work sample 3: WiFi.Bedouin (2003)
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The design challenge of this project was to create a functioning apparatus that meaningful explores notions of physical proximity, locality, and community in such a way as broaden the range of possible ways wireless networks can construct meaningful and enthralling hybrid physical-virtual space. > PROJECT DESCRIPTION WiFi.Bedouin is a wearable, mobile 802.11b node disconnected from the global Internet. It forms a WiFi "island Internet" challenging conventional assumptions about WiFi and suggesting new architectures for digital networks that are based on physical proximity rather than solely connectivity. Most significantly, WiFi.Bedouin facilitates the creation of a truly mobile web community. The WiFi.Bedouin consists of a small backpack containing an adapted 802.11b access point, RF amplifier, custom power supply and a PowerBook G4 running custom software, MovableType Blog software, a custom chat application, Apache 2.0, the Tomcat Java Servlet Container, and WiJacker - a custom built application that translates arbitrary named URLs to local services. A PocketPC PDA - the iPAQ 2200 - is mounted to the front of the WiFi.Bedouin pack, and is configured with its own 802.11 card. The PDA is used as a visual display for a custom GPS mapping application (mStory), for node WiFi activity, and for simple configuration. WiFi.Bedouin's "technology aesthetic" is to provide a mode of operation though which it becomes possible to re-imagine the common technical architectures, conceptual idioms, and marketing/advertising representations of WiFi. The project does this most notably with one provocative twist it is an active WiFi Hot Spot, but it is not connected to the Internet. In this way, it is very much like a "network island", severed from the active and inhabited virtual place we call the Internet. > MOTIVATION With the proliferation of "WiFi Hot Spots" and the mobile devices that access them, the public and private space surrounding us has become literally soaked through with Internet data. The promise of ubiquitous access to the Internet from anywhere, anytime is quickly being fulfilled. WiFi.Bedouin is designed to be functional as well as provocative, expanding the possible meaning and metaphors about access, proximity, wireless and WiFi. This access point is not the web without wires. Instead, it is its own web, an apparatus that forces one to reconsider and question notions of virtuality, materiality, displacement, proximity and community. WiFi.Bedouin is meant to suggest that what are often considered two entirely separate realms - virtual and physical worlds - are actually a much more entangled hybrid space. The physical, wearable design of the project was inspired by the proliferation of functional-fashionables - designed objects that have utility while they are also suitable for wearing about. I also draw inspiration from a play on the expression mobile internet, often used in marketing evangelicals promoting new portable, mobile devices. My twist on this design is to make what appears to be a local, constrained internet (in that it relies upon the conventional means of access to web-based services the web browser) and make that particular internet mobile.
more Julian Bleecker work samples: > work sample 1: WiFi.ArtCache (2004-2006) > work sample 2: MobileScout (2004) > work sample 4: PDPal, Eyebeam Edition (2002)
slowLab work samples:
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