Pivilion is a decentralized, uncensored, user-curated web gallery operating system and gallery management software running on nodes hosted by the general public and distributed through clearnet and Tor.
The aim of the gallery-host project is to create a nomadic free virtual environment that connects art-oriented users (both creators and consumers) by offering a participatory model of interaction. The base methodology of achieving this is allowing less experienced and community-driven users-curators to actively approach free network technologies while utilizing all the upsides of net tech, promoting connectibility, privacy and maximum freedom of curating content. (While the advanced users are welcome to re-create their own virtual Pi-based galleries.)
By removing the gallery sites from the blogs and domains to a physical gadget of the Pi - Pivilion engages & connects users on two levels of interaction - virtual and physical, ideological and technical. The interaction with Pivilion could further concepts of freedom, education and spark collaborative potentials of one’s communities.
~ ~ ~
It runs on top of Raspberry Pi hardware and is built on top of Raspbian GNU/Linux. It has Lighty server and Tor networking built in and uses the Tor network to host exhibitions out of the box.
The entire system and documentation is available for download on a central website, hosted both on clearnet and on the Tor network and distributed as SD card images available for free download. The website serves as both a central point for deployment of the system and for the announcement of global exhibitions running on nodes. It is designed so that the user-curator can use any network (even public networks behind firewalls) to host an exhibition.
Each Pivilion device receives a Tor onion domain automatically the first time it’s activated. The system provides the user with backend access to a system for publishing images, videos or websites within a gallery. The gallery runs on a CMS designed specially for hosting online gallery events, with features such as different rooms, complete with Mozilla’s Togetherjs integrated into each seperate room.
Required hardware:
- Raspberry Pi / RPi 2 / RPi 3
- min 8 GB SD card
- USB Wifi adapter (RPi 3 has integrated Wifi)
- battery