TEACH YOU, TEACH ME: A RESEARCH ON THE PRESENCE AND POTENTIAL FOR ALTERNATIVE USES OF TECHNOLOGY IN EVERYDAY LIFE, ON THE STREETS OF BELGRADE

Make me! festival will feature a series of workshops on building and using different DIY devices, with a critical reflection on the presence of technology in public space. The workshops are intended for tech-savvy women and girls but also enthusiasts of all genders with no previous knowledge. Artists and activists gathered around independent, self-organised initiatives from the Netherlands, Austria and Serbia will teach a wide range of subjects, from listening to electromagnetic waves and analysis of wireless internet traffic to the use of satellite signal for GPS and solar energy. The attendants will learn how to make and modify devices for receiving and storing the data they gather. Through one and two days workshops where “everyone teaches everyone”, we will explore the presence of technology on the streets of Belgrade. We will play with the potential of alternative uses of technology in everyday life.

The main goal is to question what is given and imposed by the technology, through an approach on the intersection between technology, art and activism. The workshops are meant to enable and encourage the participants to work with everyday technology and adapt it to their needs. They are not expected to show high technical literacy but curiousity to get to know and possibly modify technology that is available to everyone.

The target group are primarily girls with an experience in some kind of activism and an interest in art and technology. It is expected from the participants to share the interest in ‘breaking the box’ and ‘looking inside’, and to have an affinity towards learning new skills. One of important outcomes of this programme will be to create and strengthen a network that would connect the ones who are active on this scene. Through this network, we expect to be able to can support each other even long after the events have ended.

The workshops will take place over the course of 4 days, with two or three workshops sometimes running in parallel. The main programme is meant for women only. It is thought of as a ‘women for women’ exchange of knowledge. The programme would be open in its parts for participation of everyone interested, with the idea to open up our activities and content to everyone we are sharing our everyday environment with, because this is what the workshops are about.

a workshop by Stefanie Wuschitz (Mz Baltazar’s Laboratory)

This is a hacker workshop to build charismatic robots from old switches, motors, broken mobile phones and tiny pieces of hardware. We will create shaking little angst robots that interact with sound and touch. We will use micro-controlers at this basic electronics workshop, and we will re-use materials to implement them into circuits and small voodoo dolls (the angst robots). At the end we will experiment with sustainable energy resources and how they can make our angst-robots self-contained. If possible, bring old Barbie dolls!

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pictures from the workshop
11. 06. 2011.

a lecture by Katharina Jesberger (Mz Baltazar’s Laboratory)

video collectives in the 70s – lecture and panel discussion

My lecture will provide an introduction to some of the world-wide spread video movements of the 70s, their ideas, their strategies, their activities, focusing primarily on the Italian Laboratorio di Comunicazione Militante (Laboratory of Militant Communication), who concentrated on the language of mass media. In the panel I want to invite you to discuss the analogies and differences to hackerspaces and activism today, given the changes in social context and technological development on one hand and the similar contemporary issue on the other (e.g. surveillance, manipulation of media messages through visual codes etc.).

a workshop by Gordan Savičić and Danja Vasiliev

Encrypted Wi-Fi networks are private spaces carrying simple radio waves into the ether. Still, they can be received with normal equipment in public space, far beyond your apartment’s room. Who and what is claiming the ether? Are waves an emerging transmission carrier reshaping the definition of public and private space?

Sometimes we can still enjoy the luck of finding an open Wi-Fi network that some generous geek left free or occupied house-wife forgot to secure. Sadly, most recent wireless access points come off the shop shelves being pre-configured with rather strong encryption. We believe that regardless the settings the devices sold with, people still might not mind us using their wireless for the common good. All we need to do is to help them share it.

On another hand the concept of wireless security is a flaky topic to begin with. Anything what is in the air (like the radio waves) can be captured and decoded. There are no barriers for anyone to tap into anyone else’s radio network and with the power of modern computers cracking the encryption takes very symbolic time to complete.

The workshop showcases the ease of cracking WEP/WPA wireless network encryptions as a way for understanding the risks of Wi-Fi networks and will provide participants with handy computer skill for the precarious offline times. After the participants taught the easy ways of securing your own wireless environment.

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photos from the workshop
12. 06. 2011.

a workshop by Gordan Savičić and Danja Vasiliev

During the “Data carving” workshop, participants will explore the contents of found hard-disks. Using methods borrowed from computer digital forensics participants will peek into the lives of others – former owners of scavenged hardware. Hard-disks as the most intimate part of any computer system. In case of a personal computer – the most intimate part of person’s life. Deductively, we will try to discuss and recreate “psyche” portraits of those strangers and restore the time-lines that otherwise would have faded away. In the times of paranoiac privacy awareness we forget that online is not the only place to loose your identity. Although more and more personal data is stored on the Internet servers it is still written to hard-disks. There were several reports about Internet servers hard-disks ending up on flea-markets, being sold for cheap money.

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photos from the workshop
11. 06. 2011.

a workshop by Sabrina Basten and Audrey Samson (Genderchangers)

You have things you can’t bare to throw away? Migrate the sentimental value by re-purposing components into a wearable electromagnetic wave sniffer!

Participants are expected to bring an old electronic object (preferably with coils in it) to dismantle. The coils are going to be re-purposed into pick up microphones (mics that pick up electromagnetic frequencies). We will then build an amplifier from components. After that we build the circuit into a wearable device (re-using the old components of the dismatled object). We end the day by a walk through the city and shopping areas discovering the electromagnetic environment.

The ELECTROMAGNETIC CITYSCAPE is about understanding how things work, breaking things open, working with the physical leftovers of planned obsolescence, and re-incarnating old components. It is also about exploring the hidden world of omnipresent electromagnetic waves.

No previous knowledge about electronics is required.

please bring to the workshop: an appliance to dismantle (old radios, TVs, VHS players, mobiles, tape recorders or kitchen appliances) and if you have, a piece of clothing to modify; if you have your own, bring soldering irons, solder and de-solder, tools like plyers, cutters, screw drivers

Participants: 8-10

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photos from the workshop
10. and 11. 06. 2011.

MAKE ME!

BELGRADE, 10TH – 14TH OF JUNE
CULTURAL CENTRE REX, JEVREJSKA 16
FESTIVAL AND WORKSHOPS
TEACH YOU, TEACH ME: A RESEARCH IN THE PRESENCE AND POSSIBILITIES FOR AN ALTERNATIVE USE OF EVERYDAY TECHNOLOGY ON THE STREETS OF BELGRADE
FOR MORE INFORMATION: NA@PRAVI.ME

a workshop by Darija Medić

This workshop will demonstrate the possibilities to use GPS software and hardware for playing with different referential systems; Participants will work with locative media in urban environment and examine their abilities to navigate through the physical space of information.

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pictures from the workshop
10. 06. 2011.

10. – 14. june, cultural centre REX, Jevrejska 16, Belgrade

Friday, 10th

• 16h – 20h Electromagnetic Cityscapes I, Audrey Samson & Sabrina Basten
• 16h – 20h Navigate me, Darija Medić

Saturday, 11th

• 12h – 16h Electromagnetic Cityscapes II, Audrey Samson & Sabrina Basten
• 14h – 18h Angst Dolls, Stefanie Wuschitz
• 16h – 20h Data Carving, Danja Vasiliev & Gordan Savičić

Sunday, 12th

• 12h – 16h Breaking the Waves, Danja Vasiliev & Gordan Savičić
• 14h – 17h DisAssemble, computer crash course, group workshop
• 17h – 20h Composing with Open Source software, Helga Hofbauer

Monday, 13th

• 12h – 16h Solar, Selena Savić
• 14h – 18h Text only, Maria Karagianni
• 20h – 22h Between Art and Activism a panel discussion, Katharina Jesberger

a workshop by Maria Karagianni (Genderchangers)

Introduction to the command line, interaction with the computer throught textual commands only

The “Text Only” workshop will introduce participants to interacting with the computer operating system from a command line interface. In Windows terminology one would run a DOS “box”, while in Linux and Mac OS X the terminal window gives access to a prompt from which to send commands to the computer. The more familiar one gets in this text only environment the more you can do with your computer.

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photos from the workshop
13. 06. 2011.