The Opportunity

When the Turkish government began used DNS manipulation to block access to Twitter in 2014, ongoing interference with internet communications was relatively unheard of, especially among aspiring EU member states. Suddenly, the limitations of internet-dependent information distribution was on full display, leading protesters to spray-paint Google DNS addresses on the sides of buildings as a means to circumvent the ban.

Though by that time projects like PirateBox and LibraryBox were becoming more robust, there were still few examples of offline wireless networks really being used to distribute news stories. Thus, for the You Are Here project, we sought to combine the immersive and locally focused experience of audio storytelling with the independence and resilience of offline wireless connection points. In addition to providing both intimacy and privacy, these nodes could be updated manually, if needed, in order to distribute digital information even when the internet was unavailable.