L Train Notwork [Events]

L Train Notwork is a public art project organised by the WeMakeCoolShit collective. It is also the first ever mobile pirate WiFi Intranet on the NYC Subway created to encourage strangers to talk to each other via live chat room/dating site curated from local authors, poets and visual artists. The content was served “legally” from a portable battery powered webservers that created WiFi hotspots on the subway from Monday 14th Nov to Friday 19th nov.

We like to encourage strangers to talk to each other and this seemed like a great way to do it. When people ride on the train during rush hour they are forced to be so close to each other but they rarely interact with each other. We wanted to give people something to talk about.

The team looked around in obtaining a permissions but as it turns out they are not breaking any laws or rules. All of their equipment is carried on and off the train in simple shopping bags. No equipment is sat down or installed in any way on MTA property. It is no different to many laptops that emit WiFi signal by default. Main difference is that the group are serving content.

Read more here and you can stay up to date on the project here.