“Surveillance, cryptography, terrorism, malware, economic espionage, assassination, interventions, intelligence services, political prisoners, policing, transparency, justice and you.
Structural processes and roles are designed to create specific outcomes for groups. Externally facing narratives are often only one of many and they seek to create specific outcomes by shaping discourse. We will cover a wide range of popular narratives surrounding the so-called Surveillance State. We intend to discuss specific historical contexts as well as revealing new information as part of a longer term research project.” (CCC 2014)

“Freedom in your computer and in the net

For freedom in your own computer, the software must be free.
For freedom on the internet, we must organize against
surveillance, censorship, SaaSS and the war against sharing.

To control your computing, you need to control the software that does it. That means it must be _free software_, free as in freedom. Nonfree software is inherently unjust, and nowadays is often malware too. We developed the GNU system as a way to avoid nonfree software on our computers.

That assumes you’re running your own copy of the programs. That means shunning Service as a Software Substitute, where someone else’s copy in someone else’s server does your computing.

Beyond that, we face the danger of censorship, and surveillance both on and off the internet. Lurking behind them is the menace of the War on Sharing, the publishers’ decades-long campaign to control what we do in our computers. Increasingly, computer hardware itself is becoming malicious.” (CCC 2014)

Plus the Offline Network session took place. There will be a follow up session during Transmediale 15, so stay tuned:

The future is offline! An assembly all about offline networks.

Everyone interested in the growing offline networks community is welcome!

Basic concepts:

1. Community developed and running networks which enable citizens to gain benefits from networked infrastructures, while maintaining control of their data and how it is used.
2. Community networks do not need to be connected to the wider internet (hence “off-nets”), however they may have connection hubs with the internet. Off-nets may be complementary to the internet, as well as an alternative.
3. off-nets and the internet are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and can work together to offer more robust benefits to its participants.
4. (A poetic approach): in particle physics, the “observer effect” is when an electron, whilst under observation, alters its course due to the fact that it is being observed. in contemporary society, people might alter their habits due to the idea that they coud be observed. What if there were islands within the monitored, fungible, and quantified world that permitted human to interact with each other unobserved, albeit digitally? What sort of unexpected reactions would that cause?
5. One of the central characteristics of offline networks is that they are offline. We can‘t possibly anticipate all the reasons why people or groups would need to operate offline. Therefore it would be important to design applications that can be appropriated, adapted and used as “infrastructure”.
6. Keywords: #diversity #serendipity #intimacy #temporality #place

Offline Networks Manifesto

The future is offline.

(Mark Gaved: ) 1. Community developed and run networks enable citizens to gain the benefits from networked infrastructures  while maintaining control of their data and how it is used.
(Mark Gaved: ) 2. Community networks do not need to be connected to the wider internet (hence “off-nets”), however they may have connection points with the internet
(Mark Gaved: ) 3. Off-nets may be complementary as well as an alternative to the internet: these are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and may work together to offer greater benefits to participants

Bezdomny (A poetic appraoch): in particle physics, the “observer effect” is when an electron, whilst under observation, alters its course due to the fact that it is being observed. Elsewhere, people might alter their courses in life due to the idea that they are being observed. What if there were islands within the monitored, fungible, and quantified world that permitted human to interact with each other unobserved, albeit digitally?  What sort of unexpected reactions would that cause?

Addie (underlying infastrutucre/why)  The feedback system built into traditional networks necessitates the sharing of information. A problem arises, however, when the distribution of metadata conflicts with the notion of transparency —a core ideological component of the value of cultural neutrality. Since the principles of global capitalism and government can now determine value based on data, we are left with a fundamental friction in the distribution and creation of culture through networks. Off-nets will focus on the contradiction of creation and control by exploring new forms of networks and access.

Panayotis (brainstorming): Offline networks keywords: diversity, serendipity, intimacy, temporality

(Andreas Unteidig): One of the central characteristics of offline.networks are that they offline. We can‘t possibly anticipate all the reasons why people or groups would need to operate offline, hence it would be important to design applications that can be appropriated, easily altered and used as “infrastructure” for many different scenarios of use.
(Matthias) Maybe we can create a “best practice to your offline app” list. This can contain  pitfalls like try to request a fontset from google 🙂

(Matthias) We should maybe add some development rules, which says “don’t be evil” and should promote certain mind sets about problematic functionalities. On bad example is: Create a Facebook login page to fish username & passwords   ==> I can do this with PirateBox in 10 Minutes (that it looks confident)….
IMHO: We have to point out that having an offline.network is a responsibility for all the other projects. If the reputation of offline.network is damaged because of such an action, we can all stop trying to recover it…
Another point is, that this manifesto should be in a form, that you can make it easily available on the offline device like “learn more about offline networks”, and it should include a link list for further informations.
Maybe we need a “ruleset” or “guidlines” , that each devices behaves the like the same.. like a Hotel captive portal on the first access (which may not fit on each concept, I think).. this can be a good to have rule.
(Panayotis): One challenge is that you can never control what others are doing. Creating rules could make things worse (because people could develop some level of trust and thus make it easier to cheat). In my opinion it is better to uncover the whole informality and lack of control in order to make everyone responsible and cautious. One way to do this is to rely on face-to-face interactions which could be encouraged somehow …
Agreed.

Off.networks @Transmediale

Here is the almost final description of the off.networks event at Transmediale:

Title: off.networks discussion

Date & Time: Saturday, 31st January 2015, 3 – 6pm

Venue:  Central Foyer Stage, House of Worlds Cultures in Berlin

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 customized by non-savvy  users; they have to compete with more and more commercial initiatives  that now pop up claiming a similar logic; like all networks they are  vulnerable and often subject to ambiguities and contradictions.

The discussion will open by existing members of the off.networks community: Aram Barholl (deaddrops),
Jeff Andreoni (unmonastery), David Darts and Matthias Strubel (piratebox), Andreas Unteidig (hybrid letterbox),  Sarah Grant (subnod.es), Minuette Le (Rough Scholar Research Group), Panayotis Antoniadis and Ileana Apostol (nethood.org).
Practitioners working on this field from the foyer program of Transmediale will also be invited to join.
An inclusive and open-ended mode of discussion will be followed. After the initial statements,
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.

off.networks@librelist.com.

references to prior art/offline networks:
occupy everywhere
drop deads
wifitagger
pirate box
hybrid letter box
etc etc etc

Related work 🙂

http://issuu.com/urbanixd/docs/urbanixd_manifesto/12?e=7204297/10623455
http://criticalengineering.org/
http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/dada/Dada-Manifesto.html
https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/futurium/en/content/onlife-manifesto-being-human-hyperconnected-era

And an anti-manifesto manifesto:
http://cloudhead.headmine.net/post/2075216682/the-anti-manifesto-manifesto

reSync joined the ‘New Babylon Revisited‘ conference in Athens and our 2 day workshop ‘reStreet’ was one of five group events that took place over a 4 day period. 6-9th November 2014.

In the run up to the Friday workshop we spent many hours walking in Athens and working at Space Under preparing reSync systems.

reStreet sets out to expose the free information infrastructures of AWMN into the social labyrinth of Athens streets by presenting techniques for data exchange and experimenting with easily available syncronisation tools and DIY signage. In our travel bag for this trip we carried; DIY piratebox, reSync relay, wireless router, 19dbi parabolic antenna and 38mm badge press!

We also worked at rooftop level to build links with AWMN, connecting to the network infrastructure and met with President of the association, Joseph Bonicioli, who talked with us all about many aspects of AWMN and reflected on issues of public communication and network development in progress around Athens and across Greece. In particular we were keen to help identify where information presented at street level could inform and illuminate on the infrastructure development in place at roof level and how to utilise it.

 

 

Enclosures and reStreet sessions shared Space Under and to start with we addressed everyone present (36) with an introduction to proposals for both workshops and key activity schedule. Once each participant installed BTsync app on phones and laptops we activated the Space Under reSync to hold the workshop notes, some images from the session and views from the rooftop to illustrate a range of materials and techniques to test.

AWMN.net maps the community network infrastructure and describes services available to network users. Five groups each picked a network node location to visit and capture impressions, consider the environment and prepare media files to represent each one.

By Saturday we also activated a reSync for each New Babylon event ; Octo-Apps, Athens  Conference for Utopian Technologies etc. Enclosures of new Athens / Glossary of Subsumption and Babylon Radio. We prepared a range of print media artworks to promote all ten reSync locations pressing out button badges and printing small posters and flyers for distribution.

Both groups reconvened before the end of the day to share experiences and prepare for Sunday’s  Athens Drift, sharing out QRcode badges and producing a city map with points marked for AWMN, Enclosure and New Babylon revisited.

Thanks to all who attended and special thanks to our hosts Space Under and event organisers Gothe Institute Athen for their support.

reSync visited Video Vortex 10. “Video Vortex is a travelling conference series concerned with online video. Established in 2007 by Amsterdam based Institute for Network Cultures, the conference since then took place in Brussels, Amsterdam, Ankara, Split, Yogyakarta and Lüneburg.”  (Video Vortex 2014)

The Spectacular & The Power of Images with Oliver Lerone Schultz, Adnan Hadzi, Ersan Ocak, Paola Barreto, Facilitator: Ebru Yetiskin
Spectrals of the Spectacular
We know by now, that the social is also visually constructed, that there is a struggle for ‚The Right to look‘ and that social visions are projective, contested as well as fractal. We want to present the outcome of the ‘Spectrals of the Spectacular’ workshop, held at the Brazilian BTS (http://www.bts.re) conference, discussing how centralized visual event streams and orchestrations are producing alternative visual splinters, fractions and specters that also travel in fragmentary ways across the globe, making visible new landscapes and hidden horizons of meaning, i.e. ‚specters‘ to the current system and ‚mode of projection‘.
While we are interested in the geopolitical aesthetic of a (to be) pirated reality of the ‘non-territories’ which resist the address of the ‚national (interest)‘ and subsumption to the current globalized society of control and spectacle, we present some results from the ‘Spectrals of the Spectacular’ workshop, reviewing in an exemplary fashion the particular resistancies to the FIFA World Cup 2014, how they travel around and haunt the global imaginary and feed from and back to the non-aligned social intellect.
In this presentation/talk we aim at introducing some conceptual entry points into this longer term project, which in future engagements also wants to engage with the topic of pirating and (broken) projections around the New Global Spectacle and their relevance to a contemporary theory of the ‘moving image’.
Part of the reflection will be a discussion around reasons to organize this theoretical engagement by building a trans-local repository around ‚Spectrals of the Spectacle‘. We hold that a theoretical reflection of these spectralities is itself to take on the form of a decentral project, engaging with fleeting images and spectralities. (Oliver Lerone Schultz & Adnan Hadzi)

Date: 18th October 2014
Time: 2-6pm
Place: Furtherfield Commons

FLOSS Manuals was launched by Adam Hyde in 2007 to remedy the deficit of good free documentation about Free Software. Our strategy since the beginning has been to develop communities to produce high quality free manuals about Free Software in their own language. Today, through the use of Booksprints and federated publishing techniques we have more than 120 books in more than 30 languages and more than 4,000 contributors.

FLOSS Manuals is more than a collection of manuals about doing things with free and open source software, it is also the community, The contributors include designers, readers, writers, illustrators, free software fans, editors, artists, software developers, activists, and many others. Anyone can contribute to a manual – to fix a spelling mistake, add a more detailed explanation, write a new chapter, or start a whole new manual on a topic.

FLOSS Manuals now consists of 3 independent language communities (French, English, Finnish) supported by a Foundation based in Holland. Our current focus is to develop strong partnerships with grassroots educators to develop educational materials about free software. Come to our UK hub warm-up meeting at Furtherfield to propose books/manuals projects, to encourage others to propose book/manual projects and also to invite publishers, or people interested in publishing.

The afternoon is convened by Larisa Blazic, Mick Fuzz and Rachel Baker. Mick is a long-term contributor at FLOSS Manuals and community educator. Rachel has recently undertaken a detailed study of Booksprints process. Larisa is investigating how FLOSS tools and practices to be best embedded in post-graduate programmes.

reSync visited the Besides the Screen conference in Sao Paolo, see programme , & our web-flyer.

We know by now, that the social is also visually constructed, that there is a struggle for “The Right to look” and that social visions are projective, contested as well as fractal. What we want to look at is how centralized visual event streams and orchestrations are producing alternative visual splinters, fractions and specters that also travel in fragmentary ways across the globe, making visible new landscapes and hidden horizons of meaning, i.e. “specters” to the current system and “mode of projection”. While we
are interested in the geopolitical aesthetic of a (to be) pirated reality of the “non-territories” which resist the address of the ‚national (interest)‘ and subsumption to the current globalized society of control and spectacle, we also want to focus on the particular way the resistancies to the FIFA World Cup 2014 travel around and haunt the global imaginary and feed the non-aligned social intellect.

S.o.S. Logs, collectively rinsing our imaginaries by re-collecting spectacles, part Spectrals of the Spectacles.

Regularly we are subsumed under the projections that are attached to and bundled with the new “megaspectacles” (D. Kellner) of mediatized transmodern capitalism. These new specatacles arose from the fusion of spectacles as they existed all along and the new hyper-medial environments we are now increasingly immersed in. They constitute a paradox milieu for resampling prevalent images of globalism and they illustrate the circulation-economies and -aesthetics of ‘Societies of the Spectacle’ as well as ‘Societies of Control’ (or ‘Fear’) … or however you want to characterize current global society.

As the Post-Media Age also follows up on the cinematic modes of projection (and production) it is generalizing visual and medial projection as a form of subsumption (i.e. non-coercive power), naturally relying more and more on ‘moving images’, … in all possible senses of the term. For sure new spectacles are socially disseminated in medial channels and fragments of all sorts, with video, in a wider sense, taking a central role as carrier. Often our perceptions and affects (or those of our peer-groups) are skewed and re-directed by these gravitating, serial singularities, rendering hyperbolic meta-images, and dooming a myriad of alternative co-existing realities and worlds to invisibility.
These spectacles primarily work by colonizing, monopolizing and tinkering our streams of attention. They segment our social senses in a stop-and-go manner, producing a peculiar form of psychic-cognitive binding and congestion, and, not the least, fractalizing communal senses and alternative social textures.

S.o.S. wants to provide an outlet, traveling alongside the culture of critical event-horizons, setting up a cultural triage mechanisms as soothing overlay to our own conventions. Here we dispose, digest, difract the projections of recent spectacles, for collective and individual cleansing. We playfully inventarize the grammars, aesthetics and hauntologies of radiant spectacles that are just in our back. We also collect, cherish and cultivize with subliminal ease all those tokens of spectral visions, in-/visibilities and social projections that precipitate around these monster events, knowing the alternatives always shimmer nearby, right at the periphery of the centers of vision.
To do this we collect medial fragments (videos, links, snapshots, media sets…) that pertain to recent spectacles, and populate the S.o.S. Box. This will become a traveling black box on the outskirts of the Spectrals of the Spectacle project trajectory, frivolously accompanying alternate events of all kinds and pirating them with the spirits of profanizing and secularizing the new imagescapes. This piratebox-turned-into-an-SoS-Box will be housing boulders of the spectacle alongside fragments commenting and reflecting on them, … but also keeping track of visions that are, or seem to be, peripheral to these events, projecting alternative visions in the monolithic face of the new society of the spectacle.

0003_SOS_propaganda-flyer

HOW TO

1) upload your media file to the piratebox

& if you want to make us happy:

2) download the file “0004_file_annotation-1.rtf”

3) fill out the questionnaire & save it

4) upload the “00_file_annotation.rtf” file back to the piratebox

README

FROM HIVENETWORKS TO PIRATEBOX

For the hands-on workshop we will create a PirateBox with participants in order to share visual spectacles during the whole period of the
conference (ideally the PirateBox would be set up in the main lecture theatre, where all the conference visitors could access the spectacles).

Hivenetworks, started by Alexei Blinov and collaborators nearly 10 years ago, is an Open Source project that explores the new concepts of
DIY network building, mesh architectures and ubiquitous computing. The aim is to take the DIY networking and publishing to the point where it
becomes accessible to anyone with creative mind and basic knowledge of computing.

A PirateBox, designed in 2011 by David Darts, is a portable electronic device, often consisting of a router and a device for storing
information, creating a wireless network that allows users who are connected to share files anonymously and locally. By definition, this
device is disconnected from the Internet.

We are proposing a gathering, where we’ll upload spectacles of the spectacular, distribute, share, & mesh the contents during the
conference in the main lecture theatre, and at the Cine Art Palacio. Autonomous spaces, autonomous networks, boxes and forks – we invite
all DIY lovers to come and join us for a re-appropriation of networking technology to bypass the censorship and liberate our files.
What does a free culture look like? What is technology that supports it? For many years artists (among others) have been engaging with
these questions, challenging restrictive laws and regulations as well as complex technical solutions. A new surge in search for practical
solutions to file-sharing, easier to use and incorporate to our everyday life is the focus of this workshop.

Inspired by pirate radio and the free culture movements, PirateBox utilizes Free, Libre and Open Source software (FLOSS) to create mobile
wireless communications and file sharing networks where users can anonymously chat and share images, video, audio, documents, and other
digital content.

PirateBox is free (as in freedom) because it is registered under the GNU GPLv3 (see: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html). This license grants you the right to freely copy, distribute, and transform creative works according to the principles of copyleft.

Links:
http://www.hivenetworks.net/
http://piratebox.cc
http://piratebox.cc/openwrt:diy
http://forum.piratebox.cc/
http://daviddarts.com/piratebox/
http://daviddarts.com/piratebox-diy/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PirateBox
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/01/piratebox-an-artistic-provocation-in-lunchbox-form/
http://pi.qcontinuum.com/project.html
http://www.instructables.com/id/Solar-Powered-Raspberry-Pi/
http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start
http://www.radical-openness.org/programm/2014/unitary-networking
http://www.radical-openness.org/programm/2014/vpn-picnic-hivenetworks-piratebox

 

reSync set out on an ambitious programme of activity to mark it’s establishment as a startup company, picking up where deckspace.tv rounded off it’s research phase in Leuneburg.

To begin we formed a collaboration with the Freifunk Leuneburg group and invited them to join us for a few days preparation and two days of festivities on the Leuphana University campus.

Lunatic festival is held each year and operated by students of all faculties in the University as part of an enlightened in-house work experience period for second and third years. We first met with previous years chief co-ordinators at sessions in Freiraum during 2012 where we first proposed our involvement and set up the process for the following years festival. They estimated 2000 visitors a day would attend to share the love of summer and end of term!

With our invitation in hand we promoted Freifunk Leuneburg as wireless infrastructure providers at the festival an ambitious but achievable prospect and one which drew in some great characters from the local group all of whom chose to work above and beyond the call to put in place the physical and radio interlinks as well as install and test the dozen wireless access points required to put a universal access network into place for everyone to use.

To reSync Lunatic, we set up an array of pre-configured Bit Torrent Sync secrets to facilitate file synchronising between attendees at the festival via qrcode graphics printed on a series of custom button badge artwork sheets. Each Lunatic (festival visitor) claimed a badge from us and pressed it together in our workshop, along with it’s write access ‘secret’ enabling them to present sounds texts and images from their smartphone to anyone willing to scan their badge and at any location in the festival area.

We all then setup camp in a quiet corner of the spielwiese and proceeded to monitor the useage of the wireless network and respond to the increasingly engaged festival goers requesting a reSync badge and support to get their smartphones sync ready and activated.

Participatory actions and drifts for the post-digital city

New Babylon was a model of an utopian city of the architect Constant. It was based on the idea of a constantly developing network of units that can allow dynamic and playful interactions among the city and its inhabitants. Although the New Babylon was a city that was never built, a part of Constant’s thought seems to have been now realised in the most contradictory way. Life in the “smart cities” seems to have an open, participatory and playful character aiming for the constant optimisation, normalisation and predictability of urban everyday life. Constant connectivity and the continuous aggregation and use of urban data can not leave much of a space for unpredictable, ephemeral and free forms of communication and interaction. And while in the post-digital era the romanticised idea of the connected city seems to be left behind, the urge once again appears for the location and redefinition of the elements that can offer opportunities for unitary thought and collective action.

The project New Babylon Revisited invites to Athens artists and theorists who through their workshops and actions will propose new architectures of connectivity and re-examine the city’s infrastructures. As part of the overall project, the studios and offices of a building in Praxitelous street will be connected through a pneumatic network of tubes; a city drift will invite visitors to a free exchange of files; a discussion around the enclosures of the Athenian commons will be hosted in an offline sharing network; a parasitic micro-conference on the move will re-approach Athens and an ephemeral radio station at Mavromichali street will work as an open and accessible network, addressing a call for discussions and actions. E-book.