This site documents key ideas generated through a series of workshops led by artist Louise Ashcroft, during which the people of Exeter were asked to 'remake the internet', either by proposing alterations or alternatives. Each workshop used different methods: group conversation, one-to-one conversation, writing, group walks, and model-making. Here, participants' thought processes are summarised as a diagrammatic set of proposals responding to internet phenomena. By thinking about how we could remake the internet, we considered what it is about digital culture that we value, and what we want to change.
"This website is not the finished product of the project, it's an offshoot or relic. The 'internet' we made in Exeter was a live social space that couldn't be captured; an ephemeral, local network of conversations, provocations and encounters. You had to be there." - Louise Ashcroft
Remaking the Internet is a project by artist Louise Ashcroft, commissioned by Museum of Contemporary Commodities (artist Paula Crutchlow and geographer Ian Cook), co-hosted by Exeter Phoenix, Exeter Library and Devon Fab Lab; and developed in partnership with Furtherfield. Ashcroft worked with tech-savvy children from Code Club, the artist collective Preston Street Union, students passing through a foyer space at University of Exeter, drop-in participants at Exeter Phoenix and the people of St Sidwell’s community centre (a very inclusive, diverse space which hosts all kinds of free classes and has an excellent community-run cafe).