RFTO

Shortly after my previous missive, I came across a company called Citrus3 that said I could have an online radio station for very little money that would have 256kbps quality, unlimited listeners, unlimited bandwidth, and unlimited storage. It seemed like a great idea. First I had to learn how to use the software – Mixxx and AutoDJ. Mixxx is what one uses for live broadcasting in the system, and AutoDJ takes care of everything else. The back end of AutoDJ is a CMS called Centavo, which is optimised for this purpose. They have an uploader, but it’s a piece of crap, and the tech there said I should use the FTP client FileZilla as it is a much better uploader.

I soon found out that FLAC files were not permitted. So I had to change ALL of my FLAC files over to MP3. With tens of thousands of FLAC files, this was a truly massive undertaking. It tied up my computer for the better part of a week. The I started deleting unnecessary files. jpeg. jpg. gif. ini. cue. pdf. doc. docx. txt. it was a long list, and had to be done carefully, as Windows file search sucks. A lot. Also, I found that I didn’t have a large enough hard drive, so I bought one dedicated to this purpose. I moved all my files over. that took 3 days. Then I started uploading them. I realised I needed to mimic the file structure online with my local drive, so I set them both up so that there were folder A – Z, a numbers folder (for bands like 9353 or the 5uu’s), and a compilation / various artists folder. I uploaded all the A files. Then the B files. Then the C files. Then the Compilations. Then Various Artists, which were uploaded into the Compilations folder. Then I figured – I’ll do W, X, Y, and Z, because they are small and quick. Then I did D, E, F, G, H, I and J. Each letter would take hours. Compilations / various artist took two days. Then I uploaded K. In the middle of the night, I heard my computer making odd sounds, so I got up. I saw that the upload was done, and that there were 900+ failed uploads. So I deleted what I had uploaded and then reuploaded it. That seemed to take. Then I went to the letter L, and started uploading, again it choked, so I deleted what I had done and started over. Nothing would upload.

I get into my email, and there is a message saying my account has been suspended due to abuse. I was shocked. Shortly thereafter email arrived saying that my account was the source of a DDoS attack on their system and that they had to restore the entire system.

This blew me away. I have no idea why or how this happened.

I am now beginning to suspect that it was no some hidden malicious code on my end, but that their system can’t consistently handle massive uploads. But I am not sure about this. I certainly did nothing intentional to mess this up – all I wanted to do is upload music to the server.

I had all kinds of plans – designing images:

I was really excited about developing this – not just as a “radio station” but also as a kind of digital art project. Began thinking of programming, and how to program different shows:

And now – nothing.

RFTO – an art project

Radio Free Toronto (RFTO) is an ongoing project where a number of strands of my work and research coalesce. Questions of the archive, access to knowledge, post-musical society, performance, contemporary electronic music and my practice thereof, and file-sharing all come together in this creative project. Aesthetic influences include, but are not limited to, Relational Art, Conceptual Art, Computer Art, Performance Art, and Systems Art.

All these ideas would be explored in RFTO. I was going to build this world of RFTO. Now, nope. I’m super depressed about all this. All that work for nothing. Just, shattering.