P2P Foundation

The Foundation for Peer to Peer Alternatives

Dead Drops: An Artful Peer-to-Peer File-Sharing Network

via: Xenophilia

“Dead drops,” a new social initiative devised by German architect and artist Aram Bartholl, creates an offline peer-to-peer file-sharing network through “injecting USB flash drives into walls, buildings and curbs.”

Bartholl, who is a New York City resident for Eyebeam, a nonprofit organization focusing on art and technology, explains the project in a brief blog post:

‘Dead Drops is an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space. I am ‘injecting’ USB flash drives into walls, buildings and curbs [accessible] to anybody in public space. You are invited to go to these places (so far 5 in NYC) to drop or find files on a dead drop. Plug your laptop to a wall, house or pole to share your favorite files and data. Each dead drop contains a readme.txt file explaining the project. ‘Dead Drops’ is still in progress, to be continued here and in more cities. Full documentation, movie, map and ‘How to make your own dead drop’ manual coming soon! Stay tuned.

Here’s to hoping that nobody infects these USB drives with viruses, intentionally or unintentionally. …

The term “dead drop” is generally associated with espionage, referring to the secret transfer of information or items by indirect “dead drop” rather than two parties meeting in person. A “live drop” requires the two parties to actually meet.


A comment from the artist who started it all:

I have to admit I wasn’t prepared for this  unbelievable feedback I am got in the recent days. The preview post became a major release! This means while I try to hold up against a journalistic DNS attack I am putting together this site on the fly with my left hand:

http://deaddrops.com


More links: 

The original blog post announcing the initiative, by the artist

Some images on Flickr




Views: 35

Reply to This

Badge

Loading…

© 2024   Created by Josef Davies-Coates.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service