University of Leeds

This paper will introduce how the collaboration of art, anthropology and linguistics visualise Wi-Fi networks as colourful house societies where cyborg live and behave by metaphor. Wi-Fi networks are becoming more and more ubiquitous in modern urban life and the influence reshape our space from physical world to the combination of real world and cyberspace. The special landscapes attract geographers, sociologists and anthropologists to study their social and cultural meaning besides scientific and engineering orientation. The social and humanistic studies focus how Wi-Fi as new-born technology to change our consciousness and daily behaviour. They depict Wi-Fi in one way from human being’s opinion. Actually, both of human beings and Wi-Fi networks contribute a new world appear – cyborg world. To decipher and explain the invisible and non-intuitive change, this paper adopts a novel and artistic way to analyze and represent this phenomena. After 1960s, conceptual artists develop plenty of expression to discuss, highlight or represent abstract concept and issue beyond just represent them by their pen, brush, hammer or other traditional tools. They are eager to apply action, body or multiple medium to express their opinions. Art can explore complicated and subtle social/cultural phenomena by creating visual, acoustic, physical and metaphorical artworks to break the boundary and connect invisible/intangible clues in a meaningful network to mark them. To practice the cyborg hypothesis, the artist were playing cyborg role to access and collect Wi-Fi networks in different cities. The performance and Wi-Fi data were converted in to colour charts which take Wi-Fi access points as house in anthropology study. Claude Levi-Strauss pointed out house is the elementary social unit for understanding social structure and relationship. The result will show Wi-Fi access point is the important medium as house to offer user as cyborg places and position in real world and cyberspace.

“Our branch has already installed Wi-Fi network of “Wireless City” advocated by Taipei City government. Our branch with main library, Wenshan, Tianmu, Wanhua, Sanmin, Mingshen, Zhonglu, Dazhi,Datong, Lizing, Jingxin, Donghu and Daoxiang branch have constructed Wi-Fi network by ourselves to provide readers Wi-Fi service. “(http://www.tpml.edu.tw/TaipeiPublicLibrary/index.php?subsite=chinese&page=chinese-question-coi.php; original language is Chinese and translated by author)

About the art

Art provides artists to create artworks to argue with issues which are even invisible, potential, and hard to notice. From 1950s, conceptual art applied different artistic forms to convey their concepts and ideas. Their artworks involved with contemporary closely and produce distinct systems to interpret modern societies. This art movement crosses the world and produces lots of important and spectacular artworks. Until now, artists face a more complicated world than before. We are not only living in our geographical place and particular time zone. Accompanying with globalization and Internet development, we are breathing in real world/cyberspace via ubiquitous networks, here/there with faster transportation and past/present/future under overabundant hi/story. Artists own various of medium and issues and need to think how and what we create art with our special moment and position in this globalizing world.

3) Colour charts,

Colour chart is prevalent in our daily life. In 2009, Tate Liverpool had a “Colour Chart: Reinventing Colour, 1950 to Today” exhibition. In their introduction:

“…… the commercial colour chart as its point of departure, addressing the impact of mass-produced colour on the art of the past sixty years…… the shifting moment in twentieth-century art when artists began to perceive colour as ‘readymade’ rather than as a vehicle of spiritual or emotional content…… the beauty that occurs when artists assign colour decisions to chance, readymade source, or arbitrary system. Midway through the twentieth century, long-held convictions regarding the spiritual truth or scientific validity of particular colours gave way to an excitement about colour as a standardised commercial product. The Romantic quest for personal expression instead became Andy Warhol’s “I want to be a machine”; the artistry of mixing pigments was eclipsed by Frank Stella’s “straight out of the can; it can’t get better than that.” (http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/exhibitions/colou…)

Colour is a kind of readymade in contemporary society but we have more than colour charts than commercial, such as scientific and industrial. Everyday, when we see computer screens to navigate web sites and web colours are on our eyes. The colours don’t come from nature but from industrial setting. Web pages show colours according to 6-digit hexadecimal coding. Hexadecimal coding are also used on Wi-Fi access points to mark their serial number as known as BSSID (Basic Service Set Identifier) or MAC address (Media Access Control address ). Unlikely, BSSID is 12-digit hexadecimal coding not 6-digit coding. First 6-digit code of BSSID is vendor’s code in IEEE and last 6-digit code is serial number in factory. The combination of two codes produce unique Wi-Fi BSSID code. Because of its unique, it is a good features to express lots of Wi-Fi access points in cities.

To show Wi-Fi access point’s “house” metaphor, Wi-Fi access points will be presented as a house. First issue is “what kind of house” and the following issue is “which media”. For the first, we can follow Ahrens’ study to find frameworks to locate Wi-Fi in society’s situation and find the mapping principles which come from functions, entities and qualities.

a) What framework: individual city has the common and difference on their ideal Wi-Fi plan. The usual commons are government or service provider emphasize Wi-Fi’s convenience,open,popular ,simple,”free” and “freedom/liberty”. Chicago city provide free Wi-Fi in their public libraries, the below is their introduction on their web site:

“Welcome to the Chicago Public Library’s High Speed Wireless Internet System. All locations of the Chicago Public Library offer free wireless access to the Library’s network. Getting online is quick and simple. All you need is a wireless enabled laptop computer, tablet PC or PDA. The Library’s WIFI network is open to all visitors free of charge and without filters. No special encryption settings, user names or passwords are required. “(http://www.chipublib.org/aboutcpl/wifi.php)

Public library in New York City also provide Wi-Fi access:

“All Library locations offer free wireless access (Wi-Fi) in public areas at all times the libraries are open.”(http://www.nypl.org/help/computers-internet-and-wi…)

Hong Kong’e publich library Wi-Fi is part of the government Wi-Fi plan which provide free Wi-Fi access in government’ s building or facilities:

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London public library also has the similar description, but you need to setup proxy to go online which is a bit of complicated than the two:

“All locations of London Public Library, except Glanworth, Lambeth or Northridge, provide wireless…….Wireless Internet access uses radio frequency signals to exchange data between laptop computers and a network without the need for cables. LPL offers free wireless access to the Internet using the WiFi standard, IEEE 802.11b.”(http://www.londonpubliclibrary.ca/node/328).

With the launch of the GovWiFi programme in March to provide free wireless Internet access in government venues citywide, free WiFi services are now available in 31 public libraries across the territory. The programme will proceed in phases and more public libraries are expected to be WiFi friendly by the middle of this year.

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Like Hong Kong, Wi-Fi in Taipei public library was part of government Wi-Fi plan, but the service is run by commercial Wi-Fi company and not every library has this service. The following introduction was completed when library wi-fi was free: