“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

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

 

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.

ReSync.UG visited the art meets radical openess festival, taking part in a discussion around mesh networking. The whole programme can be found here: http://www.radical-openness.org/programm/2014

VPN PICNIC: FROM HIVENETWORKS TO PIRATEBOX

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 an outdoor gathering, a picnic, where we’ll test both platforms and discuss history of the future of autonomous connecting, media (file) sharing, meshing and swarming tactics in urban environment.

Unitary Networking

Unitary Networking is a speculative approach to communications infrastructure, trying to establish a link between urban technology and communication technology and reflecting on the way they form networks of power.
In practice, the starting point of the project is an electronic messaging system running on a wireless mesh network, composed of both fixed and moving nodes. The messages propagate through the network when the devices come in contact with each other. It is a non-hierarchical network, where every node receives, relays and broadcasts messages. The users of the network can send or receive messages by using the webbrowser of their smartphone or computer. The messages can be received and sent at any time, but are only synchronized when other fixed or moving nodes are encountered.
We propose a three day workshop to install the prototype and discuss
together with the participants: The first day will explain the technologies involved and the various elements that we could play with. The participants will be able to make their own nodes for the network and we will  think about how these nodes
could fit in the public space. On the second day we would like to go outside to set up the network in the streets and/or the public transport of Linz.
During the third day we would like to have a public presentation of the concept and progress, and open the use of the network to eventual experiments.
The project breaks down into a series of elements that will be part of the worksessions:
the installation of the devices that connect in the mesh network, which
will be flashed with free open-source software
the exploration of the urban space as a platform to deploy the network
the preparation of camouflaged devices as self-sufficient nodes, by
connecting it to solar panels or by parasiting vulnerable sources of energy
the construction of antennas to bridge longer distances
We count on public participation and interaction for making this proof of concept and the existing prototypes into a meaningful collective  situation.
The workshop is open to public with different backgrounds and skills, as the different tasks in the project can be shared according to the capabilities and interests of the participants.

Options for Participants:
If the participants would like to create a node of their own they should
bring an Open-WRT compatible router. For a list of compatible hardware
see(http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start). We recommend the TP-Link
TL-MR3020 and TP-Link TL-WR703N for their small size and low power
requirements. We will bring between 5 and 10 routers ourselves, to be
used as nodes.

DATA UNION discussion group/worklab
Data Union is a project by The Analogue Group. It aims to create a viral union of data refugees, whose only possession is their data, as an experiment in everyday life, that is, as a laboratory of innovation for the autonomous use of data in local contexts globally networked.
These data unions will add value to contemporary movements of ecological, economic, racial, and gender equality in three specific ways:
1. To work with groups to understand contemporary regimes of copyright, and open data movements.
2. To develop a political analysis of the data-yielding activities of their communities, groups, and organisations.
3. To develop a collective, creative, and democratic response to the social, economic, and cultural implications of Big Data and to fully leverage the value of that data in the interests of democracy, equality, and justice. More here: http://dataunion.org.uk
We’d like to spread the word about Data Union beyond London where current activities are situated. An afternoon of discussion examining efficacy of everyday behavioural tactics relating to data, surveillance and autonomy to enable anonymity, data disruption and pollution, autonomous organisation, value negotiation.
If time allows, we propose to test the Open Mustard Seed (OMS) Framework, a project by researchers, developers and entrepreneurs, primarily from Harvard and MIT and the Boston Community that seems to bridge a gap to developing autonomy in data retention, monetisation and eventual strike.
The Open Mustard Seed project is an open-source framework for developing and deploying web apps in a secure, user-centric personal cloud.
The framework provides a stack of core technologies that work together to provide a high level of security and ease of use when sharing and collecting personal and environmental data, controlling web-enabled devices, and engaging with others to aggregate information and view the results of applied computation via protected services.

url:
http://dataunion.org.uk
http://idhypercubed.org/wiki