---
# System prepended metadata

title: Open-Source Para-Structures
tags: [Articles, Open Calls, '2022']

---

# Open-Source Para-Structures

###### tags:`Open Calls`,`Articles`,`2022`

As of 2022, 18 billion devices use WiFi to create local area networks mainly to connect to the internet. It is now possible to seamlessly create a WiFi network thanks to devices such as Arduino’s, Raspberry PI and even consumer products such as smart phones. WiFi is part of the assemblages of networks that makes part of our daily life and is like an ambient network which has been invisibilised since its creation. What are the potential uses of WiFi as a creative medium? How to foster technological agency through an ambient network? How can Wifi shape and forms commons spaces and inclusivity. These are the questions that Open-Source Para-Structures aim to look into.

These digital instances situate ourselves within the private infrastructure of global communication, and at the same time on its own margin of operation. An Open Source Virtual Private Network provides a para-structure aside the global logic of concentration of control and power, sometimes referred as the digital panopticon. That very practice of emancipation operates at the core of Station of Commons; the development and re-appropriation of the digital means of communication, distribution and production.

During this workshop we will learn how to install Pi-Hole, an Ad-Blocker software that allows for all the devices in connected to its wifi network to block all advertising; PirateBox a DIY anonymous offline file-sharing and communications system built with free software and inexpensive off-the-shelf hardware and Zerotier, an encrypted Peer-to-Peer technology for encrypted communication. 

Objectives:
- Question the the concept of digital autonomy and collective infrastructure.
- Question the uses and properties of communication protocols
- Question the materiality of non-tangigle infrastructures and their creative potential.

The workshop will be designed according to the proposed time allocated by the program organisers.

**Planning:**

1. Present us + Station of Commons 10min
2. Install Zerotier
- Situating Microacts 
4. Install Pi-Hole
- Situating Microacts
5. install PirateBox
- Situating Microacts
6. Discussion



