Blog 6 Brooklyn (closing thoughts):
The server is finally accessible from the internet, although unfortunately it has no content at the moment. The adventure i’ve been on through this class has laid the ground work for a few projects which may take shape with or without its help at some point. Explorations that I mean to continue:
- [ ] run an event using Mobilizon and see how it affects things
- [ ] write up some founding documents with friends and share them at gatherings, iterating each time
- [ ] transport my personal website off of Wix (an Israeli owned website builder and host) and the full moon art festival website from github onto my server. improve the server to enable https
- [ ] Continue holding coversations about collective forming
- [ ] Invite people in my network into new kinds of kernels outside of art, that may coalesce differently, such as holding a free food stand for passover.
Blog 5 Brooklyn:
Meghna talked me through their experiences in a working collective and as an organizer. They taught me a bunch of important concepts, including the importance of widely sharing and being honest about capacities to take on responsibilities - this allows everyone to pitch in, and help out when someone can’t take on their usual load. I found that sharing my capacity often resulted in me either being more helpful to others or receiving assistance that made a big difference. We also discussed how collectives change over time and as levels of reliance on one another increase. I had thought that I wanted to form a collective, and started talking to all of my people about it - seeing what they were looking for that they didn’t yet have the infrastructure to do. Some friends were excited about starting a discord for our art community, where we could share work, events and opportunities, and create chances for collaboration or just parallel play with each other. It became apparent that at a certain point the resources at the heart of a collective infrastructure are really important: what is it that the collective offers its members, concretely? Is it physical space? a seat in the discord? access to each other, clients, funding, housing, food, entertainment, or something else? I wondered if my full moon community wasn’t really the best candidate to become a collective: it was something I’d grown accustomed to running myself, every month. It could be that at its core there wasn’t an experience that others wanted to coalesce equally around, or it could be that I hadn’t let go as much as I could. A bay area friend mentioned that some collective practices thrive around regularity and space; for example, a dance group that meets at the same time and place most saturdays in a public park. This might make more sense than a collective forming from a centralized event. We shall see! Thanks Meghna for your wisdom!!
Blog 4 Brooklyn:
It took me til I made it back home in Brooklyn to unscrew the little pieces that locked the computer into the case. Then I was able to plug it in, and after much trial and error, ssh into it over my local network and set up a Yunohost instance. From there, I started setting up a Mobilizon app on Yunohost. Mobilizon is an open source event platform. My initial idea was to send invitations to a moonthly community art gathering I host over Mobilizon instead of the usual Partiful. But at some point during the set up, I had to uninstall it and start all over again. When it comes to servers, there’s no cloud assistance, no save or undo. I’ve been feeling the pains of not having access to tools I’ve become reliant on. I’ve even switched to writing this blog post in Notion instead of in the input box on infrastructures.us, where my work was deleted on accidental logout twice. I doubted if Mobilizon is really going to make a difference for my community - will people even understand what it means that they’re on a federated website hosted at my apartment, and would they care? Seems like it’s a minor issue when I’m really just trying to see who can make it to the event. I also still hadn’t set up port forwarding, which just felt like another distraction. In the end, I sent out invitations as a plain photo - if I couldn’t use Mobilizon, I would use no platform at all. I think this felt a little more personal than the usual invite, but again i was missing all the useful features such as the ability to notify everyone of changes all at once.
Blog 3 Pittsburgh:
At OOOHack I met lots of net artists and worked on a set of biometric-sensore-activated vibrators in a system we called Eroboros: feel your partner's heartbeat and voice inside you. Working on this a line from the Feminist Server Manifesto from Are You Being Served screamed out.. "A feminist server... Knows that networking is actually an awkward, promiscuous and parasitic practice." Transforming signals from each component to the next required an excrutiating foray into a new set of esoteric DIY technologies. But ultimately we put together a hacked networked experience that could be used for remote or local play and transformed into a visual. Heather Kelley, a game designer and mentor at the hackathon, told me a bit about her experience forming collectives. I noted that the most important thing was to write a code of conduct that sets expectations. Secondarily some system for enforcing the code of conduct gives it authority. later, a group could write a manifesto using some social decision making/ collaboration system.
Blog 2 Toronto:
In Toronto, I found Solidarity sections familiar and almost soothing. I’m not one for online classes, usually, but when pulled out of my fishbowl it was reassuring to have something consistant to return to. I payed extra attention to the local networks I was thrown into: my elderly family of first gen immigrants, supporting each other in a tighnit community that had lasted their lifetimes, and queer art people i met through the central site of the Buddies in Bad Times Theater. A trans software engineer mentioned how software developers lack spaces, languages, or communities with which to discuss the impact of their work / the end result, and how to work towards something they value. This also felt like a solidarity project idea, filed away. In toronto I reflected on the Bay Area and NYC, the two local networks in which I’ve spent most of the past 4 years. Each is so tight nit and infinite unto itself, and they’re linked by a sturdy and long edge on which many travelers pass continuously. Someone I met in a bar in Brooklyn told me there’s a portal between them; my best friend and I tattooed matching spirals on each other marking this portal. I wondered if I could do a project focusing on this idea of the edge between two big networks: who are the “crossovers” who travel this edge? what are their experiences of going between two different infinities? how does the distance affect our relationships? our individual identites?
Blog 1 San Francisco:
While visiting friends in San Francisco, I picked up a Raspberry Pi 4 off facebook marketplace. The previous owner had bought a pre-setup RPi configured as a crypto mining rig. It was locked in a case that blocked off the sockets for cables i thought I needed. It felt meaningful to repurpose something mass produced to be thrown away, a tech gambler’s hustle, into something DIY and community based and open ended. I planned to ask a local bike shop for some tools to open it, but got pulled away from SF before I could make it happen.
Blog 0 Brooklyn:
I'm Zev and this is my first blog page! I've had a few ideas for what to work on.
Ideas:
- party on a pi (2d chatroom)
- event management yunohost
- used sex toy swap
In terms of implementation, I've come to possess 2 raspberry pis but for various reasons have not set them up yet. I still need to have the correct wires all at the same time! To start the pi I need an hdmi cable-> mini hdmi, power cable, sd card, and maybe some other stuff to connect it to the network. I've been away from home for a bit so when I get back tomorrow hopefully I can jump right in. The plan is to start by setting up yunohost and building a basic webserver, then doing whatever needs to be done to connect it through my router to the local network. (also learn more about local networks vs large scale networks). Then I will either find some premade yunohost software like one of their event management tools from the library and just set that up to see something working.
Then I will write my own site code myself to accomplish one of the project above.
Questions: How can I make this more local?
How will people find out about the thing? Are these ideas actually useful? Does it really matter if these ideas are implemented on a local server or not?
What is the effect of using a pi instead of a remote host?