Uns(ui)table Frequencies
This workshop was convened around a carefully maintained set of networking and publishing infrastructures. Participating in the workshop we gained a privileged access to these tools, services, system memory (which constitute a counter model of networked infrastructure). The ServPub server produces an adaptive refiguring of network infrastructure and collective presence.
Intending to invite a space for imagination and active participation in these networks, I re-purposed the widely available Wifi-enabled microcontrollers (ESP8266) to introduce a series of local-only Wifi access points, programmed to serve a simple messageboard.
My interest in these particular microcontrollers stems from their functionality, offering a low-code entry level into networking devices, that also contains enough flexibility for interesting and surprising uses to emerge.
The intent was for these to act as shadow networks to the primary shared server. It was intended to augment our interactions with the server and the collective writing processes. Additionally to these programmed uses it can also hold other interactions that distort the nested protocols.
Visibly, these microcontrollers break the infrastructure into further discrete nodes. More brittle than the wider network, technical capability is traded for limited parameters, that surface protocological moments into active decisions. The reduced component architecture offers some specificity of the material entanglements. We know where the memory is inscribed and under what levels of permanence. We can also follow the combination of manufacturers at least partially involved in this; Espressif, Ai-Thinker, Wemos.
Limiting this shadow network only to the dev-board without additional components or serial communications, the microcontrollers offer useful visual cues as to their possibility; from the visible printed antenna to the sometimes blinking LED. It also opens up the possibility for them to hide ever more discreetly in public spaces.
If part of our exploration of the shared server is understood in relation to conventional methods digital networking, how does the shared server react to a smaller sibling?
In practice the shadow network remains like weeds growing at the ankles of the ServPub server. To connect to the messageboard or run other services, means disconnecting from the collective spaces of writing on the ServPub server, and the wider internet.
Something that surfaces as an immediate limit is the lack of security offered by the microcontroller. To engage with it in a sustained way requires additional agreements and discussion, emerging from the local context. So it's perhaps always unsuited for activating effective resistance to the dominant form of the internet, but could remain a possible tool for layering upon or around experimental infrastructure, such as the shared server.
It remains a possibility of actions, untaken, and affirming of the practice developed in the shared server. The shadow network follows a Luddite logic of unpicking, allowing space for refusal, the dismissal of certain processes and tools, and the exploration of others, better suited to commonality. It remains open to other passageways of data; a shadow library, a local wiki or static site.
When so much is contingent on a connected internet, subject to ever greater modes of extraction, a template of autonomous zones and fragmented protocols (words lip read without voice) appears as a necessary practice.
(include Wemos D1 pictures if space)
---
Mateus Domingos
This workshop is convened around a carefully maintained set of networking and publishing infrastructures. Participating in the workshop we gain a privileged access to these tools, services and system memory[1].
Working experimentally with technologies in this way invites the possibility of a Luddite refusal of technologies harmful to commonality.[2] Considering the field of publishing specifically there are further parallels to be drawn. The Luddites used threatening letters to spread their message through newspapers along with the performance of legalese attempting to argue in the same logic of their oppressors.[3] More generally, the Luddite example is productive for imagining strategies of sabotage and refusal.
Activating imagination draws in other possibilities. Salomé Voegelin, quoting David Graeber, locates “imagination as a force implicated in the constitution of the real that is portrayed not as a fact but as a ‘passage’” (Voegelin, 2019, p.31) For Voegelin this is useful as a method for understanding and exploring the political possibilities of sound. Computer networks are performed along similar passages of protocol; fleeting handshakes, and the exchange of packets through electromagnetic signals sent at 2.4 GHz.[4] In this transmission it is vulnerable to the environment and the existence of other transmissions, causing interference.[5]
Inviting a space for imagination and active participation in these networks, I have programmed several Wi-Fi enabled microcontrollers.[6][7] These will act as shadow networks to the primary server. It is intended as a provocation, to augment our interactions with the server and the collective writing processes. It can hold other interactions that distort the nested protocols.
Ostensibly the microcontroller will run a programme that allows users to connect and post messages. Several initial prompts for consideration during participation in the network follow:
- Admission: Joining the network is based on a shared knowledge. Anyone can induct new members. The use of the space follows locally agreed and moderated customs.
- Interference: The presence of the microcontroller adds potential for interference with other local networks and devices.
- Ephemerality: Accessing this shadow network usually forces a user to disconnect from other networks. If the microcontroller is reset or encounters an error, the message log is not saved. “The moment of disconnectivity is the moment when protocol most forcefully displays its political character.” (Thacker, 2004, xvi) The use of the microcontroller increases the likelihood of it failing. It is brittle and limited, requiring a different kind of engagement.
- Publication: The HTML code that is displayed by the microcontroller is coded within the program that manages all the server functions. It is stored messily as variables, to be called upon and modified as needed. “Creating and declaring a variable is not only a programming issue, hardware is also involved in space allocation for data storage. As such, software and hardware are inseparable.” (Soon and Cox, 2020, p62).
- Carrier Waves: Beyond the explicitly programmed capabilities, the microcontroller offers a vector through which other data can be passed.
| Channel No. | Frequency (MHz) | Channel No. | Frequency (MHz) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2412 | 8 | 2447 |
| 2 | 2417 | 9 | 2452 |
| 3 | 2422 | 10 | 2457 |
| 4 | 2427 | 11 | 2462 |
| 5 | 2432 | 12 | 2467 |
| 6 | 2437 | 13 | 2472 |
| 7 | 2442 | 14 | 2484 |
Microcontroller Sketch Files
These are files I have adapted from examples. They should be compatible with ESP8266 microcontrollers, and the Arduino IDE. They require additional libraries. They also appear to open in the web browser if you wish to read the code.
https://bruise.in/share/aprja24-a.ino
https://bruise.in/share/aprja24-rangeext.ino
Bibliography
Arduino (2018) What is Arduino? Available from: https://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/Introduction.
Binfield, K. (2004) Writings of the luddites. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Cox, G. and Soon, W. (2020) Aesthetic Programming. London: Open Humanities Press.
Espressif Leads the IoT Chip Market with Over 1 Billion Shipments Worldwide | Espressif Systems [no date]. Available from: https://www.espressif.com/en/news/1_Billion_Chip_Sales [Accessed 4 January 2024].
Galloway, A. R. (2004) Protocol. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Iffy Books (2022) Iffy Books Pocket Wifi Portal Zine. Philadelphia, Pensylvania: Iffy Books. Available from: https://iffybooks.net/pocket-wifi-portal
Lachney, M. and Dotson, T. C. (2018) Epistemological Luddism: Reinvigorating a Concept for Action in 21st Century Sociotechnical Struggles, Social Epistemology, 32 (4), pp. 228–240.
Luddite Letter (1812) Leicester Journal, 12 June, p. 3.
Martinez, P. [no date] psk31. Available from: http://aintel.bi.ehu.es/psk31.html
ServPub Homepage (2024). Available from: https://servpub.net/ [Accessed 4 January 2024].
Thacker, E. (2004) Introduction to: Protocol. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Voegelin, S. (2019) The Political Possibility of Sound. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
index.php?title=Category:Content form
- ↑ “ServPub is an experimental platform for research and practice on experimental and computational publishing, to reflect collectively on affective infrastructures, minor tech and autonomous networks within, and beyond, institutional constraints. …Participating communities/institutions include CSNI at LSBU, Creative Computing Institute at UAL, SHAPE at Aarhus University, In-grid, Systerserver, and Varia.” (ServPub)
- ↑ “The writer professes a hope that ‘The House of Commons passes an Act to put down all Machinery hurtful to Commonality, and repeal that to hang Frame Breakers.'” (Binfield, 2004, p57)
- ↑ “In probably the best example of such validation, the frame-work knitters or stockingers, who launched the Luddite protests in Nottingham in 1811, justified their actions by referring to their own originary or constitutive charter, the 1663 Charter of the Company of Framework Knitters.” (Binfield, 2004, p.22)
- ↑ “protocological analysis must focus on the possible and the impossible.” (Galloway, 2004, p53)
- ↑ In WiFi communication the bandwidth refers to 20MHz sectors of frequency. Devices can usually be configured to work within a different sector within the range, if needed, to evade interference. This adaptability is limited by law, the protocol standards and the specific architecture of the antenna. (See also attached table)
- ↑ The microcontrollers I am using are based on the Wemos D1 Mini development board. These make use of the ESP8266 Espressif microchip. I have programmed them using the Arduino IDE. • “Arduino is an open-source electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software." (Arduino, 2018) Arduino is a popular choice for hobbyists to experiment with electronics, often utilising sensors and other components. The IDE is based on the experimental coding IDE Processing, whilst the programming language was based on Wiring (which was also based on Processing) • Espressif is a Chinese semiconductor producer. They are described as a world leading AIoT (Artificial Intelligence of Things) company. By late 2023 they had shipped over 1 billion chips.(Espressif, 2023) They are well known for their ESP range of chips which feature networking components such as WiFi. Their devices are designed to work with Espressif's own open-source SDKs as well as other alternatives, such as Arduino.
- ↑ These microcontrollers are commonly used by artists, experimentally exploiting the networking capabilities. For example, see: Iffy Books (Pocket Wifi Portal Zine, 2022) based on work by Dennis De Bel and Meltronica & MerrittSoft. They are also used extensively in conventional ways as building blocks of networks.