Chapter 2a: Server Issues: Platform Infrastructure

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Ambulant Infrastructure

Figure 2.1: The ServPub mobile server

Wiki4print, the collective writing software is installed in the raspberry pi that hosts https://wiki4print.servpub.net/ travels with us (see Figure 2.1) . We have physically constructed our network of servers so that we can keep it's hardware by our side(s) as we use it, teach and experiment with it, and activate it with others. This chapter will consider the materiality of our particular network of nodes, our reasoning for arranging our infrastructure in the way we have and what it means to move through the world with these objects. By considering our movement from one place to another we can begin to understand how an ambulant server allows us to locate the boundaries of the software processes, the idiosyncrasies of hardware, the quirks of buildings and estates issues, and how we fit into larger networked infrastructures. We will consider how we manage departures, arrivals, and points of transience, reveal boundaries of access, permission, visibility, precarity and luck. This proximity to the server creates an affective relationship, or what Lauren Berlant called affective infrastructure, recognizing the need of the commons, building solidarity via social relations and (un)learning . This precarious objects foster responsibility and care, allowing us to engage critically with the physicality of digital platforms and infrastructures that are entangled with emotional, social and material dimensions. In contrast to vast, impersonal cloud systems, our mobile server foregrounds flexibility, rhythm, and scale—offering a bodily, hands-on experience that challenges dominant industrial models that prioritize efficiency, automation, speed and large-scale resource consumption.

In this chapter we will examine our decision to arrange our physical infrastructure as mobile or ambulant and in view. To understand the material realities of cloud infrastructure, one would need to look not only at the computational hardware and software, but examine the physical architecture, cooling systems, power supply, national or spatial politics and labour required to run a server farm. In one of the talks that artist-researcher Cornelia Sollfrank gave on technofeminism, she referred to Brian Larkin's essay on "The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure," where a basic definition of infrastructure is a “matter that enables the movement of other matter,” including, for example, electricity and water supply/tubes that enable the running of a server or a micro-computer. What then is the material body or shape of an ambulant infrastructure that moves between spaces? To reveal this materiality we will map our collective experiences in a series of types of space. These spaces are reflective of our relative positions as artist*technologist*activist*academic:  

• THE PUB / PUBLIC SPACES
• INSTITUTIONAL SPACES
• SUITCASES AS SPACE
• WORKSHOPS AS SPACE
• CULTURAL/SEMI-PUBLIC SPACES
• DOMESTIC/PRIVATE SPACES
• NATIONS / TRAVEL

By situating our mobile server within these diverse spatial contexts, we illuminate the complex interplay between technology, place, social and embodied experience, advancing a critical discussion of infrastructure that foregrounds the materiality of data, software, and social-technical processes alongside tangible infrastructure. This perspective brings us to an essential question: why does the mobility of servers matter?

Travelling server space: Why does it matter?

Many precedents have contributed to the exploration of feminist servers . While there is significant focus on care, labor conditions, and maintenance, the technical infrastructure remains largely hidden from the general public as servers are fixed in location and often distant from the working group. We often perceive servers as remote, and large-scale entities, especially in the current technological landscape where terms like "server farms" dominate the discourse.

Figure 2.2: rosa, a feminist server, in ATNOFS.

rosa, a feminist server, as part of the ATNOFS project is considered as a travelling server which afforded collaborative documentation and notetaking at various physical sites where the meetings and workshops were taken place in 5 different locations throughout 2022. In addition Rosa is also part of the self-hosted and self-organised infrastructures, engaging "with questions of autonomy, community and sovereignty in relation to network services, data storage and computational infrastructure" . The naming was considered important in the context of a male-dominating discourse of technology: "We’ve been calling rosa ‘they’ to think in multiples instead of one determined thing / person. We want to rethink how we want to relate to rosa." In this way the server itself performs an identity function that broadly reflects feminist values -- acting not as a neutral or passive machine, but as a situated, relational agent of care and resistance. It is a "situated technology" -- in the style of Donna Haraway’s concept "situated knowledge" -- in that it emerges from particular bodies, contexts, and relations of power. The descriptors become significant:

Is it about self definition? – I am a feminist server. Or is it enough if they support feminist content? It is not only about identifying, but also whether their ways of doing or practice are feminist.

To describe a server as feminist is not merely to identify who builds or uses it, but to consider how it is produced, maintained and engaged with -- in opposition to the patriarchal and extractive logic of mainstream computing. However, without careful qualification, the idea of a feminist server risks defaulting to white, ableist, and cis-normative assumptions, potentially obscuring interconnected systems of oppression. An intersectional approach is needed to account for the distributed forms of power in operation. In the publication, for instance, they argue that a focus on resources can connect issues related to "labour, time, energy, sustainability, intersectionality, decoloniality, feminism, embodied and situated knowledges. This means that, even in situations focusing on one specific struggle, we can’t forget the others, these struggles are all linked."

The travelling rosa server is highly influencial as it encourages ServPub members to rethink infrastructure—not as something remote and distant, but as something tangible, self-sustained and collective. It also highlights the possibility of operating and learning otherwise, without reliance on big tech corporations which is often opaque and inaccessible. While most feminist server and self-hosting initiatives have emerged outside of London, we are curious about how the concept of traveling physical servers could reshape a vastly different landscape—one defined by critical educational pedagogies, limited funding, and the pressures of a highly competitive art and cultural industry in the UK. The first consideration is skills transfer—fostering an environment where technical knowledge, caring atmosphere, and open-minded thinking are recognized and encouraged, enabling deeper exploration of infrastructure. This is also where the London-based collective In-grid, comes into the picture of ServPub.

THE PUB / PUBLIC SPACES

Networking as a space: Call for a Counter Cloud Action Day

Figure 2.2: The poster of the International Trans★Feminist Digital Depletion Strike

On the 8th of March 2023 (8M), an international strike called for a "hyperscaledown of extractive digital services" . The strike was convened by numerous Europe-based collectives and projects, including In-grid, Systerserver, Hackers and Designers, Varia, The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest, NEoN, and many others. This day served as a moment to reflect on our dependency on Big Tech Cloud infrastructure—such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft—while resisting dominant, normative computational paradigm through experimentation, imagination, and the implementation of self-hosted and collaborative server infrastructures.

To explicate this collective action, the call's website is hosted and asynchronously maintained by a network of networks, technically known as a Webrings, especially popular in the 1990s, are decentralized, community-driven structures that cycle through multiple servers. In this case, 19 server nodes—including In-grid—participate, ensuring the content is dynamically served across different locations. When a user accesses the link, it automatically and gradually cycles through these nodes to display the same content. Webrings are typically created and maintained by individuals or small groups rather than corporations, forming a social-technical infrastructure that supports the Counter Cloud Action Day by decentralizing control and resisting extractive digital ecosystems.

On the evening of 8M, many of us—individuals and collectives based in London— gathered at a pub in Peckham, South London. The location was close to the University of the Arts London where some participants worked. What began as an online network of networks transformed into an onsite network of networks, as we engaged in discussions about our positionality and shared interest. This in-person meeting brought together In-grid, Systerserver and noNames collectives, shaping a collaborative alliance focused on local hosting, small scale infrastructure for research, community building, and collective learning.

INSTITUTIONAL SPACES

Within this context of decentralized and community-driven digital infrastructures, it is impossible to overlook the contrasting landscape of educational institutions. Many of us in the ServPub project has affilated with universities. In an academic context it is no easy matter to work in this way, as infrastructures are mostly locked down and outsourced to third parties, as well as often rely on big tech infrastructures. For example, the widespread use of Microsoft 365 for organizing daily tasks, meetings, routines, and documents through SharePoint, a cloud-based collaboration and document management platform for team collaboration, document storage, and intranet services. Similarly, the institutional networked infrastructure Eduroam (short for 'Education Roaming') provides global access, secure connections, and convenience. However, it also comes with limitations and challenges, including IT control and network restrictions, such as port blocking to prevent unauthorized or high-bandwidth usage, as well as traffic monitoring under strict privacy policies. This protective environment inevitably trades off autonomy and user agency, making it difficult to engage with the infrastructure beyond mere convenience and efficiency.

Figure 2.3: A screenshot of the CTP Server

At Aarhus University, the CTP (critical-technical practice) server (see Figure 2.3) is an ongoing attempt to build and maintain an alternative outside of institutional constraints. This was a response to the problem of allowing access to outside collaboration and running software that was considered a security threat, and therefore needed careful negotiation with those responsible for IT procedures and policies. In 2022, the CTP project invited a member of Systerserver to deliver a workshop titled "Hello Terminal," intended as a hands-on introduction to system administration. However, the remote access port was blocked, preventing anyone without a university account and Virtual Private Network (VPN) from logging in, significantly restricting participation and what people can do with the servers. If we want to understand infrastructure, fundamental questions such as what is a server and how to configure one naturally arise. Approaching these requires access to a computer terminal and specific user permissions for configuration or installation—areas traditionally managed by IT departments. Most universities, however, provide only "clean" server spaces (preconfigured server environments) or rely on big tech software and software that offer secure, easy-to-maintain solutions, limiting hands-on exposure to the underlying setup and infrastructure. This issue, among others, will be explored further in Chapter 3. When systems become standardized and enclosed, leaving little to no room for alternative approaches to learning. For researchers, teachers, students, and those who view infrastructure not merely as a tool for consumption and convenience but as an object of research and experimentation, opportunities to engage with it beyond predefined uses are limited. This lack of flexibility makes it difficult to explore and understand the black box of technology in ways that go beyond theoretical study. The question then becomes: how can we create 'legitimate' spaces for study, exploration and experimentation with local-host servers and small scale infrastructure within institutions?

Creating legitimate space to introduce other kinds of software in a university setting can be challenging. University IT departments may not always recognise that software fundamentally shapes how we see, think, and work, a point emphasized by Wendy Chun who argues that software is not neutral but deeply influences cognition, perception, and modes of working. This aspect is a crucial part of teaching and learning that goes beyond simply adopting readily available tools. For example, our request to implement Etherpad, a free and open-source real-time collaborative writing tool widely used by grassroots communities for internal operations and workshop-based learning, illustrates this challenge. Unlike mainstream tools, Etherpad facilitates shared authorship and co-learning, aligning closely with our pedagogical values.

In advocating for its use, we found ourselves having to strongly defend both our choice of tools and the reasons why for example Microsoft Word was insufficient. IT initially questioned the need for Etherpad, comparing it to other collaborative platforms such as Padlet, Miro, and Figma. Their priority, we learned, was finding software that integrated easily with Microsoft — a choice driven by concerns around centralised management and administrative efficiency over pedagogical or experimental value. When we highlighted Etherpad’s open-source nature — and the opportunities it offers for adaptation, customisation, and community-driven development — we also pointed to how this reflects our teaching ethos: fostering critical engagement and giving students agency in shaping the tools they use. Despite this, we were still required to further justify our case by demonstrating how Etherpad supports teaching in ways that other mainstream software like Google Docs do not. It ultimately took nearly a year to establish this as a legitimate option. The broader point is that introducing non-mainstream, non-corporate software into institutional settings demands significant additional labour — not only in time, but also in the ongoing work of justification, negotiation, and communication.

The ServPub project began with the desire to make space for alternative software and infrastructure, emphasizing self-hosting and small-scale systems that enable greater autonomy for (un)learning. One of the goals is to explore what becomes possible when we move away from centralized platforms and servers, offering more direct ways to access the knowledge embedded in infrastructure and technology. Developing alternative approaches requires a deeper understanding of technology—beyond simply using them from well-defined, packaged and standardized solution.

During our first ServPub workshop at a university in London in 2023, where we configured the server using a Raspberry Pi, we encountered these constraints firsthand: the university’s Eduroam network blocked access to the VPN server running on the Pi. We required a VPN (Virtual Private Network) because it allows us to assign a static IP address to the server and make the hosted site publicly accessible beyond the local network (more details about VPN are discussed in the next chapter). However, institutional network security policies often block VPN traffic, as VPNs can obscure user activity, bypass filtering systems, and introduce potential security risks. To maintain control, network administrators typically restrict the protocols and ports used by VPNs, resulting in such blocks within Eduroam environments.

These restrictions create significant challenges for experimental and self-hosted projects like ours. More critically, Eduroam’s technical architecture and policies embed institutional control deeply into network access. While it is designed to provide secure and seamless global connectivity through standardized authentication protocols, it also enforces user dependency on institutional credentials and network policies that limit experimentation and autonomous infrastructure use. Our experience with Eduroam exemplifies these challenges, highlighting the broader tensions between institutional infrastructures and the desire for more self-determined, flexible technological practices. As a result, we resorted to sharing one of the organizers’ personal hotspot connections (using a mobile data network), which itself was limited by a 15-user cap on hotspot sharing. While this was not an ideal solution, at that point in time it served as a necessary workaround that allowed the Pi server to connect to any available internet network, even when held by someone without access to an institutional Eduroam account.

This experience of navigating institutional constraints points to the significance of mobility and portability in our approach. Carrying our server with us enables a form of technological autonomy that challenges fixed infrastructures and their limitations. This brings us to consider the physical and conceptual implications of portability—what it means to live and work with servers inside suitcases, and how these objects become mobile spaces in their own right.

SUITCASE AS SPACE

We have referenced the fact that our server can be brought with us to visit other places, the server runs on a computer. What that means in practice is a repeated unplugging and packing away of objects. We unplug the computer, literally and figuratively, from the network. In the case of wiki4print, the node unplugged, sans-electricity, sans-network is:

• Raspberry pi (the computer)
• SD memory card
• 4G dongle and sim card (pay-as-you-go)
• Touch Screen
• Mini cooling fan
• Heat-sink
• Useful bits and pieces (mouse, keyboard, power/ethernet/hdmi cables)

Figure 2.3: The back side of the wiki4print server. The Raspberry Pi with cooling fan, back of the touch screen and board that controls the screen.

These items have been variously bought, begged and borrowed from retailers, friends and employers. We have avoided buying new items where possible, opting to reuse or recycle hardware where possible. We try to use recycled/borrowed items for two primary reasons. First, we are conscious of the environmental impact of buying new equipment, and are keen to limit the extent to which we contribute to emissions from the manufacturing, transportation and disposal of tech hardware. Secondly, we are a group working with small budgets, often coming from limited pots of funding within our respective institutions. These amounts of funding are most often connected to a particular project, workshop or conference, and do not often cover the labour costs of those activities. Any additional hardware purchases therefore eat into the funds which can be paid to compensate the work of those involved. Avoiding buying new is not always an option however, when travel comes into play, as new circumstances require new kit like region specific sim cards, adapters and cables accidentally left unpacked or forgotten.

It should be noted that packing and handling these items comes with a certain element of risk. The raspbery pi is exposed to the rigours of travel and public transport, easy to crush or contaminate. We know that as a sensitive piece of technology, it should be treated with delicacy but the reality of picking up and moving it from one place to another, if not in short notice instead time-poorness, we often are less careful than we ought to be. The items constituting wiki4print have been variously gingerly placed into backpacks, wrapped in canvas bags, shoved into pockets and held in teeth. So far, nothing has broken irreparably, but we live in anticipation of this changing.

Why Raspberry Pi?

Raspberry pis are small single-board computers, built on a single circuit board, with the microprocessors, ports, and other hardware features visible . Single-board computers use relatively small amounts of energy , particularly in comparison to server farms. However, they are fragile, the operating system of our Raspberry pis run off SD cards and without extra housing they are easy to break. They are by no means a standard choice for reliable or large-scale server solutions. However, their size and portability, as well as their educational potential is the reason we chose to host servpub.net websites on them.

The Raspberry Pis that host servpub.net and wiki4print.servpub.net were second-hand. So in reality, we used Raspberry Pis because they are ubiquitous within the educational and DIY maker contexts within which many of us work. There are other open-source hardware alternatives that exist today like Libre Computer and if we were to consider buying a new computer we would examine our choices around using a closed-source hardware option like a Raspberry Pi. The fact that our second-hand Raspberry Pis were close-to-hand within academic contexts reveals educational practices and concerns within Servpub.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation’s mission is largely educational . Although Raspberry Pis are comparatively not that cheap anymore (compared to some PCs), making computing physical can make computing concepts more accessible and engaging. In his book Mindstorms Seymour Papert (the creator of the educational programming language Logo) writes that “gears served as an ‘object-to-think-with’”, he explains how he could use his body to think about gears by imagining how his body turned to find a way into thinking about the mathematical aspects of how gears worked . The use of Raspberry Pis, microcontrollers like Arduino and other small physical computing objects within educational contexts serve as objects-to-think-with. In examinations of Papert’s ideas of construction kits in the context of network technologies, Stevens, Gunnar, et al. investigate the idea of “’objects-to-think-with-together’ in the context of using computers as tool and social medium at the same time” . The desire to bring the server as an object-to-think-with-together into a workshop space sits within this wider tradition of making computing physical and visible for educational purposes.

A common conceptualisation of the internet is of a remote untouchable thing, a server farm or in the worst case some nebulous cloudy concept. Being able to point at an object helps us materialise the network. Using a small-scale computer allows us to bring the server into proximity with bodies in workshops. The visibility of the guts of the machine, for example exposed ethernet ports, enables a different type of relational attention to the hardware of the server.

LOCAL/WORKSHOP SPACE

By physically bringing the server in person to teaching moments, it allows us to discuss ideas around the physicality of a server. Once the computer is plugged in, we start to approach server as software.

One way to interact with the computer would be using a screen and mouse and keyboard. How do we go about accessing this computer from another computer, over a network? Within early workshops when we set up the first Servpub.net Pi we went through the process of creating a Local Area Network (LAN). Accessing devices within a LAN requires people to be on the same network, usually in the same physical location. All computers need access to the same internet network, via an ethernet cable or wirelessly via wi-fi. As mentioned in different sections of this chapter, this simple act of getting online differs from context to context. In this section we will focus on what happens once the Pi and everyone in the room has access to the same internet network.

On a Raspberry Pi we run a Linux operating system (Armbian in the case of Servpub). There are various network protocols that will allow other computers to access the Raspberry Pi. We will focus on two, SSH and HTTP. SSH is a protocol that allows us to access the Pi from the Command Line of another computer, one of the first steps of setting up a computer as a server is to enable SSH . This allows remote access from another computer, which enables people to do system administration. HTTP allows us to access the Pi from the web browser of another computer. In order to use either of these protocols, first we need to know the IP address of the Raspberry Pi, which is the address of the machine on the shared local network .

In early workshops Systerserver shared their approaches to system administration. Using the command line via the computer terminal on our own computers we are able to SSH into the Raspberry Pi, where we were able to work together to set up the machine. Systerserver shared their practice of using TMUX, allowing multiple people to be on the command line together. One TMUX session runs on the Raspberry Pi, and people are able to take turns typing on their own computer. This was a practice we used once the Pi was connected to the VPN and we were able to do remote work from different countries. However in an early workshop in London, we were all in the same room, working on the command line together. This being in the room together allowed us to learn and form habits around being in the command line via the computer terminal together.

To access the Pi through a web browser, we need to install server software on the computer. Apache HTTP Server Project is an example of open-source server software that you can install . We installed a simple Nginx static web server . We put HTML documents and other static files in /var/www folder on the filesystem of the Raspberry Pi, and configured the Nginx server to listen for traffic on port 80 (a default port for HTTP traffic) and to send those files over the network when requested. By entering the IP address of the Raspberry Pi into the url bar on another computer's web browser on the local network, the files are requested and then shown in the web browser.

All this is before we begin to touch on topics like automation and accessing other computers over the public internet using a VPN, which will be looked at in the next chapter. During a workshop at LSBU which was open to a wider public, we took people in the room through the steps of connecting locally to a Raspberry Pi, before connecting the wiki4print server to the Servpub VPN for the first time. The session was a public co-working session, and was an opportunity to invite others into a moment of working together in a room to make visible the hardware, local access to a server and acts of system administration.

CULTURAL/SEMI-PUBLIC SPACES

Up to the point of writing, our Wiki4Print[pi] has been a physical presence at several public workshops and events/interventions. Although in many (if not all) cases, it would be more practical and less effort to leave the hardware at home, we opt to bring it with us, for the reasons outlined above. By dint of our artist*sys/admin*academic situations, the pi has visited several of what we are defining as cultural spaces. We are using this term to describe spaces which primarily support or present the work of creative practicioners: museums, galleries, artist studios, libraries. This definition is not perfect, and obscures a lot of factors which we feel are pertinent to this discussion. We are conflating publicly funded institutions with privately rented spaces, spaces that are free to enter with others that have partial barriers like membership or ticketing. However, we feel that for our purposes here, these comparisons, although imperfect allow us to see common issues. As with our entrances and exits from institutional spaces (universities), domestic locations and moments traveling we need to spend some time feeling out the material conditions of the space, and the customy practice in, and idiosyncracies of, that space. Not all two cultural spaces are built the same, as no two homes are the same.

We'll tell you about two spaces to explain what we mean.

SPACE 1. SET studios, Woolwich, UK: An arts space run by a charity, based in a meanwhile use building. The building contains rented studios which are used by individual artists and small businesses, a cafe and performance space, and gallery space open to the public. The longevity of the space is precarious due to the conditions of a meanwhile use tenancy, and indeed the space has since been vacated to allow for the site to be redeveloped. The building itself is only partially maintained as it is intended for demolition by the developers who own the site. Plumbing issues, dodgy lifts and non-functional ethernet ports and sockets abound. The space is based in the UK.

wiki4print was originally housed at SET Studios in Woolwhich, were several members of In-grid had artist studios. Before being maintained by the Arts Charity SET which emerged out of squat culture in London, it had been occupied by the HMRC (HM Revenue and Customs). The use of meanwhile space within the arts sector in London is closely tied into wider property development crises, where more and more artists are reliable on institutions that exist in the margins. The reality of having a studio within a meanwhile space is that much of the infrastructure is crumbling. When In-grid first set up the Raspberry pis the hope was to host them there indefinately, but it quickly became apparent that it was not viable, the ethernet ports in the room were not functional, the wi-fi was not reliable and the team maintaining the building are primarily artists themselves rather than corporate service providers, therefore estate support is more sporadic.

SPACE 2. Haus der Kulturen der Welt MUSEUM, Berlin, Germany (HKW): A center for contemporary arts, publicly funded by the federal government. The space hosts art exhibitions, theater and performance, films, and academic conferences. It also contains cafes and shops, and is generally open to the public, with some ticketed events. This space is in Germany. We presented in this space as part of the Transmediale Festival, which is a 'platform for critical reflection on cultural transformation from a post-digital perspective '. We brought the pi to Berlin as part of Content/Form, a research workshop culminating in a publication of a peer reviewed newspaper including contributions on the idea that content is entagled/inseperable from the forms and formats in/which it's rendered.

These spaces are demonstrably quite different, in their scale, security and publicness. That being said there are common experiences when arriving in cultural spaces with a mobile server. We need to feel out the location every time, understand levels of access, the policies and politics of these spaces, and of the duty of care/legislative duties each institution needs to respect, which may also change in relation to geography. We may have developed our protocols of working, but these cannot be impressed upon other spaces indiscriminately, we need to acknowledge that we are sharing this space with its caretakers, and also with other creative groups with their own needs and working practices, and the wider public who may be impacted and interested in our presence, or who may not be aware we are sharing the space at all.

The most pressing issue is often access to an internet connection. As we have outlined in [chapter x/section y], our network of nodes are connected to each other using a VPN. In our case, the VPN network requires access to the internet to encrypt and route data through its servers. Additionally, two of our nodes (wiki4print and pubdoc) , serve up public webpages (wiki4print.servpub.net and servpub.net) and when offline these sites cease to be accessible. Getting internet access may appear to be a simple enough problem to solve, being as we are in cultural spaces which often have public wifi available, but often it becomes more convoluted.

As we discuss in further detail in the section on educational institutions, some internet networks block all VPNs. Although this particular issue was not apparent in these particular cases, it is not uncommon for a public wifi network to block VPNs in order to control access, or for security reasons. For example, some organisations may block VPNs to maintain control over their network traffic, or to try to limit who has access. VPNs mask the IP addresses of users, and so by removing that option, institutions have greater insight into who is accessing their networks and what they are doing while connected. Additionally, although this is not an issue we directly encountered, some national governments block or restrict VPN use in order to impose state censorship and reduce individual privacy and agency, although it's often framed by the powers that be as a measure to maintain national security or prevent cybercrime.

All that being said, in our experience, cultural spaces are more personal and negotiable than Educational Institutions, despite the possibility for equal levels of government oversight and private interests. Crutially have found that Cultural Spaces have become intrinsic to our ability to experiment publicly and accessibly. The most profound difference we have observed is the ability to establish a personal connection with individuals in order to make something happen, or adjust/remove a factor which is impeding us (locked doors, firewalls). In short, in cultural spaces, it's easier to find people, whereas we have found that (at least UK based) Universities adopt more detached processes. We have found that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find faces on campuses, whereas in cultural spaces we have found it easier to locate technical staff, other tenants, communities of users or visitor coordinators. Indeed, while in HKW we were unable to idenify which ethernet port worked, we were able to fetch someone from the site who know. If we wanted to do something similar in a UK University we would be unlikely to find someone, rather we find help-desk ticketing systems that would need to wait for a email response after filling a form with description, screenshots, and credentials. This is of course a generalisation, and is not a reflection of the people labouring behind those ticketing systems, moreso it is of the changing nature of work and neoliberalisation of higher education systems.

We have found that while working within cultural spaces can be on occasion challenging, particularly in more precarious spaces where there may not be someone dedicated to sysadmin for example, they tend to be more flexible. We are less likely to have to justify our choices or working methods, there is understanding that we might try something unusual or even arguably needlessly convoluted (like bringing a server to an arts conference) in order to deliver something we assert can be meaningful.

DOMESTIC/PRIVATE SPACES

Figure 2.4: to be filled

The wiki4print pi has ended up living in a house of an In-grid member in South London. How it came to be there was a result of the needs of caring for a temperamental Raspberry pi in a temperamental meanwhile space (SET studios). However, its particular journey through London and where it has landed was as much to do with the material constraints of internet access as it was to do with the needs of working in a collective. Passing hardware from hand to hand across London became a force that determined the material shape of the network: last minute plans, emergencies, the demands of work schedules, holidays, illness and commute times all played a part in the movement of the hardware.

On one occasion In-grid, NoNames and CC were engaging in an online working session to resolve an important functionality of wiki4print. The pi kept going offline and needed someone on hand to physically reset the device or reconnect to the internet. We had to pause the workshop, while the pi was physically moved from SET studios to the house of an In-grid member. Why to that person's house in particular? The house was the closest to the studio and on the way to work for the other In-grid member. While others took a tea break the server was handed from hand to hand at a doorstep in East London on a rainy grey day, stress was shared, the pi was re-booted, the workshop continued. Moreover, the server was about to travel to Germany for a conference and this necessitated it being physically accessible to a member of In-grid who was travelling to Germany.

We thought the pi kept going offline because the SET wi-fi was bad, this was one of the problems, but it was also a red herring. We discovered there was another issue while the pi was in its new home in East London (temporarily living under a bed so the ethernet cable could reach it). Through the process of being able to debug at any hour (lying on the floor beside the bed) we were able to discover that problems with accessing the pi online were due to the Raspberry pi overheating, freezing and shutting down processes which would take it offline. We bought a heat sink and fan for the pi, and from then on it worked reliably in all locations.

Maintaining server hardware in a domestic space or outside the context of a server farm (small or large) becomes an act of providing care at odd hours. Maintenance invites the rhythms and bodies of others into the material realities of the network. Cleaning the cat hair out of the fan of the raspberry pi or plugging in the pi because a guest did some hoovering and didn't realise what they were unplugging. When someone from the wider Servpub group reports that wiki4print is down on our mailing list, an In-grid member replies back with the latest anecdote about what has happened, providing a remote window into the lives and rhythms of bodies and hardware in spaces.

NATIONS/TRAVEL

So far, this writing has detailed the cultural, educational and domestic spaces that have housed the server at different times and for different reasons. Sometimes out of convenience, sometimes as an educational tool, sometimes as evidence that indeed a server can be built outside its farm and sometimes still we frankly brought the server along just-in-case. Cutting through all these spaces was the core attribute of this server being ambulant, which was a need highlighted and inspired by the Rosa project to which a significant portion of Servpub is owed. This need for mobility and reachability revealed the seams between what would otherwise be seamless transitions across different spaces with different [politics]. Perhaps most glaring of these seams were none other than the European borders themselves.

Though travelling with the hardware did little more than raise eyebrows from airport security staff, it was the crossing of a less ambulant person that almost prevented us from taking the server to Amsterdam in the summer of 2024 for the EASSSST/4S conference. The conference was to be attended by a small sub-group of the Servpub team, to present the project and host a hands-on workshop through the server. A member who was part of this group, had packed the hardware in their bag after having retrieved it from Becky for the purpose of this trip. They were, at the time of writing, holding refugee status in the UK and was allowed to travel within Europe with a UK issued Travel Document. But there were exceptions.

The conference was in Amsterdam to which they were allowed to travel, and the group were taking the Eurostar straight to their destination without making any stops. However, they were about to traverse a particularly absurd part of the French law pertaining to Visas and freedom movement. As the officers at the Eurostar terminal explained, it was because the train will be crossing over French territory, for which one of the In-grid members would need a visa, that they could not be allowed on the train. The fact the the destination was not in France and that the train was not due to make any stops in France did not matter. In fact, that argument only presented the more absurd speculation that in the case of an emergency stop or break-down of the train in France, they would be in breach of the visa law which and that was even more justification for refusing them entry to the train. Four hours later, other In-grid members were on their way and the server was still in London with another member's hand.

The solution was to take a direct flight to Amsterdam (and hope that it wouldn't emergency-land or break-down over France) for the next day. But having had no funding for this trip, and not being able to refund the train ticket, this was perhaps the most jarring spatial transition during this project. Not only did it reveal the limits of mobility and access, it also revealed the limits of collectivity and radical infrastructures. There was only so much infrastructure to radicalise when the political structures themselves oppressive and only getting worse.

EXPOSING THE AMBULENT INFRASTRUCTURE

Using small, mobile, or DIY servers makes tangible something normally abstract and distant. While our use of servers is almost constant, they rarely feel materially real. In contrast, our modest and often fragile setup reveals the seams of infrastructure, exposing the usually invisible dynamics of access, permission, and agency that shape how we move through institutions and shared spaces. Their scale and fallibility can be at times frustrating, but also embodied, as downtime or glitches often trace back not to impersonal systems failures but to the social realities of care, memory, or negotiation, like losing a password or deciding whether something is worth fixing at all. Working with such infrastructures invite collaboration, responsibility, and stewardship, giving us a sense of proximity and empowerment: we can point to the device, understand its workings, and intervene directly. In workshops, they act as access points to otherwise abstract network infrastructures, unsettling the seamless veneer of cloud computing and revealing the boundaries between hardware and software. Their mobility also highlights questions of access and borders, showing how technologies move differently than the people who maintain them. By exposing the fragility and contingency of networks, these servers make visible the social, affective, and political conditions of technological maintenance, reminding us that technology is not floating somewhere in the air, but grounded in material forms of labor, collaboration, and care.

Writing link: https://pad.riseup.net/p/PlatformInfrastructure-keep

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