0.30402944246776265
Installation. 2013-2015
n number of computers, visualization plugin, automaton plugin (both plugins require Freenet)

Concept Description Installations Instructions Thesis Software Contact


Installation Instructions

Instructions for the Physical Space

There are no particular requirements for the space where the 
installation of the artwork has to be presented, except that the 
monitors displaying the visualization of the software have to be traced 
by the viewers to the installation. The minimal requirements for the 
installation are three computers, say A, B, and C, so they show 
connectivity dynamics within the ensemble: A -> B -> C -> B -> C -> B -> 
A, etc. These dynamics may already demonstrate a feature of (social) 
self-organization or simply map transferred data chunks within the 
virtual environment. It is suggested that the computers installed in the 
space are visually different, so the idea of the specificity or 
uniqueness of interaction between elements is present.

Technical Requirements for the Computers

There are no specific requirements for the computers, and the software 
architecture should run on computers ready to install Freenet software. 
The Freenet software is designed to run on Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X. 
The designed plugins were tested on Windows XP, Linux Ubuntu 10, and Mac 
OS X 10.7 with the latest version of the Java Runtime Environment 
additionally installed. The processor speed of the tested computers 
ranged from 800 MHz to 3GHz, and the RAM ranged from 256MB to 4GB. Slow 
computers took time and patience to configure, while faster computers 
were quick to configure.

The minimum disk space used for installing and running the software 
architecture was 4GB. All the computers were connected to the same local 
network either through a LAN cable or wireless connection. The end 
performance shown was similar, except that the slower computers crashed 
more often.

Software Installation and Configuration

The installation of the software is supposed to have a Darknet Freenet 
mode. In order to install it, the software has to be installed in 
several steps. First, the computers have to be connected to the local 
network, ideally with a DHCP mode, so the computers choose their IP 
numbers from the given range of IPs. Secondly, all the computers have to 
run Freenet software, and thirdly, the two plugins provided - the 
Visualization and the Automaton plugins - have to be loaded.

The default configuration of the Freenet will work in Opennet Freenet 
mode, thus showing the dynamics of connected nodes at a certain level: 
the self-node, depicted as a square, will not change its location. In 
order to switch the Freenet nodes to Darknet Freenet mode, the 
neighborhood nodes have to be added to every single node. This is done 
through the menu option "add friends" (Fig. 1). If there are more than 
three computers within the installation, it is not necessary to add all 
the neighborhood nodes to each node.



Fig. 1. Freenet interface to add friends. Screen shot.

As soon as the Freenet knows the neighborhood computers, it is necessary 
to switch the security mode of the Freenet to "high" (Fig. 2). This 
would mean that the Freenet is entering "Darknet" mode. Within this 
mode, the visualization should start to demonstrate a jumping square 
along the circle.



Fig. 2. Freenet “Darknet” mode configuration. Screen shot.

Loading of the Freenet plugins is done through the same Freenet 
interface, following the options "Configuration" and then "Plugins" 
(Fig. 3). The Visualization and Automaton plugins can be downloaded 
from the project's website.



Fig. 3. Freenet interface to add plugins. Screen shot.