Author: admin

Posted on 11 February 2015 by admin reports

reCapture Transmediale

tm2015-arrival Just returned from a week away at Transmediale in Berlin, ‘Capture All’ where reSync co-habited with a set of social forum and offline network workgroups to explore respective exhaustion with social media, find fresh approaches to localised practice, celebrate a sense of disconnectedness as well as reunite old friends and baptise new.

So, in a noisy and overloaded foyer environment, we bumbled through a few hours of strained explanations and half understood activities until the 16 or so attendees clicked to our reGroove to spark up some add-hock badge pressing and kitten synchronisation.

To be honest we have performed better than this but despite all, some delight and pleasure was expressed by many involved! Our ‘reSync All‘ workshop could have well been called ‘reCapture Transmediale’ in acknowledgement of the sense shared by many, on our self surveillance and semi consciousness of the issues exhibited. Elsewhere, more earnestly expressed anxiety and abstractions were deliberated over until the jitter cut of one session on another bewildered and perplexed YT.

The Off-Networks review Out in the bar, on the terrace and about town the conversations flowed more realistically from where we eventually dragged our soles through to each new day reset and rarified for another go. There were no midnight trains (too early) but trawls through the 90’s ‘scape of tobacco overload and tinnitus trials. No massage but a shrinking scrape with urban imagination and cultural preposterousness.

Just before leaving we popped over to Tactical Tech for lunch and final farewell to hosts Oliver and X Londoner Adam.. yes we ran all the way to the airport.. Cheers All !

Posted on 31 January 2015 by admin Events

Superglue Demonstration

Demonstration
At Foyer Hub 3

Over the last 18 months a team of artists, engineers, programmers, designers and researchers have been building Superglue – a visual web authoring tool and personal server, which enables you to make your own websites and host them at home. The Superglue visual web authoring tool comes as a handy browser add-on, which enables you to create websites directly in the browser window. To host your website at home the team of the project developed the Superglue personal server, which comes as a preconfigured device which you plug into the wall and instantly have your own Internet server. Superglue is a tool based on the original DIY (Do-It-Yourself) ethos of the Internet.

After its test launch in October 2014, Superglue is now open for public trials. For transmediale 2015, team members Michael Zeder, Abigail Smith and Teresa Dillon will provide a short overview of Superglue, demonstrating how the author tool and server works and discussing the ideas behind the project.

Participants can bring their own routers (TP-LINK TL-WR710N or D-Link DIR-505) or try the pre-configured devices that will be available for public test.

Bringing a laptop will be in any case necessary.

Superglue is developed by Danja Vasiliev, Joscha Jaeger, Michael Zeder in collaboration with Teresa Dillon, VERBALVISUAL and zerbamine.

Facilitated by: WORM.

Supported by: Greenhost
>superglue.it

Posted on 30 January 2015 by admin presentations

hybrid publishing toolkit

Presentation
At the Foyer Stage

This publication is part of the Digital Publishing Toolkit research project, next to a set of tools for digital publishing. The Toolkit is meant for everyone working in art and design publishing. It provides hands-on practical advice and tools, focusing on working solutions for low-budget, small-edition publishing. Editorial scenarios include art and design catalogues and periodicals, research publications, and artists’/designer’s books.

With Florian Cramer, Patricia de Vries, Miriam Rasch, Margreet Riphagen

Posted on 30 January 2015 by admin Events

Preempting Dissent: A Creative Commons Feature Documentary Film

A screening and conversation about the creative commons documentary Preempting Dissent (2014) that builds upon the book of the same name written by Greg Elmer and Andy Opel. The film is a culmination of a collaborative process of soliciting, collecting and editing video, still images, and creative commons music files from people around the world. Preempting Dissent interrogates the expansion of the so-called “Miami-Model” of protest policing, a set of strategies developed in the wake of 9/11 to preempt forms of mass protest at major events in the US and worldwide. The film exposes the political, social, and economic roots of preemptive forms of protest policing and their manifestations in spatial tactics, the deployment of so-called ‘less-lethal’ weapons, and surveillance regimes. The film notes, however, that new social movements have themselves begun to adopt preemptive tactics so as not to fall into the trap set for them by police agencies worldwide.

Posted on 29 January 2015 by admin Uncategorized

DATAFIELD2

Henry Warwick DATAFIELD2
A Temporary Autonomous Field Off the Internet

DATAFIELD is an ongoing artwork based in common computer technology operating as a Temporary Autonomous Field off the Internet. While DATAFIELD(1) was based on a mounted WIFI router, DATAFIELD2 and DATAFIELD3 – hosted at the foyer of transmediale 2015 – are units that can be moved and can be hidden.

DATAFIELD2 is a Network Attached Storage Unit that takes the theme of common ordinary household information appliances to the next level. Its low cost consumer unit is a significant part of the aesthetic and political choices surrounding the project – anyone can buy one of these devices, fill it with data and leave it in a public place. It is easy to programme and to access files, a common browser can be used. DATAFIELD2 of course has some limitations, in terms of bandwidth but at the same time it offers some freedoms. As it is battery-operated, it has the advantage that it can be moved constantly; it is nearly impossible to find or stop. DATAFIELD was and is *not* connected to the Internet – this is a strictly offline operation, a voluntary *post-Internet community*.

DATAFIELD
Henry Warwick (School of Media, Ryerson University)

DATAFIELD is a work in technology. It is similar to the PirateBox concept by David Darts, but differs in important ways, as this is not a box of piracy. This is a field of sharing. This installation, as an electromagnetic field, operates as a field of possibilities. It invites, indeed, requires participation to exist – otherwise, it’s just another electromagnetic field. To participate, the user must have a device that can access a WIFI router and mount a drive. How to locate the open WIFI connection DATAFIELD and access to the DATAFIELD drive will be provided with explicit instructions in the Conference space. If for some reason the WIFI stops working, Ethernet cables will be provided, as DATAFIELD is *not* connected to the internet. Within DATAFIELD, you can share files with others. The more people share, the more they gain from involving themselves with this piece and with others. While DATAFIELD responds to enthusiasm, as greater involvement creates a richer dataset, the WIFI router has a limit of ten users at a time. Operating as a Temporary Autonomous Field, this window will only be open the duration of this exhibit. Again, the DATAFIELD router has *no* access to the internet — this is a strictly offline operation, a voluntary *post-internet community*. This is for you, here, now. Remember, sharing is caring.

Posted on 29 January 2015 by admin presentations

Calculated Play? Games as a Metaphor, Medium and Method

Conference Stream Play

Today’s algorithmic world looks more and more like a well-calculated game. Its set rules are meant to delimit the field of open possibilities towards the most precise possible predictions of all moves, preferences and interactions. Is this however for the benefit of the user/ the worker/ the citizen? Do gameful logistics change the way power structures function or do they rather intensify asymmetries pointing to an unfortunate impasse?

To respond to these questions, the panel turns to new game projects created by artists and theorists working in this direction. Placing the player against the algorithm, different game scenarios that speculate on the future of algorithmic work and life can be discussed. Can cracks in the system still be located and exploited or do humans progressively lose all control? Does contingency, an integral element of the algorithmic logic, still allow room for the unexpected or is the battle already lost? Perhaps the algorithm can still be played as Alexander Galloway once wrote.

Presented in cooperation with Leuphana University of Lüneburg

Posted on 10 January 2015 by admin reports

reVeal Transmediale

“What does the ‘Capture All’ logic entail and what does it mean to live in an algorithmic world?

How does the desired ‘full take’ shape not just the contemporary lived environment but our very being, working and acting within it?

The idea behind a ‘Capture All’ society is not one based on a totalitarian model; it rather reflects a new system of organisation which, based on the datafication, quantification and correlation of everything, can be predictive and to some extent pre-emptive, allowing new modes of regulation and control.

Playful, competitive and productive as a ‘capture all’ society claims to be, it constantly aims for an accelerated optimisation surpassing any limitations between life and work. Its rankings and ratings, mappings and visualisations depict a gamifying condition where individuals never rest but are continuously connected and active, allowing behavioural patterns to become detectable and recognisable. But are we then faced with a new type of governmentality towards a calculative life?

And how do we respond to it? Which discourses are still needed and which counter-practices can be employed to provoke change in a datafying world?”

Posted on 9 January 2015 by admin 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 5 January 2015 by admin reports

FOSdem 15

From 31 January until 1 February FOSSem 2015 will take place.

FOSDEM is a free and non-commercial event organised by the community for the community. The goal is to provide open source software developers and communities a place to meet to:

get in touch with other developers and projects;
be informed about the latest developments in the open source world;
attend interesting talks and presentations on various topics by open source project leaders and committers;
to promote the development and the benefits of open source solutions.

Participation and attendance is totally free, though the organisers gratefully accept donations and sponsorship.

Posted on 1 January 2015 by admin Uncategorized

reSync All

During Transmediale 2015, reSync will promote collaborative synchronisation services and introduce a growing P2P exchange network of free media resources, synchronised between those in London [own], Athens [awmn] and Berlin [freifunk], that sidestep the rising sense of network surveillance and preserve privacy whilst continuing to enjoy free media exchange in public and over free information infrastructures wherever they flourish.

Join us in the lobby area of Haus der Kulturen der Welt on Friday 30th January to make sync code badges and configure your media files, messages and phone things to reSync @ Capture All.

reSync-badgepress Pick up a flyer sheet and claim a reSync ‘key’, print posters and press your own badges. Each badge features the unique QRcode to promote media from your smart phones, tablets and pc’s using Bit Torrent Sync app. Anyone then scanning the code or exchanging the key will be able to receive new images texts and sounds as you add them during Transmediale and therafter.

See the howto for more details.

Each reSync is then automatically relayed across our international network nodes using Syncthing (floss) then available on open wireless networks in Athens, London, Lueneburg and Berlin (so far!)

see this reSync All video for some instructions on the process…(ish)

This follows on from ‘reStreet’ workshops in Athens 2014 and will run parallel to the “Enclosed Athens Disclosed”/”Glossary of Subsumption – Projecting a Collective Collation” sessions.

It is no secret that ‘pirate’ sites are amongst the most popular in the world. There are already huge numbers (hundred of millions) of P2P users, and the number continues to grow despite technical and legislative attempts to slow or censor P2P technologies. Media industries are quite unwilling to accept the inevitability of filesharing as a significant, if not the most significant, global media distribution system. The continued belief that intellectual property protection, Digital Rights Management, regulation of ISPs etc. will solve the ‘filesharing problem’ prevents tinkering in this area is being overturned.

Many thanks Rob Canning for the Imagemagic qrcode compositing!

D.TV