Title of Talk / Panel / Workshop / Demo

Practical examples of energy autonomy for social justice: How to make networks off grid and autonomous.

Name : Justin Downs
Location : Brooklyn, NY
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : N/A
GitHub : https://github.com/IEFRD
Url(s) : www.IEFRD.com

Type of proposal

Talk

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / demo

Practical examples of energy autonomy for social justice: How to make networks off grid and autonomous. This talk will focus on introducing the basics of powering and housing electronics for outside and autonomous applications. A brief overview of the social ramifications of self powered communities and networks paired with a more in-depth overview on NEMA rated housings and off grid energy production and storage with a focus on solar.

Length of talk / panel / workshop

20-30 minutes

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

N/A

Demo installation requirements

A table

Speaker Bio

https://media.licdn.com/media/p/3/000/0ec/0b0/030d008.jpg
Justin Downs has a longstanding interest in social justice through self reliance in energy, information and community organization. He has worked 15+ years in open tech development from off grid research camps and GSM communications in Kenya to medical dataloggers for UNICEF and most recently LINC a facial recognition system and database for lion conservation in east Africa.

Workshop: Ways of Seeing: Visualizing Networks

Name : Dawn Walker
Location : Toronto, ON
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @dcwalk_
GitHub : @dcwalk
Url(s) : Performing Mesh

Type of proposal

Workshop

Description

Immaterial networks can be hard to make sense of, analyze or critique without tangible artefacts to engage with. I will explore this challenge through a hands on workshop where participants will use a full range of senses and modalities to visualize and map networks. Through individual and group exercises we will experiment with different techniques designed to reveal connections and flows within networks.

Length

2hrs

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

• Attendees: 16-24
• Technical Requirements: While the bulk will be lo-fidelity and paper based, could take advantage of digital/interactive options if there were computers or devices available to participants -- please let me know about possibilities and I can design the schedule accordingly!

Speaker Bio

Dawn Walker is a Masters student in the Faculty of Information at University of Toronto. Her interests include community-led infrastructure development and responses to surveillance. She has coordinated and led workshops on mesh networking, open source software and introductions to various technology. A keen gardener, Dawn has spent time building and volunteering in community gardens and urban agriculture projects.

Title of Talk / Panel / Workshop / Demo

Name : Mike Richison
Location : Ocean NJ
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @mikerichison
GitHub : MikeR77
Url(s) : www.mikerichison.com

Type of proposal

[Demo]

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / demo

[16 Step Social is a video beat sequencer comprised of a custom controller, a Max MSP Jitter interface, and the Instagram API. Users can download Instagram videos through the interface, edit the clips, build rhythms, add effects, and layer beats indefinitely. The Arduino-based controller was inspired by the Roland TR 808 and works in tandem with the computer interface. Users can search for specific hashtags or upload their own Instagram video. Audience members can participate during a performance by posting videos with a predetermined hashtag, which the performer can continuously, generating a visual and auditory feedback loop. The result is a spontaneous and rhythmic live set.

The documentation shows the piece in a performance. However, the piece can be easily adapted for an installation. There are two stations, allowing for two audience members to interact at once. I would like to give demonstrations and performances at regular intervals, encouraging audience members to interact with the controller. I would also like to share how the piece was constructed, letting the audience look under the hood, and see the expanded Max patch and Javascript.

The piece requires a projector and a sound system, set of speakers or amp. I am largely self-contained and can bring the projectors, projector screens and speakers if necessary. ]

Length of talk / panel / workshop

[The demo can last as long as time permits, or it can be shortened to fit into the schedule.]

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

[The piece requires a projector and a sound system, set of speakers or amp. I am largely self-contained and can bring the projectors, projector screens and speakers if necessary. ]

Demo installation requirements

[The piece requires a projector and a sound system, set of speakers or amp. I am largely self-contained and can bring the projectors, projector screens and speakers if necessary. ]

Speaker Bio

[http://www.monmouth.edu/uploadedImages/Content/School_of_Humanities_-_Soc_Sci/departments/art-and-design/faculty-and-staff/Richison.jpg?n=4829]

[After calling the Detroit, Michigan area home for a number of years, Mike relocated to New Jersey in 2007. He is currently a professor at Monmouth University where he teaches motion graphics and sculpture. He is a multimedia artist who utilizes a variety of media and approaches including performance, graphic design, video, photography, sculpture, printmaking, drawing, custom electronics, custom software, and installation. He has exhibited and performed at venues and galleries both nationally and internationally.]

Digital Literacy is a Trap: Workshopping Approaches to Network Pedagogy

Name : Ingrid Burrington / Surya Mattu / Dan Phiffer
Location : Brooklyn, NY
Email : [email protected] / [email protected] / [email protected]
Twitter : @lifewinning / @suryamattu / @phiffer
GitHub : lifewinning / samatt / dphiffer
Url(s) : Networks Land / OurNet

Type of proposal

Workshop

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / artwork

How did you learn about how networks work? How did you learn to use the internet? Why did you want to use the internet? How did you learn that the internet was probably using you?

Chances are, very few people who read this session description will have the same answers for any of these questions. In the US at least, education about the deeper, persnickety parts of "how the internet works" isn't particularly standardized and encompasses so many different ideas and approaches that it's hard to know where exactly to start, which means that what publics learn about networks/the internet and where and how they learn it varies really widely.

A lot of it--especially the more politically contentious parts--isn't really taught at all, despite the amount of hype and money currently being thrown at STEM and digital literacy initiatives, because it's deemed "impractical" to the larger project of digital literacy. As a result, many efforts toward education in these spaces reduce down to either training individuals to be effective consumers of online content or misleading individuals into thinking that knowing how to code is agency itself. If we really want to see alternative platforms, networks, tools, and voices, we need to radically rethink how this material gets taught and why, exactly, we're teaching it.

This session will start with short presentations on two separate projects that both involved teaching young adults. We'll share what we did, what worked, what didn't, and questions we're still working through moving forward. Then, as a group, discuss and collaboratively map out some of the different ideological positions behind teaching people about networks, the tactics that we've found useful in the past, and some of the hard questions we're working through. This session is specifically aimed at educators and activists working on these topics with the hope of coordinating more efforts toward getting educators across this space to work more regularly with each other.

Length of talk / panel / workshop

An hour--ideally 20-30 minutes for presentation/frame-setting part and then the remainder of the session is more discussion-based.

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

Projector for slides would be nice and table space would be helpful if we want to do any show and tell with various analogue teaching materials. Wall space for big note-taking and brainstorming-type things (can bring in big notepads and markers for this).

Artwork installation requirements

N/A

Speaker Bio

[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1108171/Surya_Mattu_256.png]

Surya Mattu is an artist and engineer critical of the public perception and access to wireless spectrums. He and Ingrid worked on Networks Land.

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/biexqdrf3d6kkpb/oh_for_sure_man.jpg?dl=0]

Ingrid Burrington writes, makes maps, and tells jokes. She's currently an artist in residence at Data and Society Research Institute. She and Surya worked on networks.land

[https://avatars0.githubusercontent.com/u/38114?v=3&s=460]

Dan Phiffer is a programmer and artist based in Brooklyn working on projects that use computer networks as a raw material. In the Fall of 2011 Dan created Occupy.here as an alternative darknet web forum for the Occupy Wall Street encampment and its affiliated working groups. That project has informed related efforts in digital pedagogy, through Our Net workshops (and a forthcoming zine), and to working within the platform cooperativism model with the Small Data Cooperative. For his day job, Dan helps build open source mapping tools at Mapzen and is an Impact Resident at Eyebeam Art + Tech.

SDR-101 : The Hitchhiker's Guide to the RF Spectrum

Name : Surya Mattu
Location : Brooklyn, NY
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @suryamattu
GitHub : samatt
Url(s) : suryamattu.com

Type of proposal

Talk

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / demo

Radio waves have been harnessed for communication for over a century. Until a few years ago the high cost of entry to this field limited the avenues of non-commercial exploration and research. As the price of software defined radios (SDRs) has decreased the quantity (and quality) of open source software and tools that support this hardware has increased tremendously.

Using these devices it is possible to explore communication networks that were previously off limits. These include air traffic control, weather satellites, GSM, and many more! This talk hopes to make SDRs exciting for the uninitiated with an explanation of what they are, how they work, and how they can be used for creative purposes . We will use the FCC allocated radio spectrum as our playground and explore the waves!

Length of talk / panel / workshop

30 min

Speaker Bio

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1108171/Surya_Mattu_256.png

Surya Mattu is an artist and engineer critical of the public perception and access to wireless spectrums. He is a 2015 Data and Society fellow where his research is focused on the technology and politics surrounding the radio frequency spectrum

MAC as a Place and Landscape

Name : Garry Ing
Location : Toronto, ON
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @garrying
GitHub : garrying
Url(s) : garrying.com

Type of proposal

Talk

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / demo

A media access control (MAC) address is sometimes encountered as a read-only hexadecimal string, separated by colons or hyphens, and often cited as a method to identify network interfaces in their physical instantiation; a port in which ethernet is stringed into, an adapter grafted to a computer. Though not immediately visible or understandable, their hexadecimal compositions are used in procedural means to block, allow, or trace the behaviour of a networked device and often times an individual. Though much of the attention with MAC addresses are in support of these uses, MAC addresses can also by interpreted as a peculiar landscape of manufactures and geographies.

This talk will look at MAC addresses through a publicly available dataset by the IEEE Registration Authority. The dataset is composed of organizationally unique identifiers (OUI) that is often used in network related software as means to clearly identify manufactures of interfaces. The dataset is a starting point in a series of attempts to make visible the architecture, geographies, and stories behind the manufacturing and distribution of network interfaces.

Length of talk / panel / workshop

30 minutes

Speaker Bio

Garry Ing is a designer and technologist residing in Toronto. His previous work and collaborations has been with the Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab) at OCAD University, the Technologies for Aging Gracefully Lab at the University of Toronto, and Normative. He is a graduate of OCAD University, with a background in graphic design.

Barn-raising methodology for building community networks: the Fumaça experience in Brazil

Name : Bruno Vianna
Location : Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @brunovianna
GitHub : github.com/brunovianna
Url(s) : http://nuvem.tk, http://brunovianna.net
http://www.ibe.tv/es/canal/laaventuradeaprender/849/Nuvem-Esta%C3%A7%C3%A3o-Rural-de-Arte-e-Tecnologia.htm

Type of proposal

A talk.

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / artwork

In 2015 a community communication system was installed in the village of Fumaça, 200km from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which consisted of a mesh network, that expanded the reach of the public wifi from the square to the whole village, and of the implementation of a public cell phone system based on Oaxaca-based Rhizomatica platform.

I'd like to focus the talk on the methodology used to implement the system, based on previous experiences at Nuvem - a hackspace and art residency house in the countryside of
Rio. It started with monthly meeting within the own community to define the design of the network. Then we invited volunteers from the whole country to spend one week learning different skills and helping the neighbors with tasks such as assembling poles and flashing routers.

Fumaça's community network has been running strong for more than a year and an expansion is being planned now. The volunteers now act as multipliers, teaching the technology and implementing networks in their own neighborhoods. The idea behind the talk is to share the know how obtained and foster the implementation of more community networks.

Length of talk / panel / workshop

30 minutes with 10 minutes for questions

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

Artwork installation requirements

Speaker Bio

http://brunovianna.net/fotobike.jpg

Bruno Vianna was born in Rio de Janeiro 43 years ago. He used to make visual narratives using classical and innovative supports. He lived in New York and Barcelona, and still tries to spend a few months traveling every year. He now runs Nuvem, a rural art laboratory and residency space, located 200km from Rio, and works as a teacher at Oi Kabum! School.

## Title of Talk / Panel / Workshop / Artwork:
Socializing Public Spaces With Shared Input From Mobile Devices

Name : Jonah Brucker-Cohen
Location : Brooklyn, NY
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @coinop29, http://www.twitter.com/coinop29
GitHub : coinop29
Url(s) : [http://www.coin-operated.com, http://www.livelyevent.com]

Type of proposal

[Talk and Live Demo]

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / artwork

[This talk will discuss recent projects I am working on that focus on allowing large-scale collaborative input from people in shared spaces using data from the mobile devices such as cellphones and tablets. Beginning with an earlier project of mine called “SimpleTEXT” that encouraged mass contributions from people sending text messages from mobiles phones to drive a public performance, I will expand on this project by introducing a new product I have launched called “Lively” that takes advantage of the ubiquity of mobile devices using browser-based output and WebGL visualizations of incoming text messages by large audiences. The project has been performed at a wide range of public spaces such as large conferences, public movie theaters and performance spaces, and co-working spaces.

Length of talk / panel / workshop

25 minutes talk with 15 minutes for a live demo and 10 minutes for questions.

Speaker Bio

Speaker URL: http://www.coin-operated.com
Photo URL: http://bit.ly/jonahbc

Bio:
[Jonah Brucker-Cohen. Ph.D., is an award winning researcher, artist, writer, and Assistant Professor of Digital Media and Networked Culture at Lehman College / CUNY. He received his Ph.D. in the Electronic and Electrical Engineering Department of Trinity College Dublin. His work focuses on the theme of "Deconstructing Networks" and includes projects that critically challenge and subvert accepted perceptions of network interaction and experience. His work has been exhibited and showcased at venues such as SFMOMA, MOMA, ICA London, Palais du Tokyo,Tate Modern, Ars Electronica, Transmediale, and his project “Bumplist” is included in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. His writing has appeared in publications such as WIRED, Make, Gizmodo, Neural and more. His Scrapyard Challenge workshops have been held in over 14 countries in Europe, South America, North America, Asia, and Australia since 2003. His is also the Executive Vice President of Lively Event, a company focused on enriching public spaces through shared interaction from mobile devices.]

Name : Jean-Lorin Sterian
Location : Bucharest, Romania
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : -
GitHub : lorgean(https://github.com/lorgean)
Url(s) : lorgean.wordpress.com

Type of proposal

talk

Description of your talk

Seven years ago I began to organize, irregularly (about twice a month) artistic events where artists and performeres presented their creations in my apartment. This is how I started lorgean theatre, the first living-room theater from Romania. Since 2014 I manage HomeFest, an art festival held only in private spaces. After a while I’ve started to spot events that can be framed as homemade culture from all over the world, meaning theater, visual and performance art held in private inhabited spaces. In this moment I’m building an open platform, where all the homemade culture events will be mapped and where everyone can add his own contribution. The mapping process it’s not an easy one cause most of the homemade culture events are advertised. I defined the domestic box as the living space in which assumed artistic acts take place. This space is activated when a meeting takes place in it, one between the artists and the audience, mediated directly by the host (through organization) and indirectly through the space provided, which by default becomes the scenography of all the cultural events held in that house. Homemade culture is what is born from this meeting, the living product generated in and by the domestic space. Hospitality begins at home - but it also describes our relations to each other as people, territories and nations. Homemade Culture could be one of the remedies against the world of screens that we live in, the encounters between works of art and home is creating bonding and stronger connection between people.

Length of talk : 20-25 min

Jean-Lorin Sterian is a researcher, writer, artist and performer currently based in Bucharest/Romania. He completed his bachelor's degree in journalism at Spiru Haret University in Bucharest in 1998. He has a master in anthropology from the SNSPA (2009) and a master in »Society, Multimedia, Spectacle« (Center Of Excellence In Image Study, University of Bucharest, 2015). He will start his PhD studies at SNSPA in 2016, researching what he coined to be »homemade« culture.

In 2008 Jean-Lorin Sterian opened the lorgean theatre, the first living-room theater in Romania and since 2014 he manages HomeFest, an arts festival held only in houses and flats. For many years he worked as a journalist for lifestyle magazines. He published several fiction books and one anthropological book related with his experience of turning his house into a public space for performances. Since 2009 he has been interested in performance art and contemporary dance.

Jean-Lorin Sterian worked as a performer for two projects at Venice Biennale, The Sinthome Score (2015, Dora Garcia) and An Immaterial Retrospective of the Venice Biennale (2013). He also performed his own art project, The parasite socks project, at the 56th Venice Biennale. He created performance shows like We Need To Talk About lorgean (2014), Strip-tease (2013, with Alice Pons) and Zugzwang (2012).

He received fellowships in contemporary dance at The Gathering, Montemor-o-Novo/Portugal (2013) and DanceWeb, Vienna/Austria (2012), as well as a fellowship in literature at Villa Marguerite Yourcenar, Saint-Jans-Cappel/France (2012) and Akademy Schloss Solitude (2015-2017).

Title of Talk / Panel / Workshop / Demo

NYC Mesh, a community-owned Wi-Fi network

Name : Brian Hall, Julien Deswaef, Dan Grinkevich
Location : NYC
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @nycmesh
GitHub : nycmeshnet
Url(s) : nycmesh.net

Type of proposal

Three members of NYC Mesh will be talking and presenting a slideshow

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / demo

NYC Mesh is a community-owned resilient Wi-Fi mesh network, started by a group of passionate volunteers in New York City.

The aim is to create a free, resilient, stand-alone communication system that serves both for daily use and also for emergencies — be it power outages or Internet disruption — running software that helps our community with hyperlocal maps and events.

During this talk, Brian, Dan and Julien will present the status of the network, how it works, how to get involved and why this could be useful for artists, technologists and the people of New York. There will also be some prepared nodes that you can buy ($28) and bring home to get yourself immediately on board.

Length of talk / panel / workshop

The talk will be about 30 minutes divided between three speakers, with 15 minutes of questions.

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

n/a

Demo installation requirements

n/a

Speaker Bios

Dan Grinkevich has 10 years of experience in the electric utility industry as a Senior Compliance Engineer. He is an Organizer, Firmware Developer and Network Security Expert at NYC Mesh. In his free time he enjoys amateur radio, photography and hardware hacking.

Julien Deswaef is a designer and versatile artist. Active both in visual art as well as in coding, he has the ability to transform "plastic ideas" into digital realities. He regularly collaborates with artists in the world of entertainment, music, plastic and digital arts. Engaged in Open Source and Free Softwares as an ethical principle, Julien relevantly provides the connection between the visual arts, the world of contemporary images and the most advanced aspects in digital research. He was also a member of "Reseau Citoyen", the community owned mesh network of Brussels, Belgium.

Brian Hall has worked as a freelance software engineer in NYC for 20 years and he was the senior software engineer at Sales Graphics/CustomShow. He is interested in using technology to create decentralized structures. He has been active in organizing NYC Mesh for over a year.

MTOS, federated, public key secured, social communications infrastructure

Name : Andrew Davis
Location : Jackson, Mississippi
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @diffalot
GitHub : diffalot
GitLab : diffalot
Url(s) : diff.mx | mtos.co

Type of proposal

15 minute talk and/or demo

Description of your talk / demo

MTOS is a system for exchanging public keys and subscribing to and publishing data encrypted for those public keys. Data is encrypted for each user that subscribes to your feed and distributed via bittorrent for asyncronous collection. The talk is a brief overview of the protocol accompanied by a working demo installed for the duration of the conference.

Length of talk

15 minute talk and demo installation

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

not applicable

Demo installation requirements

Demonstration will require one power outlet for a powerstrip with three Raspberry Pis and one ethernet switch connected to it. One Raspberry Pi will connect to the location wifi for internet access and the two other Raspberry Pis will set up their own access points for demonstration MTOS nodes.

Those who wish to participate in the demo will connect to the mtos.co website through the local wifi or through the peer access points, for demonstration purposes, the upstream node will be disconnected from the internet to simulate intermittent network connection and network disruption.

Table space required measures 24 inches by 24 inches.

Speaker Bio

[http://i.imgur.com/jh94JcO.jpg]

Andrew is an open media hacker specializing in writing specs for open web standards. He helped build the first media sharing website for user generated content, helped develop the html5 in-browser media standards, and helped get video editing into Wikipedia.

sylloge of codes: new modes of communication in the wake of Snowden

Name : Nicholas Knouf
Location : Wellesley, MA
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @zeitkunst
GitHub : zeitkunst
Url(s) : zeitkunst.org

Type of proposal

Workshop/demo

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / demo

Our electronic communications are constantly surveilled by the NSA or the GCHQ. Little seems to escape either computer programs or human analysts. Both pour over our data as it flows under the sea or through the ether. Sent in the clear, it's "trivial" to dig through it, as the hackers like to say. So we're asked to encrypt it, to obfuscate it in some way. Yet encryption is not a panacea, for it too can be bypassed in a plethora of ways. We seem to be stuck in a catch-22, damned if we do, damned if we don't. So we feel a lack of power, we feel helpless, we feel cynical.

What can we do?

We can think more poetically. Computers are rather silly machines, only able to "understand" the most basic of information. They can't handle the poetic nor sarcasm, and deal poorly with hidden messages, pidgin, and nuanced meanings. They can't handle the unquantifiable. This implies that we should create more poetic forms of communication that are resistant to computational analysis.

This is a workshop and demo of a new project entitled sylloge of codes, that asks us to think about these new, poetic forms of communication. I don't know what they should be, and thus sylloge of codes is a collection of ideas. Consisting of a self-contained wireless network disconnected from the internet and housed in a simple box, people are invited to contribute their suggestions while receiving a submission from a prior visitor.

The workshop will involve discussions of alternative forms of communication and the prototyping of some ideas from sylloge of codes. The demo will be the actual sylloge of codes box. More info is available on the project website at http://sylloge-of-codes.net/.

Length of talk / panel / workshop

Workshop of 1-2 hours.

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

No additional technical materials are required for the workshop, although markers and butcher paper would be needed.

Demo installation requirements

Power outlet, table, 2-3' of a wall for a projection.

Speaker Bio

Nicholas Knouf is an Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at Wellesley College in Wellesley, MA. His research explores the interstitial spaces between media studies, information science, critical theory, digital art, and science and technology studies.

Title of Talk / Panel / Workshop / Artwork

Name : Luobin Wang
Location : Manhattan, NY
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : https://twitter.com/peterobbin
GitHub : https://github.com/peterobbin
Url(s) : http://peterobbin.me/Irregular-Regularities-Thesis-Work

Type of proposal

Artwork/Installation

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / artwork

Irregular Regularities, a series of art installation, asks the audience to consider how the nature of individual consciousness is influenced by distortions of space-time. Every person—and indeed everything in the cosmos— perceives and is perceived differently as conditioned their specific frames of reference; this is Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. This piece posits scenarios that make space-time perceptible through observation and interaction. Time exist in all kinds of forms reference system drastically changes could reveal a whole new perspective. Semi-accessible clues can be embedded or hidden in a regular scene in a way not immediately apparent to the audience.

These deceptively prepared mechanisms could lead to the noticeable irregular case of the changes of space-time. The whole experience encourages curiosity by leading observers, while the human subconscious takes initiative. How is our objective reality experienced subjectively? Is reality objective considering that we live and die in a material world that is a mutable product of changing, warping space-time?

Length of talk / panel / workshop

I am mainly showcasing my art and concept. If I could do presentation it is going to be 15 minutes long.

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

N/A

Artwork installation requirements

Power outlet and 4 x 8 feet of space

Speaker Bio

Luobin was born in Beijing. With multidisciplinary background in design, user experience and technology, he was involved in installation, creative coding, design research and many fields during his career. Now based in New York City, he is a hybrid of designer, creative technologist and new media artist.

MAZI – Between digital commons, urban struggles and local self-organization

Name : Andreas Unteidig
Location : Berlin, Germany
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @a.unteidig
GitHub : https://github.com/andreasunteidig
Url(s) : andreasunteidig.com

Talk

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / artwork

Social and political processes are becoming increasingly digitized and restructured by technology. Between and beyond dystopian visions and cyber-romantic ideals, we are witnessing, producing and living the rising significance of technological mediation and transformation of our urban realities.
By aligning a critical and open approach to urban technology and discourses and practices around the „right to the city“, the EU-funded project “MAZI” brings together researchers, technologists, designers and activists in exploring the participatory development and appropriation of DIY networking technology.

Reflecting on possible alternatives to proprietary narratives on urban-technological futures, the project develops and prototypes alternative networks that unfold their agency outside the commercial and globalist internet paradigm, and are owned by their potential users.
MAZI aims at developing a “toolkit” that allows individuals and groups to easily set up, appropriate and adopt local networks according to their needs, and approaches this through four independent case studies, in which exemplary networks are being developed together with local collectives: Kraftwerk1 in Zürich, Deptford Creek in London, the nomadic group UnMonastery and the Neighborhood Academy/Prinzessinnengärten in Berlin. Through this, MAZI aims at bringing DIY networking into technologically un-savvy, political contexts which can be supported and amplified by its application.

In this talk I will illustrate the project as a whole, its core ideas and setup. Following this, I will describe the processes and outcomes of the first months of the local cooperation between the Berlin University of the Arts and the Neighborhood Academy, in which we are developing tools for informal and collective learning across different initiatives. I will demonstrate the current version of a prototype, a platform that interconnects Berlin’s ecosystem of initiatives and activists within the right-to-the-city movement, and reflect on the processes of co-designing DIY network technology in this particular environment.

The MAZI-partners are: University of Thessaly, Nethood, Berlin University of the Arts, Common Ground, Edinburgh Napier University, Open University, INURA Zürich Institute, SPC and UnMonastery.

Length of talk / panel / workshop

30 minutes plus 15 minutes for questions.

Artwork installation requirements

I will bring the prototype mentioned in the description, which does not need any installation. Additionally, I can bring Polylogue, an installation realized for Transmediale 2016 within the MAZI project: https://vimeo.com/158835693

Speaker Bio

https://cloud.udk-berlin.de/index.php/s/NA8hSsFqlZaENRI

Andreas is a researcher at the Design Research Lab / Berlin University of the Arts, where he explores the relationship of design, technology and the political. Prior, he studied at KISD/Cologne and Parsons/NYC and worked as a graphic, interaction and service designer. He has been teaching design methods and theory in Berlin, Cologne, Athens and Jerusalem. His work has been published and exhibited in Europe, the US, Israel and China.

Title of Talk and/or Demo: SQUEEZESHOT
Name : Marcus Parsons
Location : I am based in Newton, MA.
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @squeezeshot1
GitHub : mlp3
Url(s) : squeezeshot.org

Type of proposal: [a talk, with some graphics, and/or a demo -- whatever you think would most interest your attendees]

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / demo

[Brief presentation/discussion of a thought experiment that may inevitably, to some extent, come true. It invites attendees to imagine a surveillance device (a mosquito-size drone) in the hands of everyone everywhere, networked in an online mesh whereby anyone anywhere can tune in to what anyone else is observing.

It is an experiment that engages a number of your suggested possible topics: mesh networks, local networks for community, networks for political activism, experimental social networks, control and ownership of networks, ethical hacking, and more. To the extent it comes true, it will turn our lives inside out, including our sense of self and otherness; our relationships, livelihoods, communities, and institutions; etc. Privacy, secrecy, and intimacy as we have known them will be gone. Meanwhile. for now, questions: Will that happen in some way? Should it?

The first images at http://squeezeshot.org/prelude-scroll-1 represent this graphically.
Or see them at

and at
]

Length of talk / panel / workshop

[30 minutes, including 15 minutes for questions and discussion]

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

[N/A]

Demo installation requirements

[I would bring a Mac and large monitor.]

Speaker Bio

[URL to bio picture: http://squeezeshot.org/marcus-parsons/
or, via github at [141122v2-1-opt (https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/13612311/9027340/bef3aa5e-391f-11e5-92b4-1b3468f57c53.jpg)]

[Bio: http://squeezeshot.org/marcus-parsons/marcus-parsons-bio/
or, in brief: I am an author, artist, and web designer who has developed a web and ebook project, at www.squeezeshot.org and elsewhere, based on the premise described above (## Description of your talk / panel / workshop / demo).

Résumé/CV: http://squeezeshot.org/marcus-parsons/resumecv/]

Ownership Incentives and Network Evolution

Name : Jesse Tweedle
Location : Ottawa, Canada
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : N/A
GitHub : tweed1e
Url(s) : http://tweed1e.github.io

Type of proposal

Talk

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / demo

How does a network evolve? A network based on speed has a tendency to become centralized---think of the Internet or the WWW, or the production network of the US, or even airline routes---the optimal ownership structure results in a centralized network. Economics can help us understand the use and ownership incentives that shape the evolution and formation of networks.

I will present real world examples of the interaction between network ownership and performance---think of Facebook's investments in Internet.org, or why and how Turkey frequently blocks Twitter. For example, if performance in a network is defined by speed, the network infrastructure tends to come from a small number of sources and can be easily controlled by them or co-opted by government agencies. If those governments are less than democratic, citizens may not have any control over sources of communication. However, if networks require reliability, networks should be decentralized, which reduces incentives for infrastructure investment. Some of the solutions to these problems are technological, some political, but a serious study of the incentives surrounding network infrastructure and ownership is crucial to understanding the potential of networks.

These real world examples tie directly to network research, drawing from statistical random graphs (Albert and Barabasi (2002)), vulnerability of communication networks (Albert, Jeong and Barabasi (2000)), and financial contagion in economics (Acemoglu et al. (2015), Elliot et al. (2014)). These theories provide useful measures for measuring network structures (Bonacich centrality, concentration centrality, degree sequences, integration and diversification, and more), and how the properties of network integration and diversification interact with performance.

The takeaway from this talk is that economic perspectives are useful for studying networks. You can study the incentives of network use and formation to explain and predict network evolution.

Length of talk / panel / workshop

20 minutes + time for questions and discussion.

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

N/A

Demo installation requirements

N/A

Speaker Bio

Not Pictured

I am an PhD student in economics at the University of Calgary and a research affiliate in CDER at Statistics Canada. I work on social and financial and production networks.

Bibliotecha Workshop

• Name : Andre Castro, Lucia Dossin
• Location : Rotterdam, NL
• Email : andre@andrecastro, [email protected]
• Twitter : @andrecastro0o
• GitHub : andrecastro0o, ludossin
• GitLab : [Castro0o]https://gitlab.com/u/Castro0o), ludossin
• Url(s) : bibliotecha.info pinknoi.so, luciadossin.net

Type of proposal

Workshop

Description of your workshop

Bibliotecha is a local offline network for distribution of digital texts, which allows small communities to build and share their electronic text collections.
Bibliotecha relies on a small computer (a RaspberryPi) running open-source software to serve the ebooks over a local WIFI hotspot.
Using the browser to connect to it, one is given the option to retrieve or donate texts.

Bibliotecha's workshop is centered on implementing from the ground up a series of Bibliotecha nodes.
The workshop will introduce Bibliotecha's essential architecture, the open-source software it relies upon, such as Calibre, Lighttpd and hostapd, as well as Unix/Linux fundamental concepts such as the shell interface, time-sharing, SSH protocol, Linux software repositories, captive portals, etc.
At the end of the workshop each (group of) participant(s) will take home a Bibliotecha node, ready to distribute electronic books.

Participants with all levels of knowledge are welcomed. You just need to have a laptop and be at ease with it ;]

Images from previous Bibliotecha workshop at AMRO 2015, Linz (AT) http://bibliotecha.info/imgs/amro/

Length of talk / panel / workshop

6 hours.

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

Technical requirements

• Internet connection
• A network switch (or several), connected to the Internet (with 2 ports for each participant/group)
• Ethernet cables (one for each participant/group)
• Power sockets (one for each participant/group)
• One video projector or large-LCD with HDMI input
• power bars (a few)

Maximum number of attendees

• 10 individual participants or groups of participants

List of materials needed for attendees

• Raspberry Pi (model 1) or Raspberry Pi 2 (model 2)
• SD-card (for Pi model 1) or Micro-SD card (for Pi model 2), class: 10, minimum size: 6GB.
• Power-supply for Raspberry Pi
• Ethernet cable
• USB-wifi adapter with generic 80211 driver (list in https://wikidevi.com/wiki/List_of_802.11ac_Hardware#Wireless_adapters )
• Laptop with Ethernet port (Linux or Mac; Windows will be tricky to help you with SSHing and interaction with Unix-like Pi operating system, but if you are comfortable doing it on your own all should be fine).

Demo installation requirements

N/A

Speakers Bio

Andre Castro

My name is Andre Castro. I am a media designer, with a background in sound art and experimental music, and a current practice focused on hybrid publishing, underground digital libraries ( Bibliotecha ) and the intersection between technology and design processes. I am a user and advocate of Free/Open Source software.

I work as a tutor at the Master of Media Design and Communication at the Piet Zwart Institute and at Willem de
Kooning's Publication Station. In 2013 I completed the Master's program of Media Design and Communication at the Piet Zwart Institute, and graduated in 2007 from the Sonic Arts BA program at Middlesex University.

Lucia Dossin

Lucia Dossin (BR/NL) has a background in architecture and design and graduated in 2015 at Piet Zwart Institute, Master Media Design & Communication. She works at the intersection of art and design, currently focusing on the interactions between humans and computers and their implications in subjectivity, language and politics.

* Name : Martin Reiche
* Location : Berlin, Germany
* Email : [email protected]
* Twitter : @artsci_berlin
* GitHub : studiomrb
* Url(s) : martinreiche.com

Type of proposal

Talk

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / artwork

Talk about the participative project KILOHERTZ, which uses DIY antennas, open source software and over-the-counter hardware to create a world-wide network of stations to search for military communications in high frequency bands. The project wants to show how governmental authority is exercised upon an invisible territory which overlays the physical world. From the project description: Consisting of an array of land art sculptures holding simple DIY copper wire-antennas, Kilohertz is an ongoing research project about the geopolitics of radio communication. Set in rural areas in Brazil and Estonia (so far), the Kilohertz ground stations are constantly surveilling radio frequency ranges reseved for military of the respective countries as well as of other big international powers, such as the NATO and the European Union. These ground stations, set-up in lowly populated areas and guarded with barbed wire fences, are, like their institutional counterparts, exclusion zones.
In this talk I am going to give an overview of the project and invite people to participate by creating their own antenna structures and adding their raw data to the online archive.
http://www.martinreiche.com/project/kilohertz/

Length of talk / panel / workshop

30 min + questions

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

N/A

Artwork installation requirements

N/A

Speaker Bio

http://dump.artofdata.de/1633small.png

Formally educated as a computer scientist at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, I became a student of media art of Michael Bielicky at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. Today I am a self-employed media artist and independent researcher living and working in Berlin with interest in space, perception, digitization phenomena, digital anthropology, power relations and minimalistic aesthetics. My work addresses issues such as international power networks, religion, changes in the human condition through technology, mass surveillance and electronic and physical warfare.
I have created interactive installations, sculptures, video works and experimental computer games for festivals, museums and galleries worldwide, including the Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, ZKM Museum of Media Art, ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens Digital Art Festival, INCUBARTE Art Festival Valencia, ETDM Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design Tallinn and A MAZE. Festival Berlin.
I give talks and workshops on minimalistic human-computer interaction and on how to exfiltrate data out of surveilled networks. My latest theoretical book, "Real Virtuality" is an edited anthology on theory and applications of virtual spaces.

i'm a submission

Over the top networks, a history of building new systems on the wreckage of the old

Name : Edward Vielmetti
Location : Ann Arbor, MI
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @vielmetti
GitHub : vielmetti
Url(s) : vielmetti.github.io

Type of proposal

This is a talk of 15-30 minutes in duration.

Description of your talk

New networks are often feed off of old ones, in ways that characteristically draw energy from aspects of those networks that are easy to take over and hard to defend. In this talk, I'll look at the waves of creative destruction that are unleashed when network developers find existing infrastructure that can be exploited for new ends, and the ways that commoditized networks fight back to avoid being turned into dumb pipes.

The talk will look at the history and the future of these overlay or over-the-top networks, going back three decades for stories of networks like Usenet, electronic mail, and payments networks and how they started out parasitizing existing older networks only be overtopped by other interests as file sharing, security, and identity layers of newer networks. I'll look at rules for developers of radical advances in networks and guidelines to avoid the pitfalls of unexpected dependencies and hidden traps.

Length of talk / panel / workshop

Talk is 30-40 minutes plus questions.

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

This is not a workshop presentation.

Demo installation requirements

There is no demo.

Speaker Bio

[https://avatars3.githubusercontent.com/u/35047?v=3&s=256]

Edward Vielmetti has been working on the Internet since 1985 from Ann Arbor, Michigan. His background includes work on the early commercialization and privatization of the Internet. Previous conference presentations include "WYSSA means all my love, darling: A social history of the Internet from the carrier pigeon to Antarctic morse code" (UPA 2006) and "Perils and Pitfalls of Practical Cybercommerce" at (ARABANK 1996, Dubai, United Arab Emirates).

Title of Talk / Panel / Workshop / Demo

How Teachers Leverage Connected Technologies for Collective Agency and Grassroots School Reform

Name : Kira Baker-Doyle
Location : Philadelphia, PA
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @KJBD
GitHub : kbakerdoyle
Url(s) : http://kbakerdoyle.wordpress.com

Type of proposal

Talk

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / demo

Historically, teachers have worked in isolation as dis-empowered technicians implementing pre-scripted curricula. This has positioned the teaching profession as a low-status career and resulted in high levels of teacher turnover, career dissatisfaction, and ultimately, poorer teaching quality. However, there is a new wave of teacher leadership and empowerment emerging from a movement of civically-engaged teachers that use connected technologies to develop professional networks and organize with others for collective agency and educational change (termed here as "transformative teachers"). In this talk, I will describe this movement; the philosophical roots, digital-participatory practices, and impacts of the transformative teachers work on schools and education.

I will use specific case studies of transformative teachers to describe how they use connected technologies and public forums to engage in Making, Hacking, and Connecting. Through these practices, transformative teachers go public with their practice and connect with others in order to be active agents for change in their school, ultimately reshaping how we value the expertise and knowledge of teachers and bringing new, innovative resources and opportunities to their students.

Length of talk / panel / workshop

Talk - 30 minutes

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

N/A

Demo installation requirements

N/A

Speaker Bio

Dr. Baker-Doyle is an Assistant Professor of Education at Arcadia University School of Education. She is the author of The Networked Teacher: How New Teachers Use Social Networks for Professional Support (Teachers College Press, 2011). Her research interests include: Teachers social networks, urban education, community engagement, and professional development.

## Social Clinic

Name : Chang Liu
Location : Brooklyn, NY
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : N/A
GitHub : CICILIU
Url(s) : Portfolio Website

Type of proposal

[Artwork]

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / artwork

[Social Clinic is a research-based project, in collaboration with Oyran Inbar, Ava Huang.

We live in a world that is full of different types of communications. The need for social skills increases as conversation and technology rapidly evolves around us and influences our behavior.
Social Clinic facilitates as a conceptual institution that discovers people's potential social symptoms by face recognition and online survey, then provide "patients" a solution/treatment which are mostly a conversation prompts, an interaction metaphor as "Medicine" for social issues. ]

Length of talk / panel / workshop

[N/A ]

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

[N/A]

Artwork installation requirements

[We need a table and 2-3 chairs to set up our "Social Clinic", which is basically a performative installation. We need power, internet, and probably a projector. ]

Speaker Bio

[https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzMf7Fu0hnl0MVBVR2NxSXNJTzA
Chang Liu CV.pdf
]

[Liu Chang is a visual artist based in New York. Chang’s practice ranges from audiovisual installation to algorithmic art and interactive installation. She currently focuses on computational art and expands her interests into different mediums.

Chang is a co-founder of Hibanana Studio, and a research fellow in NYU-ITP.]

Title of Talk: G4G: GSM for Good

Name : Benedetta Piantella
Location : NYC, NY
Email : benedetoula at gmail dot com
Twitter : @benedetoula
GitHub : benedetoula
Url(s) : https://itp.nyu.edu/classes/towers-spring2014/

Type of proposal

Talk

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / demo

Open source cellular networks are happening - this talk will introduce a brief
overview of what they are, how they work compared to a regular GSM cellular network and open source resources available to jump start one. I will also mention how I got to using them and the class I developed at ITP called Towers of Power. Will also present some of the projects that have resulted from the class and some of the latest things I am working on.

Length of talk / panel / workshop

Talk, 45 mins max with 15mins Q&A

Speaker Bio

Benedetta Piantella is a designer turned humanitarian technologist. She has taught Lego robotics and worked for Arduino in Italy, and Smart Design in NYC, producing interactive prototypes for high-end clients. She has founded engineering R&D companies focused on producing sustainable solutions to humanitarian, social, environmental challenges worldwide. She has built partnerships with organizations such as the UN, UNICEF, The Millennium Villages Project, Universities such as NYU, Columbia and Princeton and multiple NGOs and has designed, prototyped and deployed projects in countries such as Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. She recently covered the position of Technology Architect for the Earth Institute and the Sustainable Engineering Lab at Columbia University, she is an Open Source advocate and is currently a full-time faculty member at NYU-ITP where she teaches Physical Computing and Engineering for Development.

Title: Networks of Narrative - New Forms of Qualitative Data

    Name : Andrew Freiband
    Location : Brooklyn, NY
    Email : [email protected]/[email protected]
    Url(s) : http://scalar.usc.edu/works/art-and-narrative-research-in-humanitarianism-development-and-the-study-of-complex-systems/narrative-research, http://www.risd.edu/academics/fav/faculty/Andrew-Freiband/

Type of proposal

Talk w/ Q&A

Description of your talk

A film can be thought of as a two-dimensional network of audiovisual media across time - there is only one set of connections, the connections prescribed by the editor. The cut is the link, and the qualifying parameter for that cut varies - it could be theme, it could be chronology, it could be a match cut - but in contemporary industrial filmmaking the single link we, the viewer, are permitted to follow is the one that tells the 'best story'. What makes it the 'best' is almost exclusively a market consideration.
If we used contemporary technologies to redefine this linear paradigm of film editing, and expand the network possibilities of a film edit to include dozens or hundreds of dimensions, then we may transform the usefulness of filmmaking and filmmakers, from campfire storytellers and cultural-commodity producers into a new kind of knowledge-producer.
There are countless types of data that these links can be motivated by - theme, geography, character identity, and more. Each of these forms of media metadata could be considered a 'dimension' in a network space, and a film could be watched along a pathway described by any of these data sets. The form of data I am most interested in in my research, however, is Narrative - a qualitative and probabilistic form of data that describes 'perceived causality,' a language in which filmmakers are uniquely literate, but have severely limited tools for the mapping and visualization of.
In my proposed presentation I will discuss the concept of narrative literacy, what makes the story of a film 'work,' and consider this in network terms; I'll then lay out the concept for a new kind of algorithmic, probabilistic video 'networking' toolset and how it could lead to the creation of new knowledge into complex problematic systems.

Length of talk

20 minutes

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

n/a

Artwork installation requirements

n/a

Speaker Bio

https://flic.kr/p/LfPm4n

Andrew Freiband teaches in the Dept of Film, Animation, and Video at RISD. He is a filmmaker, producer, writer, artist, and educator with extensive experience in multiple disciplines including feature films and documentary, exhibition and experience design, and fine art media. He co-produced and was director of photography on "I Learn America", a feature documentary set in a New York City high school for new immigrants in 2013, and has been screened at dozens of festivals around the world, as well as being selected by the US State Department for its American Film Showcase, and by the New York City Dept of Education, which developed a viewing guide and now distributes the film to schools across New York City. His research interests, which are supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development, (USAID) involve developing models for engaging artists in international social, humanitarian, and crisis-response scenarios as something more than just communicators - viewing art as a form of knowledge-making and a rigorous, viable means of conducting research.

I Think Therefore ICANN: An RPG about TLDs

Name : Ingrid Burrington & Surya Mattu
Location : Brooklyn, NY
Email : [email protected], [email protected]
Twitter : @lifewinning, @suryamattu
GitHub : @lifewinning, @samatt
Url(s) :

Type of proposal

Workshop

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / demo

Domain names are where the politics, poetics, and peculiarities of the web express themselves in often the most direct and clever ways. But even the most active domain name hoarder might not really understand how the Domain Name System works, why certain TLDs exist, and how they at times become an arena where real-world geopolitical conflicts play out online.

This is a workshop about understanding the technical structures behind the weird and deeply political world of domain names via a live-action roleplaying game. We'll begin with an overview of DNS, ICANN, the TLD creation process, engage in some roleplaying scenarios based on real-world incidents in ICANN history, and brainstorm alternative models to the current model for network naming conventions. Somewhere between Risk, D&D, Model UN, and TRON.

Length of talk / panel / workshop

1.5hrs

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

[For workshops, include technical requirements, the maximum number of attendees and a full list of materials needed for attendees.]

• Max 15 participants
• Projector for some slides would be useful
• Tables and chairs

Speaker Bio

https://avatars3.githubusercontent.com/u/1969578?v=3&s=256
https://www.dropbox.com/s/biexqdrf3d6kkpb/oh_for_sure_man.jpg?dl=0

Surya and Ingrid promise they'll write a bio later.

Name : Sarah Groff Hennigh-Palermo
Location : Brooklyn, NY
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @superSGP
GitHub : sarahgp
Url(s) : Personal Site, Thesis Blog

Type of proposal

Talk

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / artwork

Computing culture is sick right down to the core: infected with a concept of information that naturalizes object-based surveillance and self-surveillance for continued "improvement." The germs are there right at the root, starting with George Boole and ending with the thousands of be-sensored objects for sale today. By polluting the possible with new constructions of knowledge, new ways of relating to data, we may be able fight.

My largest attempt at polluting the possible is The Invested Object, my master's thesis project, which takes as its inspiration for an alternative approach to informational self-knowledge the narrator's journey in In Search of Lost Time. By sharing my research and attempt, I hope to inspire others to send out their own hopeful prototypes.

In my talk, I will cover an abbreviated version of the story of information (from Boole, through Claude Shannon and cybernetics, and into today's tech mainstream); the characteristics of an alternative approach; and then talk a little bit about the physical instantiation, a personal linked set of hardware and software dedicated to collecting, contextualizing and returning ruminations, with personal autonomy and privacy at the fore.

Length of talk / panel / workshop

20-minute talk

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

N/A

Artwork installation requirements

N/A

Speaker Bio

[https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/440966565492559872/SQHoYtvr_400x400.jpeg]

Sarah Groff Hennigh-Palermo likes to explore the way technology and information are currently constructed and to imagine ways it could be different. She has played with computers, art, and data at the School For Poetic Computation and the Office for Creative Research, and is currently a masters candidate at NYU.

Ghost Networks

Name : Ingrid Burrington
Location : Brooklyn, NY
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @lifewinning
GitHub : lifewinning
Url(s) : lifewinning.com

Type of proposal

Talk

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / demo

The zeal with which humans develop and implement new communications networks is matched only by their ability to forget the legacies and mistakes already made building past networks. Ironically, at least in the U.S., most of our communication networks build atop the remnants of those past networks. This talk will offer a series of ghost stories about the politics, personalities, and ideologies that continue to haunt our machines, and how our new networks might live with or at least keep the ghosts at bay.

Length of talk / panel / workshop

30 Minutes

Speaker Bio

https://www.dropbox.com/s/biexqdrf3d6kkpb/oh_for_sure_man.jpg?dl=0

Ingrid Burrington writes, makes maps, and tells jokes about places, politics, and the weird feelings people have about both. Her most recent work has focused primarily on infrastructure and magic.

Wind Farm: People-Powered Nearby Networks

Name : Nathan Freitas, aka Nathan of Guardian
Location : Brooklyn, NY / Brookline, MA
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @n8fr8
GitHub : https://github.com/guardianproject https://github.com/n8fr8
Url(s) : https://guardianproject.info https://n8fr8.github.io/me/ http://nathan.freitas.net

Type of proposal

Workshop

Description the workshop

Wind is a metaphor for the untapped communication potential that is all around us. In nature, wind can manifest as a slight breeze, or a powerful gale. It can gently spread the seeds of life, or a become a fearful gale that moves the sea. Wind can carry a message for miles, even around the world. Wind can be harnessed and turned into energy, and it is that energy which inspires possibilities. In our vision of a future of network communication, Wind is a way to describe the ability to connect and share digitally, that is not the Internet, and not the Web, but some place new, one that is right in the air around us.

The Wind Farm workshop is an opportunity to facilitate a basic vision and metaphor for many groups to all work within. It is a starting point, not a standard, an intervention to create a dialogue, shared terminology and a shared narrative of how, who, and what we expect people to do when they have a super-computer in their pocket, but no signal to communicate by.

In the workshop, we will work to find common ground between our various efforts in non-Internet, nearby, and "mesh" communication systems. We will hear from everyday people, activists, aid workers, and others who have direct experience being and working in places where all traditional communications are not available. We will have the chance to share with each other our coolest, cutting edge demos and/or our actually shipping, production ready products. Finally, we will expand our theoretical discussions from into hands-on, "live action" game situations, where we can see how different apps, tools, prototypes, and services fare when put in context of real situations.

This Wind Farm event builds on an "Internet Blackout Simulation Event" held in 2014 in New York at Eyebeam, and Wind Farm 0 held at Harvard in May 2015.
https://medium.com/@n8fr8/if-there-was-suddenly-no-internet-what-would-we-do-9bf9a00e07cc
http://eyebeam.org/events/eyebeam-square-an-internet-blackout-simulation-event8
http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/10/5794406/what-do-you-do-when-the-internet-turns-off4
https://talk.developersquare.net/t/wind-farm-0-people-powered-nearby-networks-event-harvard-may-15-16/48

Length of talk / panel / workshop

4 to 6 hours

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

• 30 max attendees
• Bring your own smartphone or tablet device
• No experience required

Speaker Bio

Nathan Freitas leads the Guardian Project, an open-source mobile security software project, and directs technology strategy and training at the Tibet Action Institute. He is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

Signal Strength and the Community Phone Booth

Name : Amelia Marzec
Location : Brooklyn, NY
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @ameliapractice
GitHub : ameliapractice
Url(s) : http://www.ameliamarzec.com

Type of proposal

Demo / Talk

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / demo

What happens when you need to share a vital message with a chosen few? The Signal Strength Project is an alternative network for cell phones to allow people to connect for a variety of reasons: loss of service due to political unrest or disaster relief, or the need to ensure privacy by communicating directly with peers instead of linking up to a centralized network. The project allows citizens to take mobile democracy into their own hands. It consists of hardware that hacks their existing mobile phone in order to circumvent cell phone providers and enable offline, peer to peer communication with other members of their urban community. It instantly connects users who are nearby, who are then able to message each other.

The project explores the role of technology in shaping resistance. It bypasses our current infrastructure to create a new, private network for a close-knit community. It enables citizens by acknowledging our very human need for connection right here at home.

The project can work alongside or independently of other services. The phone booths allow the system to exist in public space, for users who may not have access to the technology otherwise.

Length of talk / panel / workshop

The demo can be set up during the whole event. There can be a quick 15 minute talk to explain the work.

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

N/A

Demo installation requirements

Table space
Electrical outlet

Speaker Bio

Amelia Marzec has been a resident at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, a Fellow at the Tow Center at Columbia University, a Fellow at A.I.R. Gallery, and a CUNY-PSC Grantee. She was nominated for the World Technology Awards for Art, and has shown work at MIT and SIGGRAPH.

Title of Talk / Panel / Workshop / Artwork

Name : Christian Sievers
Location : Cologne, Germany
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @sweetsubstitute
GitHub : christiansievers
Url(s) : christiansievers.info

Type of proposal

Network performance / artwork

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / artwork

Populate your local network with characters from Scheherazade's 1001 Nights. Run this software and protagonists from the famous Oriental story cycle show up as network neighbors on your computer.

Just as Arabian and Persian names become more common here in Europe (with the recent influx of a million Syrian refugees into Germany alone), the performance transports into the most mundane, contemporary location – your network neighborhood – figures from a mythical, fabled "Orient". The origins of these stories have been lost in time, but from the beginning the locus of these stories was always located somewhere further east, the site of an imagined romantic otherness.

That allure has been lost. What used to be the Orient has shrunken down to be called Middle East, and any connotation of the exotic Other has vanished. It's a clearly delineated part of the world and a much discussed and dissected geographic location, associated with Neo-Colonial adventures and the rise of a religious and aggressive bigotry.

The performance is a rebuttal of the war-mongering talk of cyber this and cyber that, the scapegoating of foreigners and the weaponization of networks. It's a simple gesture, ready to download and run: invite these people with their foreign-sounding names into your home, or your workplace.

Video: https://vimeo.com/173365394

Installation in exhibition context

Within an exhibition context the bots should occupy the host institution's regular network and use it for their conversations. An interface to listen in on those conversations can but doesn't have to be provided for the audience.
Sometimes a bot might address an audience. Most of the time, though, the conversation among the bot protagonists takes place unnoticeably. Just as in the original 1001 Nights, narratives are nested within each other: Scheherazade tells the story of the fisher who tells the djinn the story of King Yunnan who tells another story. Any possible ending or conclusion is always deferred.

How it works

A shell script randomly sets one of the characters as the hostname of a computer that advertises itself on the local network. Every minute a new name is set.
http://scheherazade.network

Length of talk / panel / workshop

n/a

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

n/a

Artwork installation requirements

Host connected to local Ethernet and Wifi network, running VirtualBox software. The host OS and it's version is not important, but ideally it comes with 8GB+ memory. Someone to plug it in, turn it on and fire up TeamViewer, so I can set things up - I won't be able to appear personally, sadly. Happy to skype in to talk about this if you wish. The script is Open Source, full installation instructions on my github.

Speaker Bio

[http://christiansievers.info/images/portrait_christian_photosynth.jpg]

[Christian Sievers is a German artist and technologist based in Köln, Germany. He studied Fine Art and Performance in Braunschweig and at the Royal College of Art in London, and has worked as a systems administrator besides exhibiting nationally and internationally. He is thinking a lot about the artistic potential of autonomous agents and the public's fascination with bots these days. The material for art seems to be in the various possible relations between the work and the audience. Christian Sievers currently teaches Surveillant Architectures at the Academy of Media Art, Cologne.
www.christiansievers.info ]

Title of Talk / Panel / Workshop / Artwork

Name : Yin Aiwen
Location : Amsterdam, NL
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : [@aiwenyin](url to twitter account)
GitHub : [yinaiwen](url to GitHub account)
Url(s) : [yinaiwen.com](url to relevant sites)

Type of proposal

talk

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / artwork

Will the architecture of the internet create new nationalities that are purely based on domain and server? The speculation is perhaps not much of a leap from the current reality: In the post-Umbrella-Movement time, 'Hong Kong is not China' is becoming a popular ideology arise among the young Hong Kongese. Amongst the 'proofs' of Hong Kong being a different nation from China that they claim, network environment is a salient one. Because of the Great Firewall, the digital life of Hong Kongnese has a distinguished style from the mainlanders'. For generations whose online life become essential to their identity, a different network means a different culture, therefore a different nation. In this sense, the Great Firewall works just like a national border -- they are both the mediums that create and maintain nationality. From there, the speculation become fairly plausible: will the web become the new 'Print-Capitalism' (of B. Anderson) which produces nationalism based on the geopolitics of the Cloud?

Length of talk / panel / workshop

45 minutes with 15 minutes for questions.

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

[N/A]

Artwork installation requirements

[N/A]

Speaker Bio

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzX2waslAKWGYXVaLWplaTlZb00

Yin Aiwen is a Chinese designer&researcher based in Amsterdam. Though performances, installations and theories, her practices investigate the convergence of the political and the technological which superimposed on the personal. She Graduated from Design Department of Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam 2013 and holds a MDes degree. She is currently developing 'The Curious Casebook of Chinese Network', a design thinking blog dedicated to the Chinese network culture, with the support of Creative Industries Fund NL.

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Wait for us to get back to you, which we will do by September 7, 2016. We will respond to everyone who submits a proposal.

PROPOSAL for Radical Networks
Divination - A Romantic Mutiny in a Maelstrom of Data

Name : Nancy Mauro-Flude
Location : Singapore / Tasmania
Email : [email protected] | [email protected]
Twitter : @sister0
GitHub : https://github.com/sister0
Url(s) : sister0.tv | miss-hack.org | genderchangers.org

Type of proposal

Talk / Performance Lecture

Description of your talk

I would like to give a talk about divination a new networked performance project with kindred spirits who are wiling to engage in some constructive critique. The project is new so giving a talk will not only provide me an environment for feedback, but I will also like to test out the ‘performance lecture form’ that I think will strengthen the work for the technically uninitiated, or, average public whom may feel intimated about the technical and political implications of the issues, the work playfully brings to the fore. I suspect the form of 'performance lecture' may be a way to do this for in future showings. I will use some elements from the show i.e. holding a white disc [projection surface] that picks up the network traffic in the space to emphasise the content and the experimental approach to networks the project engenders.

Divination is a new networked performance. The maiden voyage – set sail for the duration of June 2016 -the Museum of New and old art –festival Dark Mofo. Divination - traditionally a method of visualising the unseen - highlights the ease of access to so-called ‘private data’ and offers an alternative view of the information we transmit on a daily basis. Audiences were chaperoned by human and non-human agents (that is, ‘chatbots’) called Pirate Girls, through an energetic collision of nautical mythology, computer culture and transgressive fiction.

The performance lecture will focus upon how the performance explores our relationship with mysterious or communal forces and how they relate to 21C mass electronic surveillance programs. The audience' [remote or local] are invited to think about the delphic relationship you may have with networks, signals, codes and other things you can not fully comprehend, but may opt in to. The modern Pyrate Queen, was not asking for gold to attend - but the audience’s data for the crew’s collective treasure chest - in order to steer the artwork. After opting in – audience experience network hauntings by Pirate girls who observe and act performatively to highlight how technical agents within networked systems have become increasingly inconspicuous.

Project site http://divination.cc

*Length of talk *
30 minutes with 15 minutes for questions.

requirements
table space, power, and network connectivity, video projector

It would be helpful if I could have access to a video projector – if my proposal is accepted please let me know if I should bring my own?

Speaker Bio
[http://swesor0.sister0.org/var/www/www.miss-hack.org/0nancy_bio.jpg]

Long BIO [wasn’t sure if you wanted small or big]

Nancy Mauro-Flude's explores how we articulate the resonances and dissonances between performing arts and computer science, usually within the context of the contemporary art. She has devised, curated and developed numerous experimental cross-disciplinary artworks, durational events, and pedagogical programmes that examine how networked systems, embodiment and emergent technologies manifest in contemporary culture at: Waag Society: institute for art, science and technology, Museum of New and Old Art (MONA), Transmediale, What the Hack, FILE, International Symposium on Electronic Art and so on.. She is an advocate of Free and Open Source Software and is a supporter of, and contributor to, initiatives that promote and reinforce freedom in the networked domain. Under various pseudonyms she actively works to fuse radical forms of open culture with educational and social structures, with particular focus upon relatively conservative and weakly networked regions. She is the international currency officer for Dyne - free software foundry and developer for the Genderchangers Academy; movements that actively change the ‘gender’ of technology. She was recently appointed as Assistant Professor in the Communications and New Media Department, National University Singapore.

Short BIO
Nancy Mauro-Flude's explores how we articulate the resonances and dissonances between performing arts and computer science, usually within the context of the contemporary art. Under various pseudonyms she actively works to fuse radical forms of open culture with educational and social structures, with particular focus upon relatively conservative and weakly networked regions. She is the international currency officer for Dyne - free software foundry and developer for the Genderchangers Academy; movements that actively change the ‘gender’ of technology. She was recently appointed as Assistant Professor in the Communications and New Media Department, National University Singapore.

Blog: http://networkcultures.org/performanceofcode/
Twitter account:
Home Page: sister0.tv

She once wrote the text ‘Linux for Theatre Makers’ and still sticks by that point of view advocated – it appears in FLOSS+Art and can be found at
INFO http://archive.neural.it/init/default/show/1749

Be your own NSA: Regain IO control.

Name : Yifu Guo
Location : New York, NY
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @datatranslator
GitHub :https://github.com/yifuguo
Url(s) : N/A

Type of proposal

Talk / Panel

Description the Talk / Panel

This is what the internet infrastructure looks like today, and for most of us, our interactions with the stack never falls below the Application layer.

I want to bring light to the questions like,
What is chrome doing when you are visiting a website?
What is skype doing on your computer when you make a call?

Show off some new equipment in network DIY, e.g. self contained battery powered openWRT routers.

The goal is to educate and show people how to be their own gate keepers of their network, by man-in-the-middle attacking themselves to see their own network traffic and grant control of what type of data you should and should not allow.

Length of talk / panel / workshop

15 minutes, I prefer the format to allocate lengthier sessions for Q/A rather than just me talking.

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

N/A

Demo

2 Laptops, one for people to use however they wish, another to display all the network traffic of first said laptop. I'll be providing the laptops, need local connection on site for internet.

Speaker Bio

I had the chance to work with OWS Tech Ops in Zuccotti park to set up the local internet infrastructure. spends most of my days now doing data analysis for financial institutions and network monitoring for p2p networks.

THE VIRTUAL WATCHERS

Name : Joana Moll & Cédric Parizot
Location : Barcelona, Spain.
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : [@joana_moll](https://twitter.com/joana_moll)
GitHub : [janavirgin](https://github.com/janavirgin)
Url(s) : [janavirgin.com](http://www.virtualwatchers.de/  ;  http://janavirgin.com/HANGAR/  ;   http://www.janavirgin.com/AZ/ARCHIVE/ ; http://www.janavirgin.com/CO2/CO2GLE_about.html)

Type of proposal

[artwork]

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / artwork

[The Virtual Watchers questions the dynamics of crowdsourcing the national security and border control through social media. The project focuses on the exchanges that occurred within a Facebook group that gathered American volunteers ready to monitor US-Mexico border through an online platform that displayed live screenings of CCTV cameras. The declared aim of this operation was to bring American citizens to participate in reducing border crime and block the entrance of illegal immigration to the US by means of crowdsourcing. This initiative, a public-private partnership, was originally launched in 2008 and consisted of a website and a network of 200 cameras and sensors located in strategic areas along the US Mexico border. Some of these cameras were also installed in the private properties of volunteering citizens. The online platform gave free access to the camera broadcasts 24/7 and allowed users to report anonymously if they noticed any suspicious activity on the border. The Virtual Watchers offers an interactive window that allows the public to access some of the original video feeds recorded by the RedServant’s surveillance cameras, and dive into the conversations, jokes, and questionings of the Facebook group that gathered some of the volunteering citizens that actively used the platform. By doing so, it highlights to what extent the emotional investment and exchanges of these people work as an essential mechanism in the construction and legitimization of a post-panoptic system.

Visit the project here: http://www.virtualwatchers.de/

]

Length of talk / panel / workshop

[N/A]

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

[N/A]

Artwork installation requirements

[Laptop (projector if possible) & Internet connection]

Speaker Bio

[http://www.janavirgin.com/pic_2.jpg]

[ Joana is an artist and researcher based in Barcelona. Her work critically explores the way post-capitalist narratives affect the alphabetization of machines, humans and ecosystems. Her main research topics include communication technologies and CO2 emissions, virtual civil surveillance on the Internet and language. She is a member of the Antiatlas des Frontières [http://www.antiatlas.net] and co-founder of The Institute for the Advancement of Popular Automatisms [http://www.ifapa.me].

Cédric Parizot is a researcher in anthropology at the Institute of Research and Studies of the Arab and Muslim Worlds. His research focus on mobility and bordering mechanisms in the Israeli-Palestinian spaces. In 2011 he launched the antiAtlas of Borders program that seeks to provide new perspectives on 21st century borders mutations. He sees the integration of artistic practices and digital technologies into its ethnographic research as a way to reappraise critically his own practices of modelization of knowledge.]

Network as a Decentralized Collaborator

Name : Sumanth
Location : Brooklyn, NY
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @reckoner165 (https://twitter.com/reckoner165)
GitHub : reckoner165 (https://github.com/reckoner165)
Url(s) : acrosspolyethylene.com

Type of proposal

Talk

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / artwork

The talk explores the two-way influence of network architectures and musical collaboration over each other, highlighting the role of a computer network itself as an invisible collaborator that offers its unique set of constraints provoking very different creative reactions. The talk also covers notions of remixing in hip-hop and electronic music and how the constant meta-compilation that is pervasive in online social media works in its favor.

Length of talk / panel / workshop

20 minute talk

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

N/A

Artwork installation requirements

N/A

Speaker Bio

Sumanth Srinivasan is an engineer exploring the gray area at the intersection of technology, art and culture. His works aim at interpreting art from the view point of technology and using electronics and information technology to solve(create) problems for contemporary artists.

Besides pursuing graduate studies at the School of Engineering of New York University, he composes and produces music independently under the moniker Reckoner. His work in digital media have been exhibited at Times Square and NYC Resistor Annual Interactive Show. He also engages in media criticism as well as commentary on technology for artists.

Wilderness Wireless

Name : Brett Ian Balogh
Location : Chicago, IL
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @brettbalogh
GitHub : giantmolecules
Url(s) :
brettbalogh.com
maps.generalradio.org
Wolf (2015)

Type of proposal

Workshop

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / demo

One might think radio is more of a feature of the developed world rather than the woods, but radio, as a phenomenon, is a natural resource not unlike the air, land and water of the great outdoors.
The developed world has indeed commandeered radio for use in communications networks from simple transmitter - receiver relationships via code or voice to our modern wifi network infrastructure. This workshop leads participants through the process of constructing and programming their own wireless network node suitably-powered for off the grid operation. With this system, a participant can create an off-the-grid, wireless, wifi hotspot that will serve participant-determined content via an http interface. No registrar or service providers, your network stands alone from the www. The inspiration for this workshop comes from Brett's 2015 work, Wolf, where a solar-charged, battery-powered wireless web server becomes the den of a wilderness spirit-animal.

This workshop is a new counterpart to the do-it-yourself FM transmitter workshops I have been giving in my Do-It-Yourself Broadcast class at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago since 2007, as well as at events such as the Sound Megapolis Festivals and other community venues. The class has traditionally been Fm-radio centric, dovetailing with the international radio, or transmission arts community. Tetsuo Kogawa's notion of polymorphous space is a central theme and the transmitter he designed an essential piece of hardware. My argument for these ideas and techniques was that with little investment in time, energy and resources, infrastructure-free networks could be created. The internet has always had the overhead of way too much infrastructure, from satellites all the way down to copper and fiber. With the proliferation of open source router firmwares to SoC's and low power microcontrollers with wifi stacks, creating your own wifi network is almost as easy to implement as the FM transmitter. The focus of the workshop is not to create a subnet/subnode, but to be an internet beacon, a point of interest, a source of information, a den of a spirit.

Length of talk / panel / workshop

There are two options for the workshop based on cost. The first option is a two hour workshop where participants end up with a battery-powered, portable web-server. The second option is an additional hour (three total) where participants add a solar panel and charger for an additional charge.

Duration: OPT1: 2h | OPT1+2: 3h

Capacity: 10 per session

Is it possible to run multiple sessions with sufficient interest?

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

_All participants must provide their own laptops. OSX and WIN7+ supported, linux, too!_

_The artist will provide 10 sets of soldering hand tools for use during the workshop, but feel free to bring your own tools_

from Adafruit

Kit OPT1 (does not include solar panel and solar charger, Duration: 2h)

• Feather HUZZAH with ESP8266 WiFi
• Lithium Ion Battery - 3.7v 2000mAh
• Half-size breadboard
• USB cable - A/MicroB - 3ft
• Mason Jar

Cost for OPT1: _$40.00_

Kit OPT2 (in addition to Kit OPT1, Duration 3h)

• 3.5 / 1.3mm To 5.5 / 2.1mm DC Jack Adapter Cable
• USB / DC / Solar Lithium Ion/Polymer charger - v2
• Medium 6V 2W Solar panel - 2.0 Watt

Additional Cost to Kit OPT1: $50.00

In order to have a fully solar powered solution, you must buy OPT1 AND OPT2. Total for OPT1 and OPT2: _$90.00_

Demo installation requirements

Although not necessary, I'd like to display Wolf somewhere so that workshop participants can see the finished project in action.

Speaker Bio

Pic

Brett Ian Balogh is a Chicago-based artist working at the intersection of objects, sounds and spaces. He is currently an instructor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Illinois Institute of Technology, teaching courses in new media, architecture, digital fabrication, radio and sound. Brett is a free103point9 transmission artist and has exhibited and performed at P.S.1 (NY), Diapason (NY), Devotion Gallery (NY); The MCA (Chicago) and The Hyde Park Arts Center (Chicago) among others.

Before receiving his masters in studio from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007, Brett studied engineering and biology and received a BA in biology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999. Much of Brett’s knowledge of electronics, programming, embedded computing and robotics stems from his do-it-yourself practice and hacking ethos. Brett’s educational and artistic mission is to bring the DIY movement not only to the classroom but also to the community at large. Brett has given numerous DIY radio transmitter building workshops at venues such as Dorkbot Chicago, The Southside Hub of Production, Propeller Grant space at Mana Contemporary and the Megapolis festival in Baltimore (2010) and San Francisco (2015). Through his teaching and community activities, Brett hopes to empower individuals with the curiosity and confidence to transform themselves and their environments through technology.

Name : Bruno Vianna
Location : Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @brunovianna
GitHub : github.com/brunovianna
Url(s) : http://nuvem.tk, http://brunovianna.net

Type of proposal

Workshop

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / artwork

Libremesh is a openwrt-based firmware for routers and other devices, which has the purpose of creating mesh networks. It has been used in several communities around the globe, and it is known for its reliability and easy of use. In this workshop we will have a hands-on experience of flashing the routers and building a small mesh network with local applications running on a raspberry pi.

Length of talk / panel / workshop

1:30 hour workshop

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

Projector, table, chairs, electrical outlets. If possible, 4 TP-LINK WDR3500 routers and Raspiberry PI. Otherwise we can ask for the attendees to bring their own.

Speaker Bio

http://brunovianna.net/fotobike.jpg

Bruno Vianna was born in Rio de Janeiro 43 years ago. He used to make visual narratives using classical and innovative supports. He lived in New York and Barcelona, and still tries to spend a few months traveling every year. He now runs Nuvem, a rural art laboratory and residency space, located 200km from Rio, and works as a teacher at Oi Kabum! School.

Locative new media: connecting the physical with the digital

Name     : Sébastien Pierre
Location : Montréal, Canada
Email    : [email protected]
Twitter  : @ssebastien
GitHub   : github.com/sebastien
Url(s)   : invisibleislands.org, sebastienpierre.ca, https://medium.com/re-form/invisible-islands-bcef4cf474f9

Type of proposal

Talk

Description of your talk

Invisible Islands is a locative new media project that poses a simple question: "what happens when information is anchored in the physical space?" Using offline networks powered by Raspberry PIs and open-source software, the Islands create a digital overlay that is only accessible at a specific location. Because they are disconnected from the Internet, the Islands create a surveillance-free data space for the community to exchange and interact on a social and creative level.

Invisible Islands was developed and deployed for the first time in 2014 in Aarhus, Denmark. The project was hosted by the Centre for Advanced Visualization and Interaction at Aarhus University and spread throughout the city in various urban sites, allowing for an initial exploration of offline networks deployment in urban space.

In the Montréal iteration of Invisible Islands in 2015, which was supported by the National Film Board, I worked with Canadian writer Daniel Canty to create a site-specific narrative where fragments of a story are woven throughout several points of the city's Quartier des Spectacles, Montreal's cultural center and former red-light district.

Many questions and challenges pop up when deploying digital devices in the urban space, from the legal grey-area to citizen engagement and how projects of this nature fit into contemporary discourse about locative art, site-specificity, activism, spatial annotation, place-based storytelling and mobile gameplay. In this talk, I'll share thoughts about my journey through offline networks, both from a technological, creative and societal standpoint.

Length of talk

30min presentation with 15min for questions & discussion.

Demo installation requirements

I will probably bring a couple of devices for people to try/play with. They just require electricity (ie. 110V/60Hz outlet), or a Raspberry Pi-friendly micro-USB adapter (we all know how RPis are sensitive to the power source).

Speaker Bio

Originally from France, I trained in both software engineering and design before moving to Canada 9 years ago. My interests span activism, politics, museography, information design, open data and technology. I have been publishing and contributing to open-source since 1999, and I believe above all else in in participation, free sharing of information, and the power of communities. I co-founded the local open data movement in Montréal and information design studio, FFunction, which is now in its seventh year. More recently, I started exploring how offline networks can change our understanding of information sharing, and how it can be applied to locative art and new media. I live and work in Montréal.

Crowsourced (or not) Public Transportation GPS Tracking

Name : Epic Jefferson
Location : Pittsburgh, PA
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @epicjefferson
GitHub : epicjefferson
Url(s) : epicjefferson.com

Type of proposal

Demo

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / demo

I grew up in Puerto Rico, which has currently been in the public eye in America due to it's social/economic shenanigans. Many of it’s public services (namely the Public Transportation System) are crippled, unable to provide adequate service to the population. Some routes have only 1 bus pass every hour or hour and a half, only to have the bus pass you by because it’s filled to the brim.

Even though these buses have actually had a GPS system installed since around 2006, it has only been used by a private company to “prevent theft”.

I’m proposing a system where riders provide the GPS data themselves, for each other. Using a simple phone application (currently Android only), riders can transmit their own GPS data, making the bus location known to other potential riders in real-time, through the corresponding site that loads the data on a map.

Ideally, the Public Transportation System itself could implement this system, as it very cheap to implement and keep running.

Length of talk / panel / workshop

Not Applicable

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

Not Applicable

Demo installation requirements

table space, power, and network connectivity.

Speaker Bio

I've been working with technology for about 6 years now. I'm currently pursuing a Masters in Tangible Interaction Design from Carnegie Mellon University. My research focuses on sound design and interfaces for the performance of sound.

Since 2013, I've co-directed the Lab for Erroneous Design, Puerto Rico's first hackerspace.

Title of Talk / Panel / Workshop / Demo

How Was Your Day, an Ambient Network

Names : Bruno Kruse, Carrie Kengle
Location : Shanghai, CN, Brooklyn, NY
Email : [email protected], [email protected]
Twitter : @brunokruse, @kandizzy
GitHub : brunokruse, kandizzy
Url(s) : howwasyourday.io

Type of proposal

It's a workshop!

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / demo

'How Was Your Day' is an experimental social network that enables you to communicate via color and light.

Light patterns and color as forms communication has been explored throughout history. Examples include signal lamps, morse code, smoke signals and smartphone notifications. Can we develop our own ambient language using only patterns, light and color?

Together in this workshop we are looking to push the these concepts further with our favorite modern-day web technologies. We will be designing a peer-to-peer communication network using software and hardware tools including Raspberry Pi, MeteorJS, MQTT, LED Strips and breakout boards.

In the first half of the workshop we will learn about basic setup, networking and communication with Raspberry Pi. In the second half we'll build out the hardware component of the project to display our network data via light. Our breakout board kit is designed to be a simple way to connect LED strips to the RaspberryPi GPIO.

Tags:
Networked Hardware,
Non-verbal communication,
Telepresence,
Private Networks

Length of talk / panel / workshop

4-5 hour workshop

1. Setting up the RPi
2. Installing our social network templates. NodeJS + MQTT
3. Break
4. Hardware jam and building

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

Basic programming knowledge recommended. (JavaScript)
Max number of attendees: 6

• Raspberry Pi
• High speed 8Gb or 16Gb SD Card
• Wifi dongle
• Laptop
• Custom Kits will be provided (LED Strip and breakout board)

Speaker Bios

	Bruno Kruse is an interaction designer and developer. His recent artwork focuses on developing tools to create interactive installations. He utilizes technology to create meaningful experiences and is motivated by an ongoing curiosity of designing with code.
Carrie Kengle is a New York based developer and designer. She is an active open-source contributor and can be found using the Raspberry Pi to create installations, web and data driven LED works

Title of Talk / Panel / Workshop / Demo

Name : Ansh Patel
Location : Brooklyn, NY
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @lightnarcissus
GitHub : lightnarcissus
Url(s) : Narcissist Reality

Type of proposal

Demo

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / demo

Wireless network and its architecture, to most people, is a pervasive but densely opaque and abstract entity that would be impossible to comprehend on their own.
Play has always been human culture's aspect of simplifying and abstracting aspects about our real world into a temporary engaged experience out of which players emerge with a new-found look at the world around them.

Using similar ideas about play and its potential to bring an awareness about our immediate environment, "Playful Mesh" is a site-specific game that will be installed at MAGNET, the location of the event, that visualizes the free-forming connections of the mesh nodes being formed by the spatial movement of its players.

The game played by upto four players will be controlled directly by the number of active nodes in the mesh, their spatial location allowing them to form bonds with their nearest neighbor to allow them a greater power of expressiveness on the game's abstract painting that's projected onto the screen. As a result of which, players can start forming a direct connection on how their spatial relationship is being reflected in the mesh network, allowing them to understand basic aspects of connectivity albeit in a fun and playful way.

Length of talk / panel / workshop

Each game of "Playful Mesh" lasts on average less than 2 minutes.

Demo installation requirements

*Projector
*table
*wall/screen to project on

Speaker Bio

Ansh
Ansh Patel is an interdisciplinary artist whose works range from experimental games to interactive digital media. His work usually marries practice with the conceptual, exploring the processes linking an idea to its implementation. His body of work in games generally comprises of short-form games that serve as critical deconstructions of a conventional aspect of the medium and culture. His digital media projects focuses on embodiment, digital performance, surveillance and how technology mediates our interaction.

He is also a critic whose work has appeared in Paste, Unwinnable and Arcade Review. He occasionally writes academic papers on post-modernist meaning-making processes and post-colonial critiques of first-person shooter games.

The natural structure of the internet is a mesh- networks connected at many points and no central point of failure. Mesh is also a model for how organizations can be structured.

Centralized structures are fragile and lack resiliency, but they simplify payments for a service. If a service is free then there is no need for a centralized structure.

This talk will cover various successful decentralized networks, how to avoid the "tragedy of the commons", benevolent ************ vs. leaderless organizations, and circles of trust vs. hierarchy.

Title of Talk / Panel / Workshop / Demo

Democracy through Grassroot Local Networks

Name : Joe Chasinga
Location : Manhattan, NY
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @jochasinga
GitHub : jochasinga
Url(s) : Medium blog

Type of proposal

Talk (with little demo)

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / demo

I want to outline democracy in general and how people's voice and communication among groups can leverage people's information against draconian and ever-sniffing authorities. Then I want to give some examples, for instance, my home country, Thailand, which is under military ************ which is censoring and controlling public media as well as prosecuting artists, academicians, writers and students who voice against it and in a common workplace where employers have the right to sniff everything their employees do on the internet. The enemy of a true democratic community is a network of bureaucratic bodies, from the company one work for all the way to the head of state.

Then, I will talk about an idea of local networks and, like local radios in the heydays, can empower grassroots to form factions, exchange information and communicate with lower risk of getting detected or intercepted by the big brothers. The idea is to deploy a cheap, portable device (i.e. Raspberry Pi or a phone) as a home-grown local server serving a chat application in which a group of members can form an encrypted conversation around it with all the files saved to the device which an appointed leader can carry, backup, delete and destroy at will.

The talk will include a few slides and possibly a prototype of the idea using a Raspberry Pi.

Length of talk / panel / workshop

15-18 minutes.

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

[For workshops, include technical requirements, the maximum number of attendees and a full list of materials needed for attendees.]

Demo installation requirements

A relatively strong wifi connection will do.

Speaker Bio

I'm an interaction designer self-taught in computer programming. I have always been an artist until after college when I found peace in technology and communication. I came from Thailand, a country undergoing political changes and struggling to understand her own ground. My interests are computer network, internet of things, physical computing and writing. I'm also actively developing an open source library for arduino in Python for educational purpose.

Bibliotecha @ Radical Networks

• Name : Michaela Lakova, Lucia Dossin
• Location : Rotterdam, The Netherlands
• Email : [email protected], [email protected]
• Twitter : N/A
• GitHub : ludossin
• GilLab : ludossin
• Url(s) : bibliotecha.info, mlakova.org, luciadossin.net

Type of proposal

Demo / Installation

Description of your demo

Bibliotecha is a local offline digital network for the distribution of electronic publications within small communities.
Bibliotecha relies on a small computer (RaspberryPi) running open-source software to serve books over a local WIFI hotspot.
Using the browser to connect to it, one is given the option to retrieve or donate texts.

Bibliotecha started from the need of a group of postgraduate students to freely share books.
In this Demo, we will present the project, demonstrate how it works and show examples of contexts in which Bibliotecha has been and still is used.
Bibliotecha proposes an alternative model of distribution of digital texts that allows specific communities to form and share their own collections.
With this Demo and installation we aim to set up a discussion around further implementations and developments of Bibliotecha as a framework
by exploring possible social contexts and broader communities it can serve to.

A Bibliotecha node will be installed throughout the duration of Radical Networks.The initial content of the node will consist of digital publications relevant to this event,
donated by its organization and participants. We'll encourage visitors to contribute to the collection, by logging into the Bibliotecha wifi network during the event and donate or lend ebooks.

Images and videos of previous Bibliotecha installations/presentations can be found here:

http://bibliotecha.info/imgs/book/

http://bibliotecha.info/imgs/Tent/

https://vimeo.com/97508728

Length of talk / panel / workshop

Demo + presentation will take 15/20 min (plus 15 minutes for questions).
Bibliotecha installation during the whole duration of the event

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

N/A

Demo installation requirements

• A video projector
• A network connection
• A power socket
• Electronic books (pdf, epub, djvu and txt files) relevant to the Radical Networks theme

We will provide all the required hardware (RaspberryPi, SD card, wifi dongle, power supply) and a cut-out book which will serve as a showcase.
The space needed for displaying the book is around one square meter.

Speakers Bio

Michaela Lakova

Michaela Lakova (BG/NL) is a visual artist currently based in Rotterdam. She studied under the Media Design and Communication MA in Piet Zwart Institute.
Her field of research and practice involves catchy bits and bytes of errors, systems malfunction and the inevitable generation of data traces and its problematic resistance to deletion.
Her works have been exhibited in group shows as well as media festivals including Bureau Europa, Maastricht, Lydgallerit, PIKSEL festival, Bergen, 'Unlinked', TENT gallery, Rotterdam,
USB-Shuffle show, Institut für Alles Mögliche, Transmediale, Berlin; .gif Archive, eXAF foundation, The Fridge, Sofia, “Free book for every soul”, Impakt, Utrecht.

Lucia Dossin

Lucia Dossin (BR/NL) has a background in architecture and design and graduated in 2015 at Piet Zwart Institute, Master Media Design & Communication. She works at the intersection of art and design, currently focusing on the interactions between humans and computers and their implications in subjectivity, language and politics.

Blogging in the Dark[net]

Name : David Huerta, Stephanie Hyland and Caroline Sinders
Location : Brooklyn and Manhattan, NY
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : [@huertanix](https://www.twitter.com/huertanix) [@carolinesinders](https://www.twitter.com/carolinesinders) [@corcra](https://www.twitter.com/corcra)

Type of proposal

Talk (but with multiple people, also includes a demo as a bonus)

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / demo

Hosting your own blog is an excellent first step in declaring independence from Google/Twitter/etc but still leaves some dangers in the lack of anonymity inherent to IP addresses and DNS names. Using Tor onion services, you can say stuff on the internet without randos creeping on your personal info and join the Tor DARKNET. Stop by to learn how!

Length of talk / panel / workshop

45 minutes with 15 minutes for questions.

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

¯_(ツ)_/¯

Demo installation requirements

Demo will be shown during talk, no need for permanent install

Speaker Bio

Caroline Sinders is an interaction designer for IBM Watson, artist, researcher and video game designer. She was born in New Orleans and is currently based in Brooklyn. She received her masters from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program where she focused on HCI, prototyping, and interactive storytelling. She holds a bachelor of fine arts from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in Photography and Imaging, where she studied digital culture and large format portraiture. Caroline is a member of the Code Liberation Foundation’s board, as well as a teacher for the foundation. Her current personal work explores UX and UI to stymy harassment and 'designing consent' into system designs and communication design for social networking sites. Her work has been featured in the Contemporary Art Museum of Houston, Style.com, Bust Magazine, Animal NY, Narratively, The Verge, Washington Post, New York Magazine, and other places.

David Huerta is a co-organizer for of CryptoParty NYC, a non-organization of teach-in workshops which bring privacy-enhancing technology skills to New Yorkers. In 2009, he created Hayst.ac, a browser plugin which obfuscated Google search histories to make them harder to accurately data-mine. He also created an open-hardware "mixtape" in 2013 which contained an soundtrack that was encrypted, then mailed to the NSA without the key needed to decrypt it.

Stephanie Hyland is a PhD candidate at Cornell University where she is applying machine learning to biomedical data. Originally from Ireland, she studied theoretical physics at Trinity College Dublin and mathematics at Cambridge University. Her interest in information freedom and personal privacy led her to co-found Ireland's first student-run Pirate Party in 2010, which runs one of Ireland's only Tor exits. She current resides in Manhattan, where she is now involved with CryptoParty NYC.

Implementing and Securing ZigBee Mesh Networks

Name : T3db0t
Location : Queens, NY
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @t3db0t
GitHub : t3db0t
Url(s) : t3db0t.com

Type of proposal

I Talk About the Things

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / artwork

ZigBee is possibly the defacto mesh networking protocol: but how does it work, how can we use it, and how do we encrypt it? I discuss the implementation and security of a modern ZigBee mesh and the advantages and caveats thereof.

Length of talk / panel / workshop

30 mins / 15 mins Q&A

Workshop technical requirements and materials list

Projector and/or giant whiteboard

Artwork installation requirements

N/A

Speaker Bio

[https://avatars1.githubusercontent.com/u/203307?v=3&s=460]

T3db0t is an inventor / experience and product designer with a boatload of professional ZigBee experience. He is also a dad, teaches at NYU's ITP program, and is founder of @CookingWthSound and grooply.io.

Title of Talk / Panel / Workshop / Demo

Name : Ansh Patel
Location : Brooklyn, NY
Email : [email protected]
Twitter : @lightnarcissus
GitHub : @lightnarcissus
Url(s) : Narcissist Reality

Type of proposal

Demo

Description of your talk / panel / workshop / demo

Philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari envisioned the "rhizome" as an ideological and semiotic structure which ended up serving in many ways as an underlying inspiration for the Internet.

"The Pervasive Rhizome: Data Tracking Edition" is an interactive application which visualizes the complex interconnectivity of the Internet as well as the myriad ways data gets requested, tracked and siphoned while navigating it. Beginning with a participant choosing a URL as a "starting node", the application automates through different pages recursively scraping links and moving to the first, unique link briefly displaying the page before moving onto the next.

In parallel, on a separate screen, all of these links are being visualized in a large connected network building the wide, interconnected mesh of nodes and links. Each node/web page will have a small visualized graph on its side, showing the number of content requests on it. Over time and through multiple "instantiations" by new participants, this visualized mesh will start building the rhizome of the Internet but also a dense display of how underlying mechanisms of data tracking are pervasive and enormous beneath the innocuous veil of the browser.

Length of talk / panel / workshop

The demo's length varies from 1 minute - 4 minutes per instantiation based on how long it takes for the run to hit a scraping "dead end".

Demo installation requirements

• A table
• Two monitors (one to show the actual scraped pages being loaded and the other to show the real-time visualization of the links and data tracking while navigating through the rhizome)

Speaker Bio

Ansh

Ansh Patel is an interdisciplinary artist whose works range from experimental games to interactive digital media. His work usually marries practice with the conceptual, exploring the processes linking an idea to its implementation. His body of work in games generally comprises of short-form games that serve as critical deconstructions of a conventional aspect of the medium and culture. His digital media projects focuses on embodiment, digital performance, surveillance and how technology mediates our interaction.

He is also a critic whose work has appeared in Paste, Unwinnable and Arcade Review. He occasionally writes academic papers on post-modernist meaning-making processes and post-colonial critiques of first-person shooter games.