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**Chapter summary:** Introduction to the thesis
**Chapter subject:** Explain the importance on researching decentralized protocols in spatial practices
**Existing key projects to analyze:**
- Covid measures making city centers being abandoned
- The rise of community practices and disconnected practices as means to overcome the restrictions
- The quest technological autonomy parallel to what the economical crisis was in 2009 by creating Bitcoin
Articles and works cited:
Interviews to do (if needed):

## Abstract
In the framework of my research, Decentralized technologies is a term used to describe digital and spatial technologies which challenge the traditional centralized server model of prevailing software-hardware infrastructures. Examples of this range from Blockchain, which has been implemented successfully as alternative economic models for the current global monetary exchange, community peer to peer WiFi networks for participatory urbanism and more recently websites that could be hosted by their creators and be forked by others seamlessly. Peer to Peer (P2P) is a process or dynamic that can be found in many communities and movements self-organizing around the co-creation of culture and knowledge. Examples of this are the free/open source software movements and the Open Design and Open Source Architecture movement.

The history of informatics has been shaped by a constant flux between decentralized phases and centralizing phases such as the one experienced today with GAFAM and BATX, accumulating value over the exchanges of users and data on the web. Endeavours of centralization are also seen in the plans of some actors to propose urbanistic master plans through network infrastructures with the promise of efficiency. Decentralized technologies have been designed with a set of principles and values that contrast with the current political, labor and social ones of today’s world and are potentially the tools for a new phase of informatics.

This thesis proposal elaborates on an action based design research, operating a practical and theoretical inquiry on the roles of decentralized technologies and Peer to Peer networks within creative practices. The research aims to expand these artistic and design fields/practices from a technical perspective/standpoint producing both new knowledge and forms of social scenarios.

# Introduction

> “The entire city revolves around a place that is both forbidden and indifferent, an abode masked by vegetation, protected by moats, inhabited by an emperor whom no one ever sees: literally, no one knows who does ever see him……Its centre is no more than an evaporated ideal whose existence is not meant to radiate any kind of power, but to offer its own empty centre to all urban movement as a form of support, by forcing perpetual traffic detours. Thus, it appears as an image that unfurls again and again in endless circles, around an empty core.”
>
> Barthes, Roland, L’Empire des Signes

In March 2020, Governments in Europe called their population to cease all activities where humans interact with others as the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus was expanding. Nearly a third of the globe was under some form of coronavirus lockdown [^1] in their houses for those who had the chance to have shelter. City centers, theaters, dance halls, music venues, offices and all place where human interaction could take place where abbandoned and as the world needed to continue its operation a new form of virtual world was being promoted as one to inhabit while the crisis was being overcomed. This virtual world mediated by computer cameras and software was meant to replace or create the feeling of a world that allowed for individuals to work and share with others in distant manners. As the crisis unfolded, there was societal change with all the virtual tools that supported the lockdown periods from the acceleration of e-commerce and work from home to the loss of trust in experts and institutions and in technological giants.(citation)

Population was now confronted to use software and tools that were sometimes imposed by their employers, the concept of the "killer app" was meaningless when almost every aspect of life was mediated by some technological interface. The technological transformation in this time of adversity accelerated a process of digitalization that was already taken place in all the world since the 1970 with the invention of computers and their placement in all parts of human interactions from leisure to work. The societal shift that took place here was accompanied and supported by the revelation that ones autonomy to the tools of daily life was no dissociated from the ones who produced them as a service.

Censorship-resistance, user-owned data, persistent and securely pseudonymous and other concepts that problematised the use of this tools and their use of data became more prominent in the public eye (citation) creating a collective feeling of change. People discovered Open Source tools and understood their potential to overcome some of the major problems but also it became evident that the protocols used that backed the tools they were using had a fundamental problem that had to be solved not only from a technical change but also a societal change: The server-client model used for the internet network was one of the causes of data centralisation and making informatics a service that created profit to few companies.

The internet has been in development since the 60's and has been conceived since the very beginning as an scalable network where everyone could give in their view as on how to make it evolve. It is however dependant on HTTP, IP, TCP among other low level protocols for its operation and also a robust infrastructure that needed incentives to be put on place. Incentives in this sense

Artists and designers since the early 70's have been experimenting with the creative uses of this protocols to understand what are the potential of the

For the means of this thesis I would use Decentralising technologies to refer to the set of technologies that started to be implemented, installed since the begining of the internet. although the term itself could also be traced to the first telegraph posts installed in the western hemisphere.
The same concept of decentralization from Tim Berners Lee was used to contruct the vast infrastructure of Data Centers tha thost the websites of millions without asking much about the content that was hosted there. In this sense centralising this service to information enouraged non technical users to decentralised knowledge, indeed as said in my abstract theres and interplay between Decentralisation and centralisation in mass computing which this thesis aims to explore trying to understand trough the gaze of the assamblage of the internet as public demands also technical knowledge on how to put up a hosting platform, connected to the internet.

Visual design in the begining of the in browser was libreated and then

[^1]: World Economic Forum. ‘Nearly 3 Billion People around the Globe under COVID-19 Lockdowns’. Accessed 29 November 2022. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/todays-coronavirus-updates/.

## Context

This chapter aims at situating the doctoral thesis within the different actors and my designerly practice. In 2017 Geneva University of Arts and Design partner with the doctoral school of Architecture and Sciences of the City at the Polytechnical School of Lausanne to develop a joint program for creative practioners to be part of an academic context that allow them to validate a PhD title. Within EPFL I was part of the Media x Design Laboratory LDM which is an interdisciplinary design and research laboratory that examines the effects of digitalization on architecture and contemporary cities.[^2]. Since some years the lab is a remarkable institution within Switzerland and internationally on Parametric and Generative Architecture as well as Machine Learning as in urban design constructions. I graduated in 2019 from HEAD in Media Design and followed by founding an indepedant research duo Station of Commons alongside Gregoire Rousseau aiming to research on digital commoning practices, situating ourselves as creative practioners exploring the uses of radical technologies. Our intention became relevant for others and as of 2022 it now a collective formed of 6 other people among them sound artists, architects and computer engineers.

[^2]: https://www.epfl.ch/labs/ldm/