Dead Drops

Yesterday, I went to Kingston-upon-Thames and found some dead drops, created by digital art students as part of the un/orthodoxii exhibition. The Dead Drops website says "Un-cloud your files in cement! 'Dead Drops’ is an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space."

I found the locations of four dead drops altogether - one had been stolen, one had become loose and I couldn't connect to it, but I did manage to connect to two with a laptop and they worked fine. This didn't seem too bad, considering the USB sticks had probably been there for about 2 months. I was able to look at art created by the students, as well as add my own files onto the USB stick connected to the wall.

I was surprised the USB sticks did not have more files on them that random people had added. I imagined it would become like an old BBS with a collection of random files to download, with text files about how to get high on nutmeg, purity tests, sections from the Anarchist Cookbook, the rec.music.industrial FAQ, odd porn, or more up to date, random photos taken with a phone, strange music, weird videos, and so on, but that wasn't the case. Perhaps I will try other dead drops, not just ones in Kingston-upon-Thames, and see what is on them, and if I'm still disappointed, I can always create my own and fill it up with what I want to see there.