by David McCallum

tags:  technology  bicycle  audio 

“The view from the outcropping was stunning. The village had grown to a town, fast on its way to being a city. A million lights twinkled. The highway cut a glistening ribbon of street lamps through the night, a straight line slicing the hills and curves. There were thousands of people down there, all connected by a humming net-work—a work of nets, cunning knots tied in a cunning grid—of wire and radio and civilization.”

Cory Doctorow, from Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

Warwalking—augmenting my
childhood

When I bought my first wireless card, I took my computer for a walk. My brother and I wandered the streets of our childhood with the computer nestled in a makeshift harness so the screen could still be seen while we wandered. We were wardriving, sort of—we were wardriving without a car.

After going down these streets that I had been walking, biking, and playing on my entire life, I had the sense of uncovering an entirely unknown facet of the neighbourhood. What had previously seemed like normal stretches of street, or areas that had held only personal significance, suddenly took on an entirely different meaning as we discovered secret networks. Secret in that they were invisible and unknown to those who didn’t seek them out. More than half of the networks were unencrypted.

When I would later walk through the neighbourhood without the computer, the streets and houses had taken on new meaning. It was as if the streets carried more information than had ever been apparent. Certain houses could no longer be passed without acknowledging hidden features, such as their network’s name—which often seemed an inside joke (why would someone name their network monkey?). This neighbourhood where I had grown up, the familiar streets on which I’d played for many years, were suddenly new again, as if I’d just moved in. I didn’t realise that I was drifting. I didn’t even know what drifting was. But I think, neither do the the geeks who wardrive—but they do it because of this feeling of the drift.

The beginnings of the Warbike

The Warbike began with the accidental discovery that the wardriving tool, Netstumbler, could send MIDI data based on the networks it discovered. Once I found out it would send information on the strength of networks in the vicinity, I wrote a small patch in Pd to make simple squeaking sounds based on the strength of the signals.

Relocating to Europe had given me my first experience of a more bicycle-oriented urban culture. Göteborg, Sweden is a bike city; the entire downtown, and much of the surrounding area has dedicated bike paths alongside the roads. This was new to me. In Canada, bikes are something that only kids ride before they can drive a car.

I tested the simple squeaking patch during bike rides to and from my school, with my laptop turned on in my backpack, and the volume turned up full. What I experienced during these rides was what I would later recognise as a psychogeographical experience of the neighbourhoods. This sonic experience was completely different from other wardriving forays. Suddenly, the invisible networks could be heard and felt as the backpack would squeak and squawk as I cycled through them. It would chirp in high pitches with high signal strength, and rumble in low bass pitches when in the presence of weak networks. I was no longer observing the networks—I was experiencing them.

The knowledge of the placement of wireless networks in a neighbourhood is not simply empiric—it changes one’s perception of that space. The awareness of these invisible communication webs alters the way that one perceives and associates with the area. As in my original experiments walking, I could no longer ride through certain areas without wondering about the owners and the activities of the networks I’d found.

The Warbike project was an effort to share this experience with others, this movement through these invisible communications infrastructures. In July 2005, I was able to develop that project during a residency at the Ottawa-based artist-run centre Artengine.

Physical construction

The Warbike’s brain was a Hewlett Packard iPaq PDA, chosen for reasons of portability and battery life. At first, I wanted to use headphones plugged into the iPaq. This appeared to be the ideal method for presenting the sound to the participant. Headphones act as a barrier between the participant and his environment. Closed-chambered headphones provide a strong sound-barrier against external interference and environmental noise. If the participant was to be thought of as only navigating the wireless infrastructure, the sound of the sonification through the headphones could be thought of as his sensory perception, guiding him through the web.

Although immersing the participant in the sonification of the networks might seem ideologically pure when representing this communications world, separating the participant from his physical environment removes a large portion of the psychogeographical effects of the experience. Humans don’t perceive their environment solely through visual cues. A large portion of our perception of space comes through the ears. These are not only audio cues about events around us, but ambient information such as ambient noise and pressure, helping us to develop a sense of the shape of the surrounding space and our orientation within it.

The decision was made to sew speakers into the shoulder straps of a backpack, on either side of the participant’s head. The choice of the speakers over the headphones was a compromise between the ideals of the project and the realities of implementing an interactive project to the project. The speakers do provide a certain characteristic of their own—they turn the Warbike participant into a sound maker, and not merely an isolated listener. The rider becomes an active participant not only of the project, but of the city’s soundscape.

Sound design

The Warbike’s sound has three components, to reflect the three classes of information. The first represents the presence of new networks, the second is the packet information, and the third is an ambient sound representing the ratio of encrypted networks in the vicinity.

I used FM synthesis for all of the sound layers. The presence of new networks was represented by long, medium-register-pitched, bell-like sounds. Sometimes it could sound as though the Warbike was a set of wind chimes, and the packets were wind blowing through the chimes, triggering a random melody. The quality of these sounds depended on the encryption status of the network. My working theory was that unencrypted networks were probably unlocked unintentionally, left in the default, unencrypted state by clueless owners. These networks were represented by distorted bell-like sounds. Closed networks were represented by pure, clean sounds. This may seem counter-intuitive, to represent the closed networks with the pleasant sounds, but it is important to note that the Warbike is not meant to be a tool for finding open networks, merely a psychogeographical experience and educational tool.

Packet data, to display the activity of the networks, was represented as short, high-register, woodblock-type sounds. The more active the networks, the crazier it sounded.

The general encryption status of networks in the vicinity was represented by a low-pitched rumbling. The more unencrypted networks in the area, the more the sound rumbled. The great thing about the speakers being placed on the shoulders is that this layer wasn’t experienced as a sound so much as a vibration—a tactile representation.

The final result of the sonification was a backpack that would play calm bell-like sounds when discovering new, encrypted networks, and harsh, distorted bells when discovering unencrypted networks. Water drop-type sounds were heard when packets were discovered, communicating the activity of computers, and most likely people, on those networks. And it would hum and rumble based on the perceived safety of an area—the ratio of encrypted and unencrypted networks—communicating the potential dangers or opportunity for intrusion in the neighbourhood.

The Warbike, more personal than wardriving

The Warbike converts the experience of wardriving into a deeper, more personal experience. The bike brings the participant closer to the street and the spaces that the networks inhabit, highlighting the psychogeographical experience that may be lost in a traditional wardrive, isolated from the environment, in a car. The knowledge of network presence, and the knowledge of open networks, is not quite as powerful as being able to hear and feel the networks flowing through the space that we inhabit. The ride on the Warbike is a visceral experience, communicating the invisible communications activity, something that we are used to processing intellectually. You’re invited to experience it for yourself when the Warbike is shown at Interaccess in Toronto in summer 2007.