In the skies above the city a drone flock drifts into formation broadcasting their local file sharing network.
Part nomadic infrastructure and part robotic swarm they form a pirate internet, an aerial napster, darting between the buildings.
Today we are much closer to our virtual community than we are to our real neighbours. This death of distance has created new forms of city based around ephemeral digital connections rather than physical geography. The infrastructure that drove the development of the city was once large permanent networks of roads, plumbing and park spaces but are now nomadic digital networks, orbiting GPS satellites and cloud computing connections.
Electronic Countermeasures is a project inspired by these new forms of nomadic infrastructure. The project explores the design and manufacture of a flock of interactive autonomous drones that form their own place specific, temporary, local, WIFI community- a pirate internet. These drones would fly off and hover above the city, and create ad hoc connections and networks in a new form of nomadic territorial infrastructure.
'Electronic Countermeasures' was a colaboration between myself, Liam Young, Eleanor Saitta and Superflux.
