Servpub as a project has brought together a constellation of collectives, researchers, activists, artists and other multihypenate practitioners. Servpub itself is a platform for research and practice around autonomous networks, affective infrastructures and experimental publishing through artistic and feminist methods. Servpub is a network of servers sitting within a Virtual Private Network that is accessible publicly. wiki4print, the wiki from which this publication was produced, is one node in this network of three servers. It is available at wiki4print.servpub.net.
WHO
First and foremost this work was supported by open source softwares, walkthroughs and guides, most notably the Rosa Manual, co-produced by Varia, HYPHA, LURK, esc, Feminist Hack Meetings and Constant.
The Servpub project is the collective product of work from a variety of sources including In-grid, Systerserver, Varia, Creative Crowds, Centre for the Study of the Networked Image (CSNI) at London Southbank University, Creative Computing Institute (CCI) at University of the Arts London and SHAPE at Aarhus University.
WHAT
Servpub is:
- 2 x Raspberry pi 4b
- 1 x Active cooler
- Peripherals inc. 1 x ea. 7" touch screen, keyboard, mouse, ethernet cables, 32G SD cards etc.
- Jean: a machine of Systerserver's hosted in the data room of mur.at - Graz, Austria.
- Servpub.net: a domain name with the DNS provider tuxIC.nl in the Netherlands.
Softwares include:
- Armbian - Operating system
- Tmux - Terminal multiplexer
- NginX - Webserving
- Tinc - Virtual Private Network (VPN)
- For Wiki4print: MediaWiki, Paged Media CSS, Paged.js
For working, when necessary: openSSH, Gitbash, Jitsi, Obsidian + add-ons, Github, Gitlab, Etherpad, drawing softwares, Ubuntu virtual shell, pen and paper
WHEN
These collaborations began to crystallize during the Counter Cloud strike action held in March 2023.
The building of Servpub began proper in May 2023. For reasons of brevity and legibility, the following timeline excludes at least 50% of: meetings, co-working sessions and discussions including all, or some of the constituent groups.
TIMELINE
Public Workshop 1 (CCI), 26 May 2023
Varia and Systerserver introduce techniques for establishing and administrating autonomous servers to In-grid.
Working Session 1 (online), 28th July 2023
The beginning of working together on Jean server, getting SSH access and starting the process of using tinc, a VPN software.
Working Session 2 (CCI), 4 August 2023
Systerserver and In-grid finsish installing tinc, to create a VPN and configure nginx as a reverse proxy server to connect the first Raspberry Pi server (now available at servpub.net)
Several Working Sessions, Oct - Nov 2023
Internal working sessions, documentation and planning for the next public workshop.
Public Workshop 2 (LSBU), 24 Novemebr 2023
Adding the second Raspberry pi to the VPN network intended for hosting wiki-to-print. Aim was walk workshop participants through the infrastructure and set-up process.
wiki-to-print install, 8 December 2023
First session with Creative Crowds to start the install process of wiki-to-print, which became wiki4print:
2+to=4/for, to from Varia's wiki-to-print, 2 from Hackers and Designers wiki2print, 4 as it is what the wiki is for, for as it is the fourth iteration since wiki2pdf
Content/Form, Transmediale Workshop, January 2024
Working in and around the continued setup of wiki-to-print on the server, the non-linear publishing workflow gets underway, where design and content unfolds at the same time, allowing the one to shape the other.
QUALITIES
It is useful to note that this practice has been approached using methods of collective/co-working reflective of the artistic researchers making it. The approach has been to establish our own infrastructure, as an active choice to not necessarily use existing frameworks. We are using this process as an opportunity to learn, metabolise these learnings and then pass them on in (we hope) a form which is legible, modular and useful. In turn this means we may not have been efficient, choosing affectiveness over effectiveness.
DOCS
One of the ways In-grid have approached this work is with the intention that this be an educational toolkit and replicatable resource. We are developing documentation of our work - both in terms of technical work and the experiential qualities of the process - to allow others to take what they need and make something else. At the time of writing [31.01.24] the most up-to-date, yet-unfinished version of the documentation can be found at: https://git.systerserver.net/queer/networks and we invite you to use what is useful, comment on what is not and perhaps contribute your own learnings.
TO DO
- How do you see your role in cloud infrastructures?
- How would you like to transform these relations?
- What would you do with these tools?
- Imagine who/what you would like to care for through digital infrastructures.