Public Art as a Beacon for Community Wi-Fi

[mozfest-bot]

[ ID ] 9e87caa6-5905-47fd-9723-41e80894fd6f

[ Submitter's Name ] Chris Reilly [ Submitter's Affiliated Organisation ] Digital Stewards/Eastern Michigan University [ Submitter's Twitter ] @rainbow_lazer

[ Space ] digital [ Secondary Space ] cities

[ Format ] learning-lab

Description

How can place based, public art serve as a beacon for neighborhoods? This session is a collaborative, experimental artmaking workshop that prompts participants to explore ways of making the internet into a tactile, tangible object. We will introduce neighborhood mesh network projects developed by the Detroit Community Technology Project’s Digital Stewards, as well as examples of public artworks that combine tactility and network access. Audience participants will work together to brainstorm strategies for using public artwork encourage engagement in community wi-fi networks.

Agenda

After a short intro showing some examples of public artwork and community organizing focused on developing neighborhood mesh networks, participants will break into groups for collaborative discussion, ideation, and prototyping. Discussions will begin with a set of questions and prompts about places, aesthetic experiences, and internet use. (e.g., “What does your neighborhood look like?”, “Who lives in your neighborhood?”, “How would you explain the internet to one who’s never used it?”). Following discussions, we will encourage a free period of sketching, drawing, and constructing physical prototypes, scale models, etc. A brief Q&A/sharing session will wrap up the Learning Lab.

Participants

Participants in Facilitating Public Art as a Beacon of Community Technology will be divided into small groups of 2-4 people, which will allow us to accommodate a range of audience scales.

Outcome

Explore the links between community-building through public art and shared wi-fi networks.

Crowdsource designs/ideas for turning wi-fi network infrastructure into visible, tangible objects.

Highlight the importance of community engagement in deploying/using technology projects.

Build a media archive of the results of the workshop including discussions, sketches, prototypes, etc. and make it accessible to past and future participants.

[cubicgarden]

Could this work with https://github.com/MozillaFoundation/mozfest-program-2016/issues/744?

[cubicgarden]

Thanks for the submission! Unfortunately this session has not been selected as part of the program for 2016.