Ibiye Camp

A megaphone resting on a mobile booth on Campbell Street in central Freetown, Sierra Leone, blasts out: “Top up! Africell, Orange, Sierra Tel. Top up!” The mobile booth is a point of data exchange in the city. The form of the mobile booth exceeds the boundaries of the pavement and surrounding stalls. A digital file of the mobile booth is saved and contained in a still state. The digital matter is occupied and controlled by the master, who maps and sets the preferences of its position and surroundings as if it were a digital slave.
This work is a query into decolonising data by using practices of an active revolt or uprising of the digital form. Experiments of escape from confinement imagine the ecology of digital matter and the digital life, beyond master design and control. Casts and 3D prints of the digital file are formed to revolt, spread, flow, and escape from confinement and return to earthly segments.

With the additional support of
Royal College of Art, School of Architecture, Grymsdyke Farm, Xcessive Aesthetics, African Futures Institute