frogdreams24

[frogdreams24]

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Internet walk

Title: “Internet Underwater”

Team: Erika Tsioukantana, Antonis Petras

In September 2023, the city of Volos, home to most of the departments of the University of Thessaly flooded twice . During the flooding the city was left without water and power -and consequently, internet- for weeks. Additionally to the destruction of infrastructural networks, the overflow of the city’s three rivers damaged streets, entered houses, destroyed buildings, and created piles of garbage, furniture, cables, pipes and trees that were carried away by water. 

For our Internet Walk, the main focus will be on creating a map of (inter)net infrastructure around the library. Apart from its obvious function, the library has also functioned as a node, as a valuable and rare spot of free wifi for students and passersby alike to access the internet even at night, when the building was closed. In September, tons of water and mud entered the building, damaging books, equipment and infrastructure. Seven months after the flooding, it is still sealed off today, not only barring us from its academic and sociability aspects, but also changing the ways and remapping the places -if any- where students can  get free(?) internet. During our walk, not only are we searching for visible infrastructures such as antennas, but also for infrastructure that is supposed to remain invisible, such as fiber optics,.that has become (hyper)visible as a result of the flood. This remapping approach will be based on the items, networks and processes that we encounter in specific areas connected to the library, while the walk will attempt to formulate questions on the materiality of the internet as it is presented in the face of the climate crisis. What does it mean for those infrastructures to exist, but to have no electricity to operate them? How crucial is it to lose one of the main nodes of distributing free internet in the city? How do people experience the hypervisibility of networks that are supposed to remain hidden underground? And eventually, how (can) we think of internet access when there’s no water supply in our own house?