Brett Ian Balogh

Brett is a Chicago-based artist making sculptural, aural and cartographic explorations of the electromagnetic landscape. At a time when we increasingly rely on wireless technologies, Brett draws attention to the personal, private and political aspects of our wireless world. He is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he teaches courses in digital fabrication, robotics, physics, sound and electronics. Brett is a free103point9 transmission artist and has exhibited and performed at P.S.1, Diapason, Devotion Gallery, The MCA Chicago and The Hyde Park Arts Center among others.

Workshop

Wilderness Wireless II

One might think radio is more of a feature of the developed world rather than the woods, but radio, as a phenomenon, is a natural resource not unlike the air, land and water of the great outdoors.

The developed world has indeed commandeered radio for use in communications networks from simple transmitter - receiver relationships via code or voice to our modern wifi network infrastructure. This workshop leads participants through the process of constructing and programming their own wireless network node suitably-powered for off the grid operation. With this system, a participant can create an off-the-grid, wireless, wifi hotspot that will serve participant-determined content via an http interface. No registrar or service providers, your network stands alone from the www. The inspiration for this workshop comes from Brett's 2015 work, Wolf, where a solar-charged, battery-powered wireless web server becomes the den of a wilderness spirit-animal.

This workshop is a new counterpart to the do-it-yourself FM transmitter workshops I have been giving in my Do-It-Yourself Broadcast class at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago since 2007, as well as at events such as the Sound Megapolis Festivals and other community venues. The class has traditionally been Fm-radio centric, dovetailing with the international radio, or transmission arts community. Tetsuo Kogawa's notion of polymorphous space is a central theme and the transmitter he designed an essential piece of hardware. My argument for these ideas and techniques was that with little investment in time, energy and resources, infrastructure-free networks could be created. The internet has always had the overhead of way too much infrastructure, from satellites all the way down to copper and fiber. With the proliferation of System-On-Chip devices (SoC's) , open-source router firmwares and advanced mesh network protocols, creating your own wifi network is almost as easy to implement as the FM transmitter. The focus of the workshop is to create a point of interest, a source of information, or a den of a spirit. What is your wireless presence in the wilderness?

Workshop Requirements

Full list of requirements and materials coming soon!