reSync Review

About

Following on from a short research fellowship at Post media Lab in Leuphana University, Luneburg, co-workers on deckspace.tv have formed reSync UG to move ahead with some of the ideas arising and apply some outcomes to this new business.

The next reSync activity takes place in Berlin during Transmediale early in 2015 where we will use workshops to continue investigating a range of experimental synchronisation techniques to explore the extra value of media exchange via open wireless networks.

Please see the ‘New Babylon reVisited‘ session ‘reStreet‘ report.

(UG a small private company with limited liability based in Germany).

reSync All

unitag_qrcode_resync1During Transmediale 2015, reSync will promote collaborative synchronisation services and introduce a growing P2P exchange network of free media resources, synchronised between those in London [own], Athens [awmn] and Berlin [freifunk], that sidestep the rising sense of network surveillance and preserve privacy whilst continuing to enjoy free media exchange in public and over free information infrastructures wherever they flourish.

resync-spaceunder01-300x225 We gathered in the lobby area of Haus der Kulturen der Welt on Friday 30th January to make sync code badges and configure your media files, messages and phone things to reSync @ Capture All.

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

resync-badgepress-300x291See the howto for more details.

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

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

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

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

Many thanks Rob Canning for the Imagemagic qrcode compositing!

reStreet

spaceunderworkshopReSync are pleased to be joining the Goethe Institut Athen for a cluster of 4 workshops around the topic of the city and autonomous networks this November, 6th – 9th called “New Babylon Revisited

Friday 7th and Saturday 8th November; The reStreet workshop @ Space Under will focus on AWMN and it’s leading role as infrastructure pioneer, techniques to help advance use of the network and promoting the access and synchronisation points we discover around the city – with maps, printed material and social mediation.

spaceunderrooftop01We will touch on aspects of open infrastructure and software philosophy as well as explore secure methods for file sharing and data exchange which promote the wireless network and acknowledge the the scope for services as well as introduce some of our own.

Sunday 9th November is the the final event during which we will walk/drift from place to place and re-discover our street-sync signalling and signage, play with the network and discuss the experience of New Babylon.

Lunatics

Welcome to the reSync workshop at the Lunatic annual arts and music festival in Lüneburg Germany 6th and 7th June 2014. from 12:00 till 20:00 each day.

Please register to make your custom reSync badges to promote your media shares over the Freifunk open wireless network and contribute to a festival mashup of image sound and video.lunaticbadgemock

  • Install BTsync to your Smart phone, Tablet or PC
  • Create a reSync folder for your favorite texts, images or movies
  • Scan your dedicated reSync code and add media to your reSync folder.
  • select automatic sync
  • make and wear your badges.

Visit us and find out more in the Spielwiese area on (artist fair on campus). see the map

howTo

btsync-150x150BTsync offers some of the best of both examples to resync local media and publicly hosted resources.

It’s free to install and operate on all the major computer operating systems. It incorporates the use of QRcodes and text keys to arrange access control between peers.

If you are attending Capture All @ Transmediale please follow the process outlined below.

  • pick up a numbered ‘reSync All‘ flyer sheet 0001-resync-all
  • email this number to all@reSync.ug for your “read/write” key
  • install Bit Torrent sync on your smartphone or PC things
  • Follow the link we send to “Get the folder”and add it to your local file storage.
  • set ‘Automatic sync’ in the folder preferences
  • put your texts, images, audio and movies in this folder to share
  • cut artwork from the flyer and press your “read only” badges
  • promote your activated reSync with the flyer
  • wear your badge and reSync All at Transmediale 2015

resynced1000QRcodes are the low resolution high contrast printed patterns in use for inventory tracking as well as a growing range of creative and experimental purposes. Many websites exist to offer on the fly authoring for a wide range of applications.

 

ownmagentaOWN – The open wireless network where you live and work can be utilised to enrich the cultural currency of network exchange and facilitate open sharing of information. The vital Information about OWN is mostly propagated by word of mouth, through the access splash screen, flyers, posters and by local people who own and use the network.

We like ifttt.com for its versatility and power to drive systems in imaginative and extraordinary ways and aim to offer an equivalent for the management of syncronisation options, perhaps it offers a clue as to how further NFC/qrcode meddling can evolve..

reCapture Transmediale

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

IMG_0174So, in a noisy and overloaded foyer environment, we bumbled through a few hours of strained explanations and half understood activities until the 16 or so attendees clicked to our reGroove to spark up some add-hock badge pressing and kitten synchronisation.

reSync-badgepress-300x291To be honest we have performed better than this but despite all, some delight and pleasure was expressed by many involved! Our ‘reSync All‘ workshop could have well been called ‘reCapture Transmediale’ in acknowledgement of the sense shared by many, on our self surveillance and semi consciousness of the issues exhibited. Elsewhere, more earnestly expressed anxiety and abstractions were deliberated over until the jitter cut of one session on another bewildered and perplexed YT.

tm2015-off-networksOut in the bar, on the terrace and about town the conversations flowed more realistically from where we eventually dragged our soles through to each new day reset and rarified for another go. There were no midnight trains (too early) but trawls through the 90’s ‘scape of tobacco overload and tinnitus trials. No massage but a shrinking scrape with urban imagination and cultural preposterousness.

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

reVeal Transmediale

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

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

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

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

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

future project collaboration on Dowse

reSync was invited to collaborate on the Dowse project.

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

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

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

Further information can be found here.

FOSdem 15

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

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

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

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

31C3: Reconstructing narratives

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

“Freedom in your computer and in the net

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everyone interested in the growing offline networks community is welcome!

Basic concepts:

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

Offline Networks Manifesto

The future is offline.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Off.networks @Transmediale

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

Title: off.networks discussion

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

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

The ‘off.networks’ mailing list started as an attempt to bring together researchers, activists and artists that work on the idea of an offline network, operating outside the Internet. Such networks could range from
artistic projects (eg. deadrops or wifitagger) and “personal networks” (eg PirateBox.cc or subnod.es), to community networks (eg commotionwireless.net, nethood) and large city-scale mesh networks (eg. guifi.net, freifunk.net, awmn.net.). The first assembly of off.networks took place at the CCC last month. In their second scheduled meeting during Transmediale Festival, the members of this network wish to make their first effort to build a diverse and dynamic community around the design, implementation and deployment of offline networks in different contexts. They wish to reflect critically on the role of such local networks in shaping the evolving hybrid urban space and in addressing the threats which are posed by internet corporations and surveillance states on citizens’ privacy and freedom of speech.

In other words: How can the under construction “offline networks” allow us to join forces in reaching our common visions without sacrificing pluralism and independence? The answer might not be so simple as offline networks are subject to hybrid design and therefore require the collaboration between people with different expertise; they are context-specific and thus need to be easily installed and customized by non-savvy users; they have to compete with more and more commercial initiatives that now pop up claiming a similar logic; like all networks they are vulnerable and often subject to ambiguities and contradictions.

The discussion will open by existing members of the off.networks community: Aram Barholl (deaddrops),
Jeff Andreoni (unmonastery), David Darts and Matthias Strubel (piratebox), Andreas Unteidig (hybrid letterbox), Sarah Grant (subnod.es), Minuette Le (Rough Scholar Research Group), Panayotis Antoniadis and Ileana Apostol (nethood.org).
Practitioners working on this field from the foyer program of Transmediale will also be invited to join.
An inclusive and open-ended mode of discussion will be followed. After the initial statements,
the stage will be given to participants from the audience who will have 2-3 minutes each to present
their thoughts and ideas forming a big round table.

off.networks@librelist.com.

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

Related work :-)

https://criticalengineering.org/

https://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/dada/Dada-Manifesto.html

https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/futurium/en/content/onlife-manifesto-being-human-hyperconnected-era

And an anti-manifesto manifesto:

https://cloudhead.headmine.net/post/2075216682/the-anti-manifesto-manifesto

Street Sync

reSync-spaceunder01-300x225reSync joined the ‘New Babylon Revisited‘ conference in Athens and our 2 day workshop ‘reStreet’ was one of five group events that took place over a 4 day period. 6-9th November 2014.

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

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

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

SpaceUnderrooftop01

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

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

AWMN 20736
AWMN 17643
AWMN 17643
AWMN-16915
AWMN-16915
AWMN-12629
AWMN-12629
AWMN-6697
AWMN-6697

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

SpaceUnder
Space Under
Radio Babylon
Radio Baby
OctApps
Octo apps
Enclosures
Enclosures
Acute
Acute

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

PANO_20141109_142506

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

Video Vortex Istanbul

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

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

FLOSS Manuals UK hub warm-up

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

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

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

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

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

reSync @ Besides the Screen (Brazil)

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

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

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

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

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

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

0003_SOS_propaganda-flyer

HOW TO

1) upload your media file to the piratebox

& if you want to make us happy:

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

3) fill out the questionnaire & save it

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

README

FROM HIVENETWORKS TO PIRATEBOX

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

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

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

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

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

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

Links:

https://www.hivenetworks.net/

https://piratebox.cc

https://piratebox.cc/openwrt:diy

https://forum.piratebox.cc/

https://daviddarts.com/piratebox/

https://daviddarts.com/piratebox-diy/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PirateBox

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/01/piratebox-an-artistic-provocation-in-lunchbox-form/

https://pi.qcontinuum.com/project.html

https://www.instructables.com/id/Solar-Powered-Raspberry-Pi/

https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start

https://www.radical-openness.org/programm/2014/unitary-networking

https://www.radical-openness.org/programm/2014/vpn-picnic-hivenetworks-piratebox

 

Lunatics in Leuneburg

IMAG0035reSync set out on an ambitious programme of activity to mark it’s establishment as a startup company, picking up where deckspace.tv rounded off it’s research phase in Leuneburg.

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

IMAG0080Lunatic festival is held each year and operated by students of all faculties in the University as part of an enlightened in-house work experience period for second and third years. We first met with previous years chief co-ordinators at sessions in Freiraum during 2012 where we first proposed our involvement and set up the process for the following years festival. They estimated 2000 visitors a day would attend to share the love of summer and end of term!

Screenshot-from-2014-06-06-21_29_35With our invitation in hand we promoted Freifunk Leuneburg as wireless infrastructure providers at the festival an ambitious but achievable prospect and one which drew in some great characters from the local group all of whom chose to work above and beyond the call to put in place the physical and radio interlinks as well as install and test the dozen wireless access points required to put a universal access network into place for everyone to use.

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

Screenshot-from-2014-06-06-18_59_27We all then setup camp in a quiet corner of the spielwiese and proceeded to monitor the useage of the wireless network and respond to the increasingly engaged festival goers requesting a reSync badge and support to get their smartphones sync ready and activated.

New Babylon Revisited

Participatory actions and drifts for the post-digital city

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

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

Freies WLAN auf dem Lunatic Festival

Freies WLAN auf dem Lunatic Festival
Das mittlerweile elfte “Lunatic Festival” findet am 06.06 – 07.06.2014 in Lüneburg auf dem Campus der Universität statt. Der Verein Freifunk Lüneburg (i.G.) ist dieses Jahr mit dabei!
“Ziel unseres Vereins ist es, dass Menschen die Möglichkeit erhalten in Lüneburg und Umgebung freie Netzwerke aufzubauen, zu betreiben und sich darüber sozial und kulturell austauschen.
Ein Festival wie das lunatic ist dafür ein spannender, temporärer, experimenteller gesellschaftlicher Mikrokosmos. Wir wollen sehen, ob unsere Idee dort funktioniert.
Dazu werden wir an strategischen Stellen auf dem Campus-Gelände unsere privaten Freifunk-Geräte aufstellen, um das Gelände mit WLAN zu versorgen.
Wir wollen möglichst vielen Festival-TeilnehmerInnen einen kostenlosen und freien (d.h. unzensierten) Zugang zum Internet zur Verfügung stellen.”, so der erste Vorsitzende Arnim Wiezer.
“Weiterhin werden wir auf dem Gelände temporär “Freifunk”-Aufkleber anbringen, die die Festival Teilnehmer darüber informieren, dass sie Freifunk und das Internet nutzen können.
Freifunk Lüneburg wird auch auf einem der Festival Flyer vertreten sein und die NutzerInnen darauf hinweisen, dass sie sich unter freifunk-lueneburg.de genauer über Freifunk informieren können.” , sagt der zweite Vorsitzende Rüdiger Biernat.
“Wir bedanken uns herzlich bei der Leuphana Universität, die unser Freifunknetz an das Internet anbindet.”, so Claas Heinrich, Schatzmeister.
Von Londoner Netzaktivisten (https://resync.ug) wird das Freifunknetz zudem für einen kulturellen Workshop verwendet.
Per Smartphone, QR-Code und Freifunknetz können die Festivalgänger online ein Mashup aus Bilder, Sound und Videos erstellen und beobachten.
Weitere Infos hierzu:

https://freifunk.net

https://freifunk-lueneburg.de

https://resync.ug/wp/?page_id=17

Wir freuen uns auf das Lunatic Festival!

Analog III

reSync besucht analog III: “Verlagsbranche im Wandel”

“Haben die gedruckte Zeitung und das gedruckte Buch eine Zukunft? Wie gehen Verlage und Redaktionen mit dem digitalen Wandel um? Fragen, über die rund 60 Teilnehmer und Teilnehmerinnen aus der Region Niedersachsen im Rahmen der Veranstaltungsreihe ANALOG im Stadtarchiv Lüneburg diskutierten. Auf Einladung des Innovations-Inkubator Forschungsprojekts Hybrid Publishing Lab am Centre for Digital Cultures trafen sich Fachleute aus allen Bereichen der Medienbranche sowie interessierte Bürgerinnen und Bürger, um sich über die Digitalisierung der Medien auszutauschen, Erfahrungen zu teilen und den Blick für aktuelle Herausforderungen zu schärfen.” (CDC 2014)

Sieh auch video editing server & WikiTV

reSync @ Art meets radical openness

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

VPN PICNIC: FROM HIVENETWORKS TO PIRATEBOX

Hivenetworks, started by Alexei Blinov and collaborators nearly 10 years ago, is an Open Source project that explores the new concepts of DIY network building, mesh architectures and ubiquitous computing. The aim is to take the DIY networking and publishing to the point where it becomes accessible to anyone with creative mind and basic knowledge of computing.
A PirateBox, designed in 2011 by David Darts, is a portable electronic device, often consisting of a router and a device for storing information, creating a wireless network that allows users who are connected to share files anonymously and locally. By definition, this device is disconnected from the Internet.
We are proposing an outdoor gathering, a picnic, where we’ll test both platforms and discuss history of the future of autonomous connecting, media (file) sharing, meshing and swarming tactics in urban environment.

Unitary Networking

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

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

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

url:
https://dataunion.org.uk

https://idhypercubed.org/wiki

ifttt

Latest apps for Android and iOS include long overdue ifttt automation suite which will extend the scope for syncronising and managing publicity during the events we have scheduled. So far I can’t see a btsync channel, perhaps we will get one added.

We are using a recipe to trigger a tweet to be displayed whenever a new lunatic makes a badge which displays their resync qrcode. If it works like this I shall be amazed

 

Analog II

reSync besuchte die Analog II Veranstaltung um das Thema “Kontrolle politischer Macht durch Medien muss sein”. “21. März 2014 Lüneburg. Von prekären Arbeitsbedingungen für hochqualifizierte Journalisten bis zur Verantwortung der EU für die Vielfalt der Lokalzeitungen – auf der Medientagung ANALOG der Leuphana Universität Lüneburg diskutierten rund 100 Medienvertreter und Journalisten am 20. März die Zukunft des Qualitätsjournalismus. Prof. Dr. Däubler-Gmelin sprach sich für die Kontrolle politischer Macht durch die Medien aus.” (CDC 2014)

D-cent event

reSync visited on the 14th of March 2014 d-cent: “D-CENT is a Europe-wide project creating privacy-aware tools and applications for direct democracy and economic empowerment. Together with the citizens and developers, we are creating a decentralised social networking platform for large-scale collaboration and decision-making.” (D-cent 2014)

Nesta announced that: “on March 14th we will host the D-CENT launch event in London at Nesta and we would like to invite you to attend the event and participate in the working group sessions. The event will draw a number of high-level policy makers, academics, activists, civic society organisations, and hackers from the field. Together we will dive into new ways of strengthening citizens’ participation and deliberation in the political process presenting already existing digital tools for open democracy, new frameworks for institutional innovation, and alternative economic models based on complementary currencies and digital crypto currencies.”

Art Meets Radical Openness

Uncovering new truths and making them public as a disruption and criticism of the dominant system has consequences.

Threat scenarios of the digital surveillance state inevitably have palpable effects on our lives and actions. Access to information, infrastructure and technology, which is especially important for activists in repressive regimes up to the present, has become a widely discussed issue since Snowden’s disclosures at the latest, because now a broad mass of people in democratically governed states see their “privacy” endangered. Independence, confidence and freedom are massively put to the test.

Artists, hacktivists, cultural producers, journalists, software developers and idealists, in short creative actors with a desire for change increasingly find themselves in uncertain territory. Which methods and alternative tools can be used to generate new views of everyday life, work, money, politics and the environment, and to instigate a new cultural practice, to impel civil society processes, without them being nipped in the bud?

How do creative actors contribute to the process of change and which new forms of cooperation do they enter into?
# Program # AMRO Showcase # Speakers

Contributers:
Klau Kinki/ES; !Mediengruppe Bitnik/CH; Adnan Hadzi/CH/UK; Aleš Hieng, SLO; André Castro/ES; Andreas Zingerle/A; Anne Roth/DE; Dennis de Bel/NL; Roelof Roscam Abbing/NL; Dominik Leitner/A; Donna Metzlar/NL; Femke Snelting/NL; Franz Xaver/A; Heath Bunting/UK; Inari Wishiki/UK; Jakub Pišek/CZ; James Bridle/UK; James Stevens/UK; Jonathan Kemp/UK; Karlessi/IT; Konrad Becker/A; Larisa Blazic/SRB/UK; Linda Kronman/FIN/A; Lizvlx/A; Lonneke van der Velden/NL; Marc Garrett/UK; Marek Tuszynski/ Margarita Köhl/A; Martino Morandi/IT; Marie Polakova/CZ/A; Michael Schweiger/A; Nathaniel Tkacz; Niek Hilkmann/NL; Renfah/A; Robertina Šebjanič/SLO; Roelof Roscam Abbing/NL; Selena Savić/CH; Taro the cook/A; Tatiana Bazzichelli/IT; Valie Djordjevic/DE; Veronika Krenn/A; Vesela Mihaylova; Victor Diaz/ES; waiwai; Wolfgang Spahn/DE; Yoana Buzova/NL; Reni Hofmüller/A, Jogi Hofmüller/A; u.v.a

Afterglow – art hack day

reSync visited transmediale 14: afterglow’s art hack day: “Afterglow” is a collaboration between Art Hack Day, LEAP Berlin and transmediale. As coders we fear the ‘legacy’ system, a piece of old junk we haven’t yet figured out how to throw away. As artists, we’re tempted by prolific outbursts of freshness and novelty; more art of less value. Businesses and government crave more data, more connections, more context. By embracing these impulses without contemplation we perpetuate the technological hype cycle and unintentionally shorten the half-life of our artefacts. Technology has become akin to a natural resource, generating physical and immaterial waste that is appropriated in such diverse contexts as e-garbage dumps, big data businesses and mass surveillance schemes. As such, trash is no longer what is just left behind but is central to our post-digital lives. When digital detritus piles up it decomposes, giving rise to a post-digital afterglow with the potential for new expression and new enterprise. Can we make peace with our excessive data flows and their inevitable obsolescence? Can we find nourishment in waste, overflow and excess? Can the afterglow of perpetual decay illuminate us?” (Art Hack Day 2014)

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