Poor Sculpture: Making contingent markers with localize wireless networks

‘Involuntary Works’ is a term first applied to a series of photographs made by the photographer Andre Brassaï in 1933 for the third and fourth editions of the Surrealist Magazine Minotaure. Everyday mundane objects such as bus tickets and bread rolls, photographed in extreme close up were monumentalized; becoming through the process of recording an ‘Involuntary sculpture’. Employing current analogue technology and through the print distribution system of a magazine publication, the previously established notions of sculpture as materially permanent markers that were singularly authored had been countered. Offline customizable wireless networks can be equally understood as providing an alternative platform for marking space. Mazi is a term used to describe a set of adaptable tools hosted on a localized platform. Its name, derived from the Greek word for ‘together’, communicates how Do-It-Yourself low-cost networking hardware, and free/libre/open source software ‘Floss’ applications can be adapted as a community tool to facilitate collective exchange and creative production. Reverso, a project developed across two different community contexts São Paulo, Brazil and London, UK will be used as a case study. Alternative approaches to the deployment of Mazi as a platform for distributed learning and hosting open-source software creative tools to facilitate community action will be discussed. How three-dimensional digital open-source modelling applications might be used to facilitate the recovery and activation of shared local histories in order to produce contingent digital markers will be introduced. The extent to which Mazi can be understood as offering new forms of digital sculptural fluidity through collective production and authorship will be considered.