Description
Most hack labs are located in urban areas where they tend to focus on issues that are pertinent to urban spaces. Yet Brazilian artist and scholar, Bruno Vianna, dedicated to doing something different and created one in the countryside of Rio de Janeiro called Nuvem—Estação Rural de Arte e Tecnologia (Cloud—Rural Station of Art and Technology).
As it is located in the countryside, the projects developed to deal with issues that emerge from the local rural areas, dealing with technology experimentation, environmental issues, and economic sustainability. One of these collective actions is called Fumaça (Smoke) Data Springs, aiming to create a Wi-Fi mesh network and a GSM autonomous cellular network in the Fumaça Village, a rural district in the Resende County.
In 2014, Fumaça Village had no landlines or cell phone coverage, just one public Wi-Fi hotspot in the main square that required residents to walk to the square to get access to the internet. Many did not know how to use the internet, nor did they have any devices to connect to.
In 2015, Nuvem created a Wi-Fi mesh network and a GSM autonomous cellular network in the Fumaça Village. To help Fumaça Village, they received a grant from Commotion Wireless to build a community network (CN) with the help of a team of volunteers working with the local community. With Nuvem being based so close to the project, it helped ensure that Nuvem had a close connection with the community to get the community what they needed and wished for. Together, they designed the network, decided where to put the CN nodes, and discussed how the community could benefit from having internet and cellular access. In the following years, new nodes were added by the community members who kept maintaining the network. According to Vianna, the establishment of a successful CN depends mainly on the involvement of the locals and their interest in getting it to work.
The collective also offered workshops for different communities to teach them how to contribute to their environment in new and unprecedented ways. One of these workshops was held in 2012 for the Visconde de Mauá residents. The workshop taught participants how to use GPS and their mobile phones to create a collaborative map of Visconde de Mauá.
Connection to Mobile Networked Creativity
A study found that media artists’ creative process in Brazil stems from the challenges they experience in producing their art and their ability to collaborate with others. The media artists in the Nuvem project, for example, incorporate the lack of resources into their creative process as a technique. And, sometimes, collaborations are used as a way to get access to resources. This is why collectives such as Nuvem are successful: they engage a variety of artists and community members in creating an environment where art can thrive. Through this engagement, they also create deeper connections with each other and with their environments.
Location
Countryside of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
To Learn More
- Adriana de Souza e Silva, Fernanda Duarte, and Cristiane S. Damasceno, “Creative Appropriations in Hybrid Spaces: Mobile Interfaces in Art and Games in Brazil,” International Journal of Communication 11 (2017).
- “Cloud,” Wayback Machine, 2024.
- Vianna, Bruno, “Comparing Two Community Network Experiences in Brazil,” in Community Networks: The Internet by the People, for the People (Rio de Janeiro: Escola de Direito do Rio de Janeiro da Fundação Getulio Vargas, 2017), 207–26.
