Fragments of Freedom

We are living through times where the political atmosphere across the world feels increasingly constrained - where dissent is monitored, platforms are controlled, and the spaces for free expression are subtly, and sometimes overtly, shrinking. This project emerges from that urgency: the need not just to document protest cultures, but to actively build ways for them to survive, evolve, and connect—especially when traditional channels fail. My project explores the challenge of creating and sustaining infrastructures for protest, community, and alternative forms of communication.

The project is a collection of tools focusing on three aspects:

• Absurd Symbolism as encryption (tarot as secret comms)
• Resilient Communication (switching node based ham radio)
• Collective Knowledge Sharing (archive and political weather map)

Coded Comms using Tarot

I had created disguised tarot cards earlier this year that would serve as secret communications system. The aim was to create an evolving system, the evolution of which is in the hands of the user.

I wanted to take this forward and make it more usable as a tool in actual protest situations or adverse environments, so I built a digital game using v0, also my first attempt at using v0 for an actual functioning website. Although it is currently very rudimentary, it allows creation of card combinations with ridiculous and irrelevant descriptions. The users themselves may decide a code from before so that on ground they can see each other's combinations from the website and hence decode the message themselves, or leave a new combination based on the message they want to give.

Access the game here. Feel free to get yourself an absurd reading, but it is only usable when shared with friends and used together based on a decision of the code

Resilient Radio

The resilient radio concept was something I worked on in my second term. At that point it was just a ham-radio setup with an Arduino allowing controls and serving a landing page. The idea was that a local radio working out of personal wireless networks would allow people to be able to share information in heavy surveillance scenarios. In the situation of an emergency, it could convert into an emergency communication system as well.

The radio:

I built a ham-style radio using an esp 32 based arduino and an audio stream running from my pc.

The arduino acts as a connecting point and serves the landing page, while giving a few basic controls through buttons to control the stream, activate apps (like vlc) and indicate when the stream is active.

The basic components for the setup:

• Voicemeeter audio mixer taking inputs from an active mic as well as a music app (vlc in this case), and sending it to BUTT audio encoder.
• BUTT audio encoder for streaming audio, sending the audio to the Icecast server
• Icecast begins a server that serves the audio across the local network only (currently my mobile hotspot).
• Arduino connects to the local network (using ESP 32 wifi), and serves a simple html landing page as well, and includes the audio stream on the page.
• A javascript file creates another server and provides controls, allowing buttons on the arduino to open vlc and start playback, start or stop the stream and switch between live mic and vlc audio.

For this exhibition I wanted to take this forward a bit, by having an online accessible version that had more functions than this local web version. I created a radio map that was meant for curating political radio stations around the world. As of now many stations are placeholders, while many are actually curated. I need to work on curating more with time. You can access the WIP here.

I built the initial version with v0, and combined it with my arduino for access through a local stream. I was hoping to build a system where if the internet is shut off, the local network automatically switches and plays off a local radio, with a button allowing live mic toggle, but I soon switched to working further on the other tools.

The Archive

One of the main concepts of my project was a central archive that would be resilient and very simple and light. A collectively built collection of inspiring stories, creative protest methodologies, literature, documents, films and other resources. I built the archive and started curating some basic content into a variety of categories. After some time I realised I could go on for a while, but I still don't have any relevant collective participation. A few of the activists and artists I spoke to did want to contribute to the archive, but it would take its time to curate and add as I still could not give them direct access so they could participate themselves.

WIP available here. With time this should grow as I update the platform

The Political Weather Map

While building the tech aspects of the project as well as the archive, I was missing out on actual collective participation. The radio map and archive gave me a very simple idea for the same. I decided to create a political weather map, one that is not generated by AI, but rather is created collectively by all the people who access it and add a contribution.

Please do add your own contribution to the Political Weather Map, and share it with anyone who would like to view or add to it!

Anyone can add an anonymous comment, while geotagging it to a place in the world and choosing a severity marker and colour code. I also created an admin area from where I can review, edit severity or hide/delete messages. The idea would be for multiple people from the collective to have access and review messages and filter bogus messages.

At the exhibition I interacted with many people who helped collective filtering of the comments that had been added recently. Please

I will still be building this as I take it forward, and would hugely appreciate any help or support from anyone who is interested in this project, has any similar or relevant project, or would simply like to contribute in any way.