Colourful Wi-Fi Network

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.

These public library provide/provided Wi-Fi services and emphasize it is free and open to all except for Taipei. But all of them stress all or almost all libraries has this service. The ubiquitousness is what they want to stress. This concept and point also appear in commercial corporates, for example all Starbucks Cafes in these cities provide Wi-Fi service by particular telecom companies. In London, BT replace T-Mobile to run Wi-Fi service at all Starbucks (http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/899492/BT-launch…). AT&T offer Wi-Fi access in American Starbucks (http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9958942-7.html).

These cities also have or had city-wide Wi-Fi plans which are implemented by volunteer in New York City, governments in Chicago, London ( both suspend), telecom company in Hong Kong, and BTO (build to order) between government and company in Taipei.

High density and ubiquitousness are pursued by these cities and they create a framework “Wi-Fi exists everywhere.” This framing strategy make us look house metaphor with “ubiquitousness” consideration. Originally, houses and Wi-Fi access points has limited space and paricular borders.

Actually, the “ubiquitousness” is an image like social control of country, and Wi-Fi infrastructure is like one kind of “Ideological State Apparatuse” proposed by Louis Pierre Althusser. Besides state/government, powerful telecom giants also give us this kind of ideology. Marx and Engels said,”…the ruling ideas: i.e. the class, which is the dominant material force in society, is at the same time its dominant intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production……” (Marx and Engels, 1974: 64-5; quoted from Williams 2003:37). The ubiquitousness is the ideal and it is always connected to the word “convenience.” In Chicago and London, city government aimed to push municipal Wi-Fi hotspots around the city or particular area (along south bank in London) but unpredictable expense force these cities to suspend their project. The same economical problem also appeared in Taipei but Taipei ask the private company to run this service. The company corporate with convenience stores, Cafe and different companies to maintain its business. Until now, the company Q-ware makes Wi-Fi hotspots penetrate into Taipei environment.

NYCWireless, a non-profit organization aims to help New York city to develop the public and open Wi-Fi networks. NYCWireless has the idealist’ goal and it is like that they ask everyone open their door to share Wi-Fi access.

Hong Kong’s telecom giant “PCCW” controls the market and they provide their Wi-Fi for university, companies and individual citizen. Hong Kong government installed their own Wi-Fi network in governmental premises.

The above governments, organizations and companies offer a framework for Wi-Fi building project. No matter the projects are successful or fail, all of them take Wi-Fi as a media which can materialize space ownership, Internet resource and communication.

But government or telecom monopoly can’t control Wi-Fi dominantly.

Adrain Mackenzie(2006) consider Wi-Fi owns a flow of meaning and he applied (1)ideas of place, such as airport,(2)forms of externalization, such as Wi-Fi network cards,(3) figures attached to social distribution, for example home users to “outline the growth and dynamics of Wi-Fi as cultural flow of meanings concerned with data and people in movement (Adrian 2006:796).” Wi-Fi is like traditional mass media which are only controlled by few administrators or companies. For example, NYCWireless’s open and free wireless project is an action to share the restricted resource to escape from telecom companies’ exploitation. As NYCWireless, Freifunk(http://start.freifunk.net/) also help residents to build and share Wi-Fi resource. Because Wi-Fi access points are cheap and easy available, they provide citizens to create their Wi-Fi network as telecom companies and government did.

FON(http://www.fon.com/en/) is famous for it provide their cheap Wi-Fi access point – FONERA – to help users share their Wi-Fi signal and users could be a free provider or a small telecom company to earn money. Since 2008, FON corporates with BT in UK to provide BT subscriber, including BT Total Broadband and BTOpenzone customers to share the service “freely”. As they said “BT FON is an initiative between BT and FON that aims to give all its members access to wireless broadband wherever they are in the world. This is possible because all BT FON members agree to securely share a portion of their Wi-Fi bandwidth through a separate channel on their wireless router with other members who are in range of their wireless router. These wireless routers become known as “BT FON hotspots(http://www.btfon.com/support/faqs#point01).”