Autonomous, Roaming Swarm Creates Temporary Local Wi-Fi Network

[Eugen Leitl]

http://www.suasnews.com/2012/03/13658/autonomous-roaming-swarm-creates-temporary-local-wi-fi-network/

Autonomous, Roaming Swarm Creates Temporary Local Wi-Fi Network

20 March 2012

By Gary Mortimer

The Electronic Countermeasures project is essentially an autonomous, roaming
Internet swarm, constructed from repurposed UAS.

The project is lead by Liam Young of think tank Tomorrowbs Thoughts Today and
Unknown Fields Division, with assistance from Eleanor Saitta, Oliviu
Lugojan-Ghenciu, and Superflux and was demonstraeted at the Glow Festival in
the Netherlands last year.

Electronic Countermeasures @ GLOW Festival NL 2011 from liam young on Vimeo.

These UAS would fly off and hover above the city, and create ad hoc
connections and networks in a new form of nomadic territorial
infrastructure,b Young says, ba flock of interactive autonomous drones that
form their own place specific, temporary, local, Wi-Fi communityba pirate
Internet.b

Rather than carry satellites to uplink to the greater Internet, Young
imagines his swarm as a highly site-specific means to create peer-to-peer
communication (think text messaging or the old Napster file sharing model).
And in this regard, Young actually views Electronic Countermeasures as a form
of nomadic architectureba roaming infrastructure built from digital beams
rather than steelblike a drifting island of information.

bArchitecture is typically such a slow medium and we wanted to develop
alternative strategies for how an architect may operate and alternative forms
of projects that could play out with much more immediacy,b he writes.