ÃŽle Sans Fil

TECHNICAL PROJECTS

WiFiDog

The Wifidog project is an open-source embeddable captive portal solution. It uses the physical limitations of WiFi as an advatage to encourage hyper-local social interactions through location-based content and location-based services. Click here or here for examples of the location-specific splash pages which users are forced to see before they can access the web. Some of the content we show to users are location-specific images via Flickr. Users can send pictures to the portal pages of specific ISF hotspots by using the appropriate tag. Wifidog will grab them via Flickr’s API and present them on the portal page to subsequent users. Another source of dynamic interactive locative content are any RSS feeds from either the owner or other local sources.

The Wifidog project was started by Ile Sans Fil and is now in use by over 30 communities and businesses across four continents. It can also aggregate and present other content besides Flickr and Rss feeds. Click here for our central server.

For more information on Wifidog please visit www.wifidog.org

HAL

“Hub Artistique Local”, or HAL, is a new open source platform to distribute audio and video content to wifi network user. HAL assists Montrealers in discovering local artists and media producers by making their works available via wireless jukeboxes located at select Ile Sans Fil hotspots. As easy to use as opening up iTunes, HAL brings high-speed streaming of video and audio together with location-relevant media.

For more information please visit HAL.

ARTISTIC PROJECTS

Through our infrastructure and our participation, ISF has made the following projects possible.

Through partnership with the Mobile Digital Commons Network:

Sonic Scene

Through partnership with MDCN.
Using the ISF hotspots in Montreal, Sonic Scene explores and creates personalized, mobile audio, video and textual experiences of the city. Working with artists Michelle Teran, Kate Armstrong, Michelle Kasprzak and tobias c. van Veen (Project Lead), Sonic Scene is an artistic intervention into both the physical and wireless city that aims to develop experiential, cultural content for public wireless reception. A fragmented artwork (sound, video, text) is distributed across a selection of ISF hotspots, encouraging the user to drift from hotspot to hotspot to experience the totality of the work. Each fragment is unique to its hotspot, developing a relation between wireless art and its physical space—one must travel to a certain hotspot to experience a particular fragment. Conversely, the casual user will encounter art on various ISF hotspots alongside information and Net access, thereby encouraging the creative use of wireless networks.
SonicScene

DigitalCities

Through partnership with MDCN. As public space, digital networks offer new opportunities for public participation, dialogue and intervention. This project will create a network database to support MDCN projects as well as conduct research with sensors in the urban environment. We will prototype a series of low-cost, task specific, wireless sensors capable of capturing and measuring urban stimuli by sending text, sound, and image over the internet to a newly established urban database, TRANS.ACT 1.3. The database will house a range of media objects contributed by users that can modified be in relation to the data collected by the sensors and used to trigger events in the database that will activate zones of public dialogue and exchange.
DigitalCities

CitySpeak

CitySpeak is an investigation of how data acquired from an urban environment’s virtual networks can be used to investigate the same urban space’s physical environment. Using the Ile Sans Fil hotspots in Montreal, CitySpeak will select several locations in the city that are rich nodes of both virtual and real-world traffic and sample the geo-encoded data related to these particular locations. The dynamic qualities of the data will be processed using a database called Next Text to construct “texts? that interpret the data and to determine how the texts will be represented visually. The resulting stream of text will be layered back onto the locations using both very intimate (PDAs) and very public (large-scale projections) technology.
Cityspeak

InSite

In-Site Montréal is a collection of site-specific art presented on the portal pages of five wireless internet hotspots in the Île Sans Filnetwork. Artists Nicolas Fleming, Maria Legault, and Virginie Laganière have created art works that can be viewed simply by logging in to the Île Sans Fil hotspots shown on the map. These playful works respond directly to the hotspots that they are situated in, so the users are treated to a creative and innovative viewpoint on the local environment they may not have expected. Curated by Michelle Kasprzak, a new media curator and Ile Sans Fil volunteer.
InSite

Terminus1525.ca takes the City!

Ile Sans Fil, Wireless Toronto and ZAP Quebec users are being introduced to art by young Canadians when they use any of the 125 free, public, wireless hotspots operated by the three groups. terminus1525 is a ground-breaking project that provides free virtual studios to young Canadian artists. Using the terminus1525 studios, artists can network with each other whilst also promoting their work to the general public. By showcasing the work of the terminus1525 artists, Ile Sans Fil is expanding their potential audience even further, and enhancing the knowledge of the latest trends in emergent art for its users.
Terminus1525

Elections07 - Québéc

Election07 is a project realized in collaboration between Ile Sans Fil and ZAP Quebec. The goal of Election07 is to use the free wireless service operated by the two groups to engage and inform their users about the upcoming election.

News items are automatically collected from all* the political parties. They are automatically displayed on the portal pages of ISF and ZAP Quebec. Since the users of the two groups have to pass through these portal pages before gaining access to the internet, they are automatically informed about the latest news from all of the parties. The news items are also collected and displayed at in order to be accessible to non-wireless users.
Election07

ACADEMIC PROJECTS

CWIRP - Community Wireless Infrastructure Research Project

The Community Wireless Infrastructure Research Project project brings together an interdisciplinary team of academic researchers and community and government partners to engage in in-depth case studies of public/community-based ICT initiatives in order to document and assess the various models, best practices and benefits of public ICT infrastructure provision in Canada.
www.cwirp.org

CRACIN - Canadian Research Alliance for Community Innovation and Networking

CRACIN brings together community informatics researchers, community networking practitioners and government policy specialists from across Canada to document and assess the achievements of community-based ICT initiatives.
Research Partner 2004-2007
www.cracin.ca

LabCMO - L’Université du Québec à Montréal

Research Partner 2005-2006
cmo.uqam.ca