Install ShiftSpace
Step 1: Install Firefox
It appears that you are already running Firefox, so you can move along to step 2.
Step 2: Install Greasemonkey
ShiftSpace currently requires a Firefox extension called Greasemonkey. If you already have the latest version of Greasemonkey, then you can move on to step 3. It may be a good idea to upgrade Greasemonkey if you think it might be outdated.
Install Greasemonkey
- After installing you will need to restart your browser and return to this page to continue.
Step 3: Install ShiftSpace
Click the button below to install the latest ShiftSpace userscript for Greasemonkey.
Install ShiftSpace
- You will be prompted with a confirmation window.
Welcome to ShiftSpace
To complete the installation, click “Install” in the confirmation window. To start using ShiftSpace:
- Reload the page
- Hold down the shift key on your keyboard and press the space bar
You Are Not Here 
Become a meta-tourist on an excursion through the city of Baghdad while walking through the streets of New York. By holding the double-sided map up to the light you will find your way through Baghdad and locate the YANH street-signs on the street of NYC . These signs provide the telephone number for the Tourist Hotline. Enter the site-specific access code for a guided audio tour of the corresponding destination in Baghdad.
YANH exposes the contrasts and the similarities between two mashed cities in an attempt to retrieve the sense of human scale lost through mass-media. Walking becomes the medium through which to discuss, comment and exchange views about the issues regarding Baghdad and NYC.
In the new YANH project – A tour of Gaza through the streets of Tel-Aviv, we collaborate with Gazan blogger, Laila El Haddad. A future project, mapping P'yongyang & Seoul will follow in the coming year as well as the release of YANH's tactics in an open-source/DIY model – inviting artists to create YANH projects in their own cities.
ShiftSpace and YANH share a similar approach through parasitic media and intervention in space. They both question the way we have come to experience our space as a mediated construct. Both are inspired by urbanist and situationist theories and hack the surrounding environment through meta-data.
Graffiti Studio: Separation Wall 
A collaboration with British studio, Lessrain. A free graffiti painting software which translates the aesthetic language of sprays and markers into software land. Users can choose to tag several train models, tanks, helicopters and the Separation Wall built on Palestinian territories. Since November 2005 the Separation Wall surface alone have received more than 18,000 individual submissions, all available online. Graffiti studio is a successful example of tool-based activism. It does not dictate the discussion or it's language yet still manages to convey a message through interface – the wall should be discussed.
The Postnational Foundation 
Upgrade! International 
- Trails (read more)
- Highlights space
- Add social networking to the platform
- Add reputation & moderation systems
- Decentralizing the database (go P2P)
- Create Media spaces (audio, video)
- Launch the Turbulence.org/ShiftSpace commission program to encourage parasitic net art using the platform
- Offer ShiftSpace Workshops
- Provide a way to browse ShiftSpace content before installing the plug-in and allow embeding of ShiftSpace content and functionality on websites.
- Document developer API
- Expand the open source developer community
- Develop more spaces like "write between the lines", "netraset" or "collaborative ad remover"
- Collaborate with artists to build additional Spaces
Dan Phiffer is a new media hacker from California, interested in exploring the cultural dimension of inexpensive communications networks such as voice telephony and the Internet.
Mushon Zer-Aviv is a designer and a media activist from Tel-Aviv, interested in challenging the perception of territory and borders and the way they are shaped through politics, culture, globalization and the world wide web.
What is ShiftSpace?
ShiftSpace is an open source layer above any website. It seeks to expand the creative possibilities currently provided through the web. ShiftSpace provides tools for artists, designers, architects, activists, developers, students, researchers, and hobbyists to create online contexts built in and on top of websites.
While the Internet’s design is widely understood to be open and distributed, control over how users interact online has given us largely centralized and closed systems. The web has followed the physical transformation of the city’s social center from the (public) town square to the (private) mall. ShiftSpace attempts to subvert this trend by providing a new public space on the web.
By pressing the [shift] + [space] keys, a ShiftSpace user can invoke a new meta layer above any web page to browse and create additional interpretations, contextualizations and interventions – which we call Shifts. Users can choose between several authoring tools we’re working to develop – which we call Spaces. Some are utilitarian (like Notes and Highlights) and some are more interventionist (like ImageSwap and SourceShift). Users will be invited to map these shifts into Trails. These trails can be used for collaborative research, curating netart exhibitions or as platforms for context-based public debates.
The ShiftSpace Firefox extension is available for free download. As described above, ShiftSpace is a platform that offers a number of Spaces (tools) to manipulate Shifts (modifications) on a web page.
Notes is a Space that allows a ShiftSpace user to leave post-it annotations on websites. Highlights is one we’re still developing, which would allow a user to highlight text on the page. Some Spaces lead more naturally to an interventionist usage. Two such Spaces that we have implemented are ImageSwap, which allows a user to grab any image on the web and swap it in place of other image, and SourceShift, which allows users to freely edit a page’s HTML code.
When a user visits a modified (’Shifted’) webpage, the small ShiftSpace icon (§) pops up in the bottom left side of the screen. Pressing the [shift] + [space] keys reveals the ShiftSpace console. From the console, the user can browse through existing Shifts, choosing to enable those that might be of interest. Holding down the [shift] key shows a small contextual menu, allowing the user to create Shifts of her own. The user can then choose whether to share her Shifts or to keep them private.
Shifts marked as public are aggregated on ShiftSpace.org which also provides some RSS feeds to follow other ShiftSpace users’ activity. Another such mechanism we’re working on is called Trails. Each shift can be trailed to one or more others, creating a relational map to explore. For example, a Note on an article can be trailed to a Highlight on a blog, trailed to a SourceShift on a corporate site. Trails can be used for collaborative research, curating netart exhibitions or as a platform to facilitate a context-based public debate.
ShiftSpace uses Javascript + PHP + SQLite. During the summer we hope to add social software functionality, implement a P2P architecture and create more spaces.
