The treasure chest in the HCH lab

Hackney Crack House is preparing for the Temporary Autonomous Art with an installation against the Digital Economy Bill. Like the French government already did, the UK government just introduced measures based on the "Three Strikes" idea: after two warning messages they could cut your Internet connection if you pursue sharing files with your peers. The issue is explained here in a bit more detail.

The PiratePond lets you feel like a real pirate while you are pirating music. The government pictures users sitting at their home computers as pirates, but our motto is "It is not piracy if there is no parrot involved." So you can fulfill the fantasies of your government by embarking on a quest for the treasure chest, crossing the dangerous waters of the Pond, and burning the booty on a disc or thumb drive.

HCH is paying homage to the PirateBay, the most militant of torrent trackers that carries the flag of free peer-to-peer information flow. PiratePond is not the vast sea of the Internet, merely a little pond with its localised information flow. It highlights the absurdity of the legislation by carrying its metaphors to their logical conclusion.

The installation is comprised of a physical environment incorporating a paddling pool with water, pirate artifacts and treasure island styling; a treasure chest with a builtin computer and sound system; and a software environment with a kiosk setup. You can use it to copy music on and off the PiratePond computer, learn about the laws against piracy while you are burning a disc and have fun in a pirate theme park. The software is based on a configuration of the Awesome window manager with ncmpcpp as the music player sitting on the top of the Music Player Daemon.

Come and experience the PiratePond at the TAA from Wednesday to Saturday (June 2-5), location TBA, call 070 929 837 95 on the day.

Working on the software setup