# Tracing the scream of clouds

Mario de Vega
Víctor Mazón Gardoqui

    We are loners constantly in touch.1 — Zygmunt Bauman
    META
    _ is a display in the form of a publication.
    _ is an asymmetrical refraction.
    _ is a proxy for the dissemination of information.
    _ is an open and peer-regulated model of pedagogy.
    _ is a platform that offers critical perspectives on the transformations imposed by techno scientific militaria.
    _ is an opaque guide to a world that requires more than five senses.
    _ exposes ambivalences of misleading information through the sharing of expectations.
    _ summarises an inquiry into the invisible.
    _ reveals hidden arrangements of spectra and their inevitable unraveling.
    _ explores the borderlines of printed media and the physical complexities of frequency modulation.
    _ approaches design as process.
    _ showcases reflections on congested and contested surfaces that unfold the vertical domination of our world.
    _ traces the exponential adulteration of norms, impositions of power, and methodologies
    for social control.
    _ confronts irregular proportions of power.
    _ analyses how manipulative extensions act to divide and isolate us.
    _ reflects on ruins made by human presence in a timeline of abuse and deceit.
    _ is a disagreement about a time fascinated by dull and obscure gadgets, highly sophisticated data traffic, and cloud computing.
    _ approaches tactical media as situational aesthetics.
    _ discusses and analyses new regimes of knowledge and information.
    _ is a gesture that alludes the value of community as a tool for social transformation, wagering on an inquiry into truths.
    _ is an organism that ingests, roars, and eructs the remains of human decay and hope.
    _ is a nervous turn that slaps itself. _ is a reflex flow.
    _ is phlegm.

    A background on batch production
    Shenzhen, China

    We dug in the underground and overground, the subworld of motherboard replacements, bargains, cloning, Alipay transactions, weChat dependency, genderdivided spas, fried soja, and black market machinery to create a system that relies on a custom firmware flashed on
    a 32-bit micro-controller running at 160 MHz, resulting in 555 single units each outfitted with a unique »ID« based on the 4 last Bytes of its MAC address.
    Through a customized version of an ESP8266
    Wi-Fi module, META executes as a local
    or internetbased network, holding physical and virtual content on a low power microcontroller module. It provides a wireless internet spot as an open access point embedded into the spine
    of the compendium.
    A web interface displays the expanded archive, visualized by any TCP / IP browser, allowing the user to navigate through content that is dynamically pulled from the micro controller to the server and then to the rest
    of the users’ »nodes«.
    META is based on a Message Queue Telemetry
    Transport ( MQTT ) client from node to broker to node.

    An ID
    ://R

    During the last 10 years as ://R, we have experimented with the theorization, design and production of electronic interfaces
    and speculative devices. Each of them identified with an alias. To complete this proposal,
    we identified this unit as ID. Each unit ( ID ), includes an Ultra Violet Light Emitting Diode controlled by an algorithm. A high luminous surface mount technology which due to
    its wavelength causes the UV ink on the book to fluoresce ( glow ), allowing the user to see the printed content.
      These oscillations operate on a range of 390–398 nm, with 180 degrees directivity and up to 3 W of power. The lighting technique
    is capable of emitting a narrow spectrum of radiation (+/- 10 nm ) more accurately than the mercury lamps or fluorescent tubes used on currency inspection, forensic analysis, fluorescing minerals, gems and personal ID detector devices.
      This compendium celebrates 10 years of independent research with an interest in tracing, exposing and sharing information. During
    this decade, together with researchers, technologists, theorists, designers and artists with shared interests in the observation and dissemination of knowledge, we have been immersed in the development of interfaces to provide extensions that allow the human senses to access hidden layers and affective qualities of vibrant matter.
    As a result, META questions a timeline
    of exhausted superlatives, superficial paradises of consumption, and vast proliferation of technological paraphernalia.