To book your place in workshops and events please use the general booking form for the festival →

The Mobile Commons

Facilitators: (Rachel O’Dwyer, Seamus McGettrick, Keith Nolan and Colman O’Sullivan. Visuals by Tim Redfern)
When: 10am – 6pm, June 30th and July 1st
Where: HackLab, Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin
Participation: Free and available to all visitors to the Science Gallery with a mobile phone!

Wi-Fi Router Hacking: E-waste Workshop 12.0

*This workshop is now fully subscribed and bookings are closed*

Schedule: Friday 29 and  Saturday 30 of June, from 10am – 4pm (2 days)
Teachers: Benjamin Gaulon and  Lourens Rozema
Group: Max 10 people

Participation: free
Required Skills: No previous background in programming or electronics required 
Required Materials: Bring your own laptop + some e-waste (old printer, scanner, old home phone, electronic toy, obsolete audio / video equipment…)

Location: Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin 

During openhere the e-waste workshop will focus on hacking and interconnecting obsolete devices by repurposing cheap WiFi routers. Our workshops offer participants a chance to become familiar with basic hardware and software design, while at the same time gaining hands-on experience making an interactive art project. The workshops are open to participants of different backgrounds, and no programming or electronic skills are required. The idea is to start from scratch and create a complete project by the end of the workshop, including concept, design, electronics / interfacing, and functional programming.

Deconstructing readily-available, cheap electronic devices into interactive tools is more than a lot of fun; the process offers the same visible, hands-on learning and understanding acquired through dissection. By re-purposing second-hand hardware or cheap toys, a commercial, mass-produced product is transformed into a unique device, with potential for new and original means of expression or communication. The boundaries of a  device are set by the manufacturer (planned obsolescence); those limits can be redefined by such creative recycling.

We live in a disposable society. This is most prevalent in large parts of the telecommunications industry. Mobile phones, communication devices, game consoles and PCs have short lifespans. Consumers expect ever-greater functionality from the next generation of each device. Moore’s Law dictates that the complexity of computer chips doubles every 18 months. This causes a rapid decrease in the value of existing electronics. Thus, the dark side of technological progress is the production of endless amounts of electronic waste: e-waste. Although the economic value of obsolete electronics approaches zero, the electronic components themselves can still be useful in other contexts. Hence we need to seek ideas and inspiration for how we can rethink technology and, in particular, communications and ICTs, from sources that are outside traditional engineering domains.

For further information and to book a place on the E-Waste Workshop please use the bookings page →

To book your place in workshops and events please use the general booking form for the festival →

NETworkshop

*This workshop is now fully subscribed and bookings are closed*

Schedule: Monday 25 – Friday 29 June, from 12pm to 18pm (5 day workshop)
Teachers: Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev
Group: 10-15 people

Participation: Free
Required skills: Agility
Required materials: Laptop with ethernet port

Location: CTVR Dunlop Oriel House, Trinity College Dublin

Ask anyone how the postal system works and they would give a vaguely correct description. Few however would come close to describing how email, let alone a computer network itself, actually functions. With this lack of knowledge comes a risk; we lack the practical understanding to effectively read the infrastructural and political implications of our increased dependency on this technology.

In this intensive 5 day workshop Oliver and Vasiliev will teach low level networking for wireline and wireless networks using only command line tools. In doing so, students will learn both how to manipulate computer networks and how they manipulate us. No prior knowledge of computer networking is required. A small scale model of the Internet will be created in class for the purposes of study with which we will interact with another self-built local network. By learning about routing, addressing, core protocols, network analysis, network packet capture and dissection, students will become dexterous and empowered users of  both fixed and wireless networks.

In the second phase of the workshop students will learn to read network topologies as political control structures, seeing how corporations and governments shape and control the way we use computer networks. Students will learn to study these power structures by tracing the flow of packets as they pass over land and sea. Macro-economic and geostrategic speculations will be made. Oliver and Vasiliev will provide all students with a LiveUSB operating system complete with tools familiar to both the hacker and network engineer alike. Complete documentation will be provided. Participating in this workshop requires no prior knowledge of computing or computer networking.

For further information and to book a place on the Networkshop please see send a short expression of interest telling us a little bit about yourself and your reasons for wanting to participate in the workshop to bookings.openhere@gmail.com.

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2.4GHz Workshop | Hack the City

Schedule: Wednesday 27th of June, 10am to 4pm
Teachers: Benjamin Gaulon
Group: Max 10 people

Participation: free

Location: Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin 

The 2.4Ghz project uses a wireless video receiver to hack into wireless surveillance cameras. This device (which is now part of consumers popular products), can be used for wireless surveillance cameras, but it can also be used for parents to monitor their children. Such systems are becoming more popular as they get cheaper.

But what most users of those devices don’t realise is that they are broadcasting the signal.

With the 2.4GHz Workshops participants are invited to explore the CCTV wireless networks of their city by searching and recording 2.4GHz surveillance video signal. The recorded materials is then compiled in a movie of the event.

For further information and to bookings visit the via Science Gallery →

Project website →

To book your place in workshops and events please use the general booking form for the festival →

Workshop: Talking Protest Posters

*This workshop is now fully subscribed and bookings are closed*

Facilitator: Saoirse Higgins
When: Thursday 28th June, 12-3pm
Where: Gallery 2, Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin

Group: Max 10 people
Participation: free
Required Skills: No previous background in programming or electronics required,
Required Materials: Laptop with arduino IDE preinstalled (www.arduino.cc).

*Friday’s workshop is now fully subscribed and bookings are closed – there are still some places available in Saturday’s workshop*

These writing workshops will give participants a chance to respond to themes raised throughout the 4 day festival, which will range from discussions on the digital commons, open spectrum,technolgoical obsolescence, net-art, future networks and the mysterious phenomenon of the ‘transdisciplinary’.
The workshops will be informal, with plenty of tea and comfort provided to ensure lively discussion and uninhibited writing, whether factual or fictive!

The Writing Workshop, in existence since 2007, is now an open pop-up forum within which participants feel safe & encouraged to explore writing through a considered use of language and theme. In the past, participants in The Writing Workshop have been invited to discuss & share ideas of interest to them, with a view to inspiring some interest amongst their peers. Participants have been invited to ‘host’ a workshop, setting a theme or action for the session, framing discussion, inviting participation, developing ideas through discussion and writing exercises.

The Writing Workshop has been facilitated by Jessamyn Fiore (Playwright, Curator), Clay Mcleod Chapman (writer & performer), Wreckio Ensemble (Theatre Company NYC), Bernardine Carroll (Artist), Séan Lynch (artist) & Kevin Barry (writer), amongst many others.

www.thewritingworkshop.wordpress.com

 

 

 

 

“The scope of political resistance in vital networks, then, should be the discovery of these exploits—or better yet: look for traces of exploits and you will find political practices.”
Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker

This panel brings together a number of practitioners across engineering and art to explore forms of ‘exploit’ or tactical engagement with the political structures of communications networks, governments, powerful institutions and systems. Participants will introduce various personal projects that cross the boundaries between critique, activism and speculative design including Newstweek and Namaland.

The discussion will orient itself around some of the following questions:

What do we mean when we speak about the ‘exploit’? We might think of hactivism as a practice that is not just concerned with forms of political resistance but with the projection of possible alternatives from the temporary opening that this exploit produces. How are the projects discussed examples of this?

How can the language of engineering be transformative to art and design practices and discourses (and vice versa)?

‘Hactivism’ as a term was coined in the 1990s. How has the use of digital media to critique political systems and institutions transformed over that time? We might consider on one hand what implications a growing culture of surveillance, stricter IP and DRM regimes and increasingly tiered network architectures have to the importance of hactivism as a political activity.  We could also consider the growing popularity of techno-political activities such as data scraping, and the wide availability of open source technologies and platforms to a hactivist culture.

Sometimes hactivist work is a fully functional system that engages with real world systems in an applied way. Sometimes its function is as a speculative design that provokes cultural imagination and public discussion. How does the hactivist work or system move between these applied and fictional spaces?