Alley Jaunting with the WiFi Guys
Neighbourhood network poetry: “Fort Awesome,” by Jodi
For one weekend in August, an invisible facet of the Trinity Bellwoods neighbourhood in Toronto’s west end became tangible — mapped, manipulable, audible. And all it took to render the unseen visible was a WiFi-equipped PDA, a GPS data logger, a couple of laptops, some nifty programming, and the imaginations of a handful of good-looking geeks. For two steamy summer days, the Wireless Toronto Art Squad gave physical form to a neighbourhood’s wireless Internet network. Hot.
Wireless Toronto’s presence at this year’s Alley Jaunt, a celebration of local art in local garages, may have seemed strange to some — how, exactly, are advocates no-fee wireless Internet access artists? But I saw visitor after visitor convinced, and charmed, after just a few minutes in the WT garage talking to the geeks, making magnetic verse, taking in the epic poem being projected onto the back wall, and listening to the bell-like tones that sounded every time a packet of data zipped along the web of local networks.
The installation got underway with my live-in geek’s walk through the Trinity Bellwoods neighbourhood, his GPS data logger mapping his route while it talked to his PDA, which detected and identified wireless networks in the area. If you’ve ever connected to the Internet wirelessly, you know that you must select your desired network from a list of available ones. Well, after his walk Michael learned that Trinity Bellwoods has about 317 of those networks up and running, most of which have been given unique names — Fort Awesome being my favourite — by the people who established them. It was these network names, and the neighbourhood’s dimension of character they revealed, that allowed WT to turn technology into art.
Alley Jaunters creating neighbourhood network poetry at the Wireless Toronto garage
With network names printed in red and a mix of local street and historical names as well as verbs and conjunctions for “glue” in black, WT made magnets that visitors to their garage could slide around metal boards and arrange into poems, bringing their own vision to the neighbourhood. Meanwhile, a computer hooked up to a projector was randomly weaving the same pool of words from the boards into a poem of epic proportions. Powered by a program Michael wrote (and managed to perfect, I’m told, about twenty minutes before Alley Jaunt officially opened — shhhh), the two-day poem contained some surprisingly coherent turns of phrases considering its author was an automaton (the program, not Michael). It remains, as far as I know, untitled.
The garage showstopper, though, was David’s sound installation. Originating as part of another art project called “The War Bike,” David’s piece of hardware listens for movement of information over wireless networks and converts that movement into sound. The result is that every time someone within range receives an email, Googles, or checks the weather online, a tone sounds. WT’s garage was surrounded by about eight networks that were close enough for David’s hardware to detect, and there was near-constant chiming for an audio backdrop on the afternoon that I spent at Alley Jaunt. “Duck! There goes a Google search flying by,” joked one visitor as he dodged an imaginary packet of data during a particularly cacophonous moment of network traffic.
My favourite visitors to the garage were the ones who made surprising discoveries amongst the sea of words stuck to the mounted boards. Pointing to a red-lettered magnet, these jaunters would exclaim, “Hey! That’s my network.” And then they’d make poetry from it.
Neighbourhood network poetry: “George,” by Jodi
Only one visitor over the whole weekend didn’t buy the idea of techno art. His name was George, and let’s just say he had some some issues that went beyond his not understanding why people might be interested in the process of giving life to a neighbourhood’s wireless network. The more Michael tried to engage him with the idea that people’s naming of their networks reveals something about them and their neighbourhood, the angrier he got. At first other Wireless Torontonians tried to help out in explaining the installation to George, but he was having none of it. It got to the point where those of us assembled couldn’t even bear to watch one of the last visits of the weekend go so awry, and poor Michael was left to fend for himself as people stared at the ground, the walls, or the ceiling. The only thing I could think of to do while averting my gaze was to play with the moment in verse. I didn’t kiss George, but Michael sure looked beat.
Neighbourhood network poetry saves the day.
