projects

Posted on by adnan Deptford.TV, news, projects, Report

H3333333333K

On the occasion of the new construction for the HeK and Atelier Mondial at Freilager-Platz at the Dreispitzareal, the culture department of the Christoph Merian Foundation, in cooperation with the department kulturelles.bl of the Department for Education, Culture and Sports and the Swisslos-Fonds Basel-Landschaft, carried out a single-stage international “Art at the Building” competition by invitation.

The jury, chaired by Nathalie Unternährer, head of the culture department of the Christoph Merian Foundation, selected from among the six complete and qualitatively outstanding submissions the project proposal “H3333333333K” of !Mediengruppe Bitnik.

Posted on by adnan news, projects, Report, research, ReSynced

Action timed, envisioned..

James Stevens shared the great news of MAZI getting the Horizon2020 grant, on the SPC blog:

Despite the numerous claims raised by UK councils and GLA to establish public wireless service for all, few examples have made it out of the boardroom and even then, fall to commercial pressure or operational chaos before long.

mazi_logoWe are hopeful that the very recently awarded fund for MAZI project starting early in 2016, will re-energize interest and activity along Deptfords Creekside, with a program supporting development of local innovation over the next 3 years that will galvanize existing networks and promote fresh collaborations.

DagePano2015

This image is taken from the roof above the DAGE shop on Deptford High Street, one of the dozen surviving OWN nodes which continues to offer public access and mesh with the other points in the area. It retains a unique status in London, an operational model of ‘collectively owned and operated broadband infrastructure’, but by just a thread!

lateralaniBuilding and co-coordinating public access networks is very tricky and time consuming operation but increasingly affordable and relevant. As we wake up to the realities of state surveillance and data mining of our interactions, we may well find the recent interest in off-line networking adds a layer of obscurity that’s preferable.

Posted on by adnan news, projects, Report, ReSynced

Mazi Mondays

James Stevens reported on the off networks mailinglist that we “have been sorting out ourselves after a couple of years work with resync.ug. Some of the outcomes of that initiative will continue to return value and there is plenty of scope to develop applications of these mixed techniques. Now a fresh grouping ‘offline networks’ has come together out of a meeting at Transmediale in Berlin during February, that has appealed for funding from the HORIZON 2020 CAPs initiative.James reported on the SPC blog about the MAZI applications: Panayotis Antoniadis co-founder of Nethood has gathered a group of thinkers and network activists around the MAZI project. As part of this initiative, SPC have proposed to revisit the Creekside network in Deptford and help compose a Mazi toolkit. With this, we hope to further the operation of local offline network services over the free information infrastructures such as the long lived OWN. Here he is talking at a recent floss4p2p event in London.

Panos-small“What I had in mind is that the research would focus on an area covered by a local network either permanently or at least during the duration of the project. This network would host locally crafted educational material and floss applications that would showcase emerging tools and technologies. This could be as simple as a single web hosting device offering short-range access or a community mesh network with broader objectives. “

This preferred area of focus may well coincide with existing mesh node installations.. it’s along the creek so there are indigenous social housing, boating, artistisan, hoodlum, drinking and eating communities as well as inevitable high rise developments and mixed emotions!

SPC has capacity in it’s network to offer uplinks to Mazi for the duration..  Mesh solutions are great for mobile network nodes and for resilience in an unstable environment. Primed with a set of great locations and willing collaborators aplenty, a point to point radial model will ensure greater stability and higher speeds for community needs. We already have a few low power servers and resources available and have set up a mazi subdomain of spc.org

SE9 mateThere is a swell of social, cultural and creative interest along Creekside in Deptford where we have enjoyed success in the past. We hope to rekindle interest and activity in support of the Mazi workshop program and the adoption of a locally delivered alternative to commercial web dependencies.  Meanwhile the whole area is being “developed” so there are rising blocks on every quarter isolating areas of Deptford which will present a challenge when fixing links and bridging ideas.

The river Ravensbourne snakes from Bromley through Lewisham and opens out after Elverson Road DLR into naturalised riverside alongside Brookmill Park. It retreats into a concrete slot under the A2 at Deptford Bridge DLR and emerges as Deptford Creek up behind LeSoCo (Lewisham College) canyoned by new flats and hotels on the Greenwich side, developments that are set to run the length of Norman Road.

Babar-Birdnest0914

Just as the Creek broadens a little and gets really muddy there is a branch mooring a dozen barges and smaller boats. On land there are a similar array of trailers and vans where people live and work. At the top of Creekside on the corner of Deptford Church Street is the Birdsnest live music pub and local flux point. The yard that wraps around it features Big red Pizza Bus and an array of related performance and construction trades. Other adjacent properties are in progress of reactivation in the sweep of enthusiasm for SE8. APT (artists in perpetuity trust) purchased the old factory building in 1995 and their community of traditional crafts practitioners are at the core of Deptford artist reputation.

Creekside Education Centre  has the only direct access to the creek. Boundless broadband coop was first implanted here in 2004, and is still operating an OWN node today. Over the road is the Crossfields council housing estate, repopulated  by young families,  artists and musicians in 1970’s and regularly commented on. Thereafter it’s a pick n mix run of light industrial yards, Scaffolders, Machinists, Work Units, Art Studios, Cockpit Arts, Laben Dance and bonanza of real estate prospectors with plans to block out the light.

cropped-minesweeper2001A 2nd world war Minesweeper is moored alongside one of few remaining light industrial estates off Norman Road. It has a mixed crew of arty anarchos who screen print t-shirts and lead on refurbishment of the aged hull, host great parties and a flotilla of smaller boats. Madcap Coalition have just moved to one of the remaining warehouses adjacent to the cement works by the Creek Road lifting bridge. Finally at the mouth a new pedestrian swing bridge links between swanky new condo’s before the creek tips into the Thames.

More, much more info about the area and it’s many great features, ideas and activities are reported in a clutch of local blogs, projects and innovations to numerous to detail here.

Here is the MAZI project outline;
Do-It-Yourself networking refers to a conceptual approach to the use of low-cost hardware and wireless technologies in deploying local communication networks that can operate independently from the public Internet, owned and controlled by local actors.
MAZI means “together” in Greek and the MAZI project invests in this paradigm of technology-supported networking, as a means to bring closer together those living in physical proximity. Through an experienced interdisciplinary consortium, MAZI delivers a DIY networking toolkit that offers tools and guidelines for the easy deployment and customization of local networks and services.
The MAZI toolkit is designed to take advantage of particular characteristics of DIY networking: the de facto physical proximity between those connected; the increased privacy and autonomy; and the inclusive access. Such characteristics are used to promote information exchanges that can develop the location-based collective awareness, as a basis for fostering social cohesion, conviviality, knowledge sharing, and sustainable living.
To achieve this objective, MAZI brings together partners from different disciplines: computer networks, urban planning and interdisciplinary studies, human-computer interaction, community informatics, and design research. These academic partners will collaborate closely with four community partners to ensure that the MAZI toolkit benefits from the grounded experience of citizen engagement.
MAZI draws from the diverse mix of competencies of its consortium to develop a transdisciplinary research framework, which will guide a series of long-term pilot studies in a range of environments, and enhanced by various cross-fertilization events.
The main goal of this process, and its measure of success, is establishing DIY networking as a mainstream technology for enabling the development of collective awareness between those in physical proximity, and the development of surrounding research and theorizing of this approach.
Participants; University of Thessaly, NetHood, Edinburgh Napier University, Berlin University of the Arts, Open University, INURA Zurich Institute, SPC, Prinzessinnengarten, and unMonastery.
Posted on by d.tv Events, news, presentations, projects

D-Cent & Snowden @ FutureFest

Today our friend Jaromil chaired a panel discussion on “Blockchain: How Encryption Will Shape The Economics and Politics of the future” @ FutureFest.
Denis “Jaromil” Roio (chair), Brett Scott, Jorge Timón, Stacy Herbert

FutureFest is a multi format event which gives visitors ample opportunity to take self-guided journeys. This year’s speakers include the visionary musician George Clinton, NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, fashion designer and activist Vivienne Westwood, and journalist/best-selling author Jon Ronson, among others.

D-CENT hosts two panels:

  • Networks, Movements and Parties: D-Cent and the challenges of net-era politics
    Francesca Bria (chair), Birgitta Jonsdottir, Davide Barillari, Fabrizio Sestini, Miguel Arana Catania
  • Blockchain: How Encryption Will Shape The Economics and Politics of the future
    Denis “Jaromil” Roio (chair), Brett Scott, Jorge Timón, Stacy Herber

Vivienne Westwood at FutureFest 2015: End Vulture Capitalism from Nesta UK on Vimeo.

Edward Snowden at FutureFest: full interview from Nesta UK on Vimeo.

Worth mentioning is Vivienne Westwood’s engagement in the protest against TTIP in the campaign Artists against TTIP.

What is Artists Against TTIP?

Artists Against TTIP is a growing group of performers, musicians, designers, visual artists, directors and thinkers who have come together to raise awareness of the threats posed by TTIP.

BUT WHAT IS TTIP?

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP, pronounced tee-tip) is a comprehensive free trade and investment treaty currently being negotiated – largely in secret – between the European Union and the USA.

The scope of the negotiations is very broad. The stated goal is to reduce “barriers to trade” between the EU and US. In practice TTIP would lead to a huge transfer of power from democratically elected governments to large corporations. The implications for public health, the environment, public service provision, financial regulation, labour standards and social protections are profound. On top of this, research produced for the European Commission estimates that TTIP will lead to the loss of 1 million jobs.

Posted on by deptfordtv projects

future project collaboration on Dowse

reSync was invited to collaborate on the Dowse project.

By replacing the outdated proprietary ISP ‘gateway’ with an open and user-visible device, Dowse creates a new platform that leverages its topologically unique access and influence in the domain of the local-area network. It introduces a visible, malleable, knowable communications hub to the language of the small network.

Dowse seizes on the power of the technologically/topologically necessary gateway/hub role to create development opportunities which cannot exist on other platforms. Dowse becomes the locus of a specific new class of end-user-visible applications which are able to perceive and affect all devices in the local sphere, whether they are open or closed.

Moving above the platform of Dowse, it is in touching upon the Internet of Things that a glimmer appears of what may be Dowse’s killer app(s). These are the applications of Dowse in which human opportunities appear to interactively define the Internet of Things at a high level. The entrance or departure of a device from the local IoT ecosystem is accompanied by audiovisual interactive aspects. Such interactions extend to the new presence or absence of a communications channel, for example between an electrical meter and a corporation. The software explorations that can appear in this domain, enabled by the Dowse platform, can bring individual awareness, preference, and empowered influence to the network/IoT as its own organ.

Further information can be found here.

Posted on by admin about:thesis, Deptford.TV, news, projects, reports, research

Steal this film II, Nov. 2007

Meeting the League of the Noble Peers in Sheffield during the premiere of their film Steal this film II. Jamie King explains further plans to develop financing systems for filmmakers. The Concept is called DIstributed, Supportive Payment system (DISPS). DISPS could potentially be applied to Deptford.TV

DISPS is a robust system allowing donors to make Distributed, voluntary Supportive Payments (DISPs) to creators, producers and distributors of media. DISPS is premised on the fact that free sharing of files through p2p networks is irrevocable. Under DISPS, consumers choose to make voluntary supportive payments directly to the producer without the mediation of the file/media as commodity.

Steal this film on Wikipedia:

Part one

Part One, shot in Sweden and released in August 2006 combines accounts from prominent players in the Swedish piracy culture (The Pirate Bay, Piratbyrån, and the Pirate Party) with found material, propaganda-like slogans and Vox Pops.

It includes interviews with Pirate Bay members Fredrik Neij (tiamo), Gottfrid Svartholm (anakata) and Peter Sunde (brokep) that were later re-used by agreement in the documentary film Good Copy Bad Copy, as well as with Piratbyrån members Rasmus Fleischer (rsms), Johan (krignell) and Sara Andersson (fraux).

The film [4]is notable for its critical analysis of an alleged regulatory capture[5] attempt performed by the Hollywood film lobby to leverage economic sanctions by the United States government on Sweden through the WTO. Alleged aims included the application of pressure to Swedish police into conducting a search and seizure against Swedish law for the purpose of disrupting The Pirate Bay’s BitTorrent tracker.

The Guardian Newspaper called it ‘at heart a traditionally-structured “talking heads” documentary’ with ‘amusing stylings’ from film-makers who ‘practice what they preach.’[6]. Screened at the British Film Institute and numerous independent international events, Steal This Film One was a talking point in 2007’s British Documentary Film Festival.[7]. In January 2008 it was featured on BBC Radio 4‘s Today Programme, in a discussion piece which explored the implications of P2P for traditional media.

Found material in Steal This Film includes the music of Can, tracks “Thief” and “She Brings the Rain”; clips from other documentary interviews with industry and governmental officials; several industry anti-piracy promotionals; logos from several major Hollywood studios, and sequences from The Day After Tomorrow, The Matrix, Zabriskie Point, and They Live. The use of these short clips is believed to constitute fair use.

Part two

Part Two of Steal This Film [8] (sometimes subtitled ‘The Dissolving Fortress’) was produced during 2007. It premiered (in a preliminary version) at the “The Oil of the 21st Century – Perspectives on Intellectual Property” conference in Berlin, Germany, November 2007.[9]

Thematically, part Two examines the technological and cultural aspects of the copyright wars, and the cultural and economic implications of the internet. It includes an exploration of Mark Getty‘s infamous statement that ‘intellectual property is the oil of the 21st century’. Part two draws parallels between the impact of the printing press and the internet in terms of making information accessible beyond a privileged group or “controllers”. The argument is made that the decentralised nature of the internet makes the enforcement of conventional copyright impossible. Adding to this the internet turns consumers into producers, by way of consumer generated content, leading to the sharing, mashup and creation of content not motivated by financial gains. This has fundamental implications for market based media companies. The documentary asks “How will society change” and states “This is the Future – And it has nothing to do with your bank balance”.

It was selected for the Sheffield International Documentary Film Festival,[10] South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, [11] and the Singapore International Film Festival [12]. It was also shown during the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam [13] where Director Jamie King was a panelist and speaker presenting a rumoured Alternative Compensation project by The League of Noble Peers. Steal This Film has most recently been nominated for the Ars Electronica 2008 Digital Communities prize.[14]

Distribution

A cam version leaked soon after the preliminary premiere in Berlin.[15] Part Two had its ‘conventional’ (ie, projected rather than viewed online) premiere at the openly-organised artistic seminar in Stockholm 2007.[16] Despite the principles of the seminar itself (all aspects of which were organised via open wiki in a year long process), the involvement of Piratbyran caused controversy with the funders of the seminar, the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, who refused to allow Piratbyran‘s logo on the seminar marketing materials alongside its own. The seminar initiators’ solution was to add a black sticker dot over the logo, which was easily peeled off. Another condition given by the Committee was that an anti-piracy spokesperson be present to balance the debate.

The documentary was officially released on filesharing networks on December 28, 2007 and, according to the filmmakers, [17] downloaded 150,000 times in the first three days of distribution. Pirate Bay encouraged the downloading of Steal This Film Two, announcing its release on its blog.[18] Steal This Film Two was also screened by the Pirate Cinema Copenhagen in January 2008.[19] The documentary can also be downloaded on the official Steal This Film website.[3]

The League of Noble Peers asks for donations and more than US$5000 has been received as of January 5 2008. [20]

Language

Like Part One, Part Two is in English. However, unlike Part One, which only had subtitles in English, Part Two has subtitles in many languages due to great interest in the documentary by volunteer translators. The film has subtitles in Croatian, Danish, French, Finnish, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Ukrainian.

Financing

As well as funding from BritDoc, the Steal This Film series continues to utilise a loose version of the Street Performer Protocol, collecting voluntary donations via a PayPal account, from the www.stealthisfilm.com website. The filmmakers report that roughly one in a thousand viewers are donating, mostly in the range USD 15-40.

Credits

Steal This Film One and Two are credited as ‘conceived, directed, and produced’ by The League of Noble Peers. Where Part One contains no personal attribution part Two has full credits.

The League of Noble Peers are now working on a cinema release of Steal This Film.