn about the history and philosophy of the project, including recent updates, ongoing challenges, and future possibilities.
Participants should bring a laptop, an OpenWrt compatible router (TP-Link MR3020) and a USB Flash Drive (4GB or larger).
The PirateBox toolkit (router and usb flash drive) can also be bought upon online registration.
http://www.transmediale.de/content/offline-networks-unite