Wireless Toronto

Dory, David, Edward, Michael met to talk though a few ideas that could be used as part of Wireless Toronto's presence at this year's Alley Jaunt. our thoughts centred on making the invisible elements of the space tangible to visitors.

Some ideas include:

• demarcating existing wireless networks with chalk, noting the SSID and if possible the area covered. The latter would result in sweeping arcs that would look lovely from above.
• additionally we could note and distinguish 3 types of space/place names: the visible (i.e., official street/lane name), the invisible (i.e., SSIDs), and the lost (i.e., local names such as “Arnaldo's shed”). The first two are straight forward, the lost names adds good texture but could be hugely time-consuming. Worth exploring for sure though.
• we'd begin noting SSID's that are in the immediate vicinity of our designated garage and then, as a possible performance, go scouting and sniffing through the area covered by the weekend festival. The performance could include taking attendee/participants along for a walk.
• scouting would also include sniffing for wireless network activity and capturing packets. With those we could then display images being viewed, YouTube videos, etc. If we capture first and then playback the results we could/should filter to exclude adverts, dreaded flesh pics, etc. If filtering is done it'd be interesting to note the percentage.
• captured images and maybe a map of where they were 'found' would be displayed in the garage.
• with SSID names in hand we could create a magnetic poetry (real on magnetic paper or Flash/PD-based) installation that allows 'neighbourhood remixing'. Could poems be captured and either printed or saved visually?

• there are also listeners that convert network activity to sound. It's a sysadmin tool (name?) but could be interesting for immersing garage visitors with what's invisible.

We'll meet again in a couple weeks and see where we are at. The submission deadline is early March so we've not much time.

We four met again to refine some of the ideas.

Dory had a great fun one of converting the assigned garage into a travel agency. This would set the mood for 'travel' through the newly identified space and we could provide some education component by allowing us to talk about wireless networks as a space, wehat can be done in them, as well as the work wireless toronto does smashingly well.

We're still mostly talking the same ideas; demarcate the existing space and display the content (images from sniffed packets of that space.

Converting network activity to sound, and broadcasting that through a low-power FM transmitter, seemed like a popular option and a few

Lastly, Dory's knack for craft provided a good solution through her old school labeler (white raised letters on blue plastic) all we need now is some magnetic paper and the SSID poetry can begin.

default Fred's Wireless default linksys opennode default default fat tony linksys default linksys …

If the SSID poetry does get included we should be sure to bring a digital camera or two and a laser printer. It'd be cool to let someone take home their poem and we could archive the pics and document the project.

No word on the jaunter's deadline, still 'early march.'

We should continue to think about the ideas and define requirements and possible sources when we next meet.