May 2012 - April 2013

  • April

  • The project Expeditions to the Void, Science, Territory and subjective narratives, investigates the potential of subjective narratives created by a series of women artists who analyse, narrate and question the models of science and territory. The first phase of the project consisted in a (…)

  • May

  • The work at the Libre Graphics Research Unit (LGRU) is now almost halfway. Since June 2011, the Unit functions as a traveling lab where new ideas for creative tools are developed. LGRU is an initiative of four European media-labs actively engaged in Free/Libre and Open Source Software and Free (…)

  • The best part of May, Femke will be in residence at Medialab Prado (Madrid) to work on projects, presentations and texts in the context of the Libre Graphics Research Unit. She will report on her adventures at http://blogs.lgru.net/ft

  • On Saturday 12th May performer Delphine Auby returns to the heart of Schaerbeek to shout messages of the inhabitants at Cage aux Ours/Berenkuil. Ten days previously to the shout, she will deposit mailboxes on the square, inviting people to post their messages for the neighbourhood, as well as a (…)

  • Ten artists lead us to experience sound perceptions in the form of walks, discussions, experiments & workshops around the topic of Seeing Sound.
    Soundlab: auratory starts on May the 14th at Constant Variable.
    It’s the beginning of two weeks of lectures and walks:
    First week: 14th – 18th (…)

  • As part of the Open House event, Constant Variable will open its doors to the public from 17 to 19 May between 14 and 18h. This artistic laboratory behind the facade of a beautiful mansion in the street Gallait in Schaerbeek will surprise visitors with posters sibilants, rap’s experimental area (…)

  • Did it ever occur to you to wave at a surveillance camera? Or rather, at the person who is watching you at that moment in the control room? And how would it feel if that person would wave back and you would somehow be able to see or hear that?
    By using surveillance cameras and the free motion (…)

  • The Piet Zwart Institute Master in Media Design and Communication department launches its new publication with Mute publishing: Sniff, Scrape, Crawl"¦ on privacy, surveillance and our shadowy data-double. It includes contributions from: Birgit Bachler, Seda Guerses, Inge Hoonte, Men in Grey, (…)

  • What tools do you use in your artistic practice, where do they come from, how were they made? Are they digital or physical?
    Constant member Wendy Van Wynsberghe does a small intervention on this topic during Ladyfest Brussels. Afterwards, she will talk about why and how she uses F/Loss tools (…)

  • What would be a space that welcomes use and abuse, one that thrives on appropriation? How to make time and place for research, with life in the middle? What kind of interfaces could support collaborative work, and make different publics swap territories? Moving from the kitchen to the workshop (…)

  • June

  • The Piksel & Lines research seminar is the third international meeting in the context of LGRU. This edition is organised by Piksel and will have a particular focus on improvements, interoperability between and fringe use of F/LOSS graphic bitmap and vector softwares, as well as generative (…)

  • Radio broadcast in French with material from the performance by Delphine Auby at Cage aux Ours on Saturday 12th May, in the framework of the project of La Langue Schaerbeekoise/De Schaarbeekse Taal.
    Sound & Editing: Anthony Dupriez.
    Images of the day: (…)

  • For Documenta 13 Constantmembers Nicolas Malevé and Michael Murtaugh are developing a series of experiments in connection with the archive of Erkki Kurenniemi, the Finnish artist and technology pioneer of the 1960s. Over the years, Kurenniemi has obsessively documented his everyday activities, (…)

  • STARTING AT 15:00
    The last Samedies before summer is an occasion to get together and discuss past, current and future projects. On the table: Informal discussions, ad-hoc performances, improvised food and hands-on worksessions. Welcome!

  • Kdenlive is a complete open-source non lineair timeline edit software for Linux and OSX. This is the first of two meetings in which we will collectively discover the ins and outs of the software and how to make use of its strong points. Have a look at the software, (kdenlive.org) bring a (…)

  • July

  • Presentation of the LGRU project during the closing party of the Open Design Conference held in Barcelona, organized by the FAD. The conference brings together designers and thinkers who share an open practice of creativity.

  • Short Circuit / Short Process is the first edition of PiNG’s Summer Lab. Constant member Wendy Van Wynsberghe will host an atelier on salutations and greeting
    rituals. Make textile sensors that initiate new ways of greeting each other with Arduino, sound and conductive thread.
    This meeting is (…)

  • Kdenlive is a complete open-source non lineair timeline edit software for Linux and OSX. We will collectively discover the ins and outs of the software and how to make use of its strong points. Have a look at the software, (kdenlive.org) bring a project, preferably a machine and your curiosity (…)

  • September

  • For one month between April and June 2013 the Constant Variable residency studio will be open for artists who want to work on a F/LOSS-project. Constant Variable offers a free living & working space in exchange for a presentation of your work(-in-progress), bits and bites, artworks under (…)

  • During their residency in Variable, Ana Carvalho, Ginger Coons & Ricardo Lafuente, the editors of Libre Graphics Magazine, invite you to take part in the
    making of the upcoming issue.
    From 2pm to 6pm on Saturday, September 8, you can join them at Variable for a workshop with a focus on (…)

  • The Pure Data patching circles are free open workshops organized monthly to gather, share, learn and enjoy around the Pure Data software in a creative way. Aimed at artists and coders as well as a large public during specific events (performances and presentations), the patching circles in (…)

  • Please come & celebrate Variable’s first anniversary! Two more years of life ahead for the F/LOSS Arts Lab in the VGC building in Schaerbeek. And what better way to celebrate gathering around a barbecue to enjoy the last summer vibrations. Be welcome to spend an evening among friends (…)

  • For the past few months, Michael Murtaugh and Nicolas Malevé have been running a series of experiments with a subset of the archive of Erkki Kurenniemi, artists and technology pioneer who obsessively documented his everyday activities, collecting vast amounts of audio-visual-textual material to (…)

  • Constant member Wendy Van Wynsberghe was invited to organise a short workshop in the DSGNRMRKT in Genk. Come and learn the basics of textile and electronics, start with adding some light! For this workshop we will take an ingeniously simple design by Irene Posch and we will make our own summer (…)

  • Freedom not Fear is a yearly gathering of activists from different European countries. Subjects: Net neutrality, camera surveillance, smart meters, facial recognition, biometrics.
    The meeting is aiming to connect action groups, ngo’s, and everybody who is concerned with the ’arms race’ in (…)

  • In the context of the Libre Graphics Research Unit, Piksel is offering a collaborative research residency for one artist and one developer, to jointly explore the interoperability and expansion of functionality in self-produced and/or existing libre graphic tools, placed in a performative (…)

  • The next Research Meeting Abstracting Craft will take place in Rotterdam, The Netherlands from 26-29 September 2012. The program is being developed by WORM in collaboration with FLOSS-Manuals.

  • October

  • The exhibition ’Rendez-vous à la cage’ gives an overview of the actions that have taken place in the framework of the neighborhood contract ’Navez-Portaels’ that took place between 2009 and 2012. Constant organised the project De Schaarbeekse Taal that will be integrated in the exhibition.

  • In october Constant member Peter Westenberg will take part in the residency programme Creative Politics organised by Laboratório de Criação Digital
    The objective of this residency is to question and creatively intervene in politics. It is intended to question the role of politicians, but also (…)

  • Right before the local elections, on 12th and 13th October Z33 and FoAM organise a 2 day workshop, led by Heath Bunting and An Mertens. During this workshop you learn how you can create a legal identity for trees. With your guardianship they will be able to gain a voice in society, first (…)

  • At this autumn Code Tasting, we’ll try out Graphical Shell, a prototype
    developed by Pierre Marchand in the context of the Libre Graphics
    Research Unit. His proposal links the ’tick’ of a program to the rhythm of design
    through motioned histories, streaming and messaging. The idea behind the (…)

  • The reNUM textile, sound and digital map, based on the stories from the Breil neighbourhood (Nantes) could be seen and listened to during this event.
    See: http://www.renum.net/leblog/?p=743 &
    http://conference2012.artilect.fr/

  • Interview avec An Mertens dans Jardin Public sur Radio Panik, 18-19h, le 18 octobre 2012

  • Interview avec An Mertens sur Vivacité, Journal Parlé 7h45, le 19 octobre 2012

  • Interview with An Mertens on Radio 2 Vlaams-Brabant, 19 October 2012, 18h

  • The book Woorden uit de Berenkuil/Words from La Cage aux Ours will be festively launched in Passaporta, where we are hosted by Entrez Lire. There will beinhabitants reading fragments of the book, writer-performer Milady Renoir performing the fiction she wrote based on the words and slammer Maky, (…)

  • Interview avec Clémentine Delahaut sur la publication ’Mots de la Cage aux Ours’ dans la Dernière Heure, 22 octobre 2012

  • Interview avec Clémentine Delahaut sur le Journal Parlé de Télé-Bruxelles, 22 octobre 2012

  • Interview with An Mertens on TV Brussel, 22 October 2012, News 18u

  • Report booklaunch Passaporta, Het Nieuwsblad, 22 October 2012

  • Interview avec An Mertens dans la Capitale, 23 octobre 2012

  • Portrait of Cage aux Ours, Knack, 24 October 2012.

  • Reportage leaving Schaarbeek to go to the booklaunch in Passaporta, Brussel Deze Week, 24 October 2012

  • Medialab-Prado and The Libre Graphics Research Unit are seeking for projects to be collaboratively developed during a two-weeks workshop to be held in Madrid, 15-27 April, 2013. We are interested in your ideas for tools to design, edit, draw and write together. This edition focuses on (…)

  • November

  • ’How do you do’ is a low treshold meeting during which makers explain ’the making of’ succesful digital and technological projects.
    Peter Westenberg wil lead one session about Active Archives and one about Variable.

  • During this session, upon request of some participants, we’ll have a look at the different options available toward video treatment, for loop playing/mixing as well as video effects, with the libraries like Gem, PDP, gridflow, and gstreamer bindings. Having some abstractions at hand will also be (…)

  • NO ARCHIVE!
    #OP_HUMAN_CARGO - OPERATION HUMAN CARGO, RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRADICAL REAL TIME,
    !Mediengruppe Bitnik will be coming to Variable for a work residency for
    the whole month of November.
    They are currently interested in questions of (collective) identity, non-archiving, real (…)

  • Constant member Wendy Van Wynsberghe was part of this radio series on copyright and free licenses.
    You can re-listen to the broadcasting here:
    http://www.radiopanik.org/spip/Les-droits-d-auteur-a-la-hauteur
    http://www.radiopanik.org/spip/Brevette-bien-qui-brevettera-le
    or here (…)

  • Art house Z33 in Hasselt celebratesits 10th anniversary with you during a thirty-three-hour festive weekend.
    For Z33 Celebrates! PeterWestenberg will bring an exercise in invisibility. In times of excessive video surveillance, how can you find ways to stay out of the picture? Take part in the (…)

  • Your copier, scanner or mobile phone is broken and your local thrift store has kindly referred you to the dump? Don’t worry, inside these machines you can find all kinds of treasure, such as little motors, a lens, microphones or a little amplifier! In this workshop you will learn how to (…)

  • Your copier, scanner or mobile phone is broken and your local thrift store has kindly referred you to the dump? Don’t worry, inside these machines you can find all kinds of treasure, such as little motors, a lens, microphones or a little amplifier! In this workshop you will learn how to (…)

  • Constant members Peter Westenberg and An Mertens are invited to give a lecture about the project of La Langue Schaerbeekoise/De Schaarbeekse Taal for the students Master in the Social Work of the University of Gent, in the framework of the class ’Culture Studies’.

  • Your copier, scanner or mobile phone is broken and your local thrift store has kindly referred you to the dump? Don’t worry, inside these machines you can find all kinds of treasure, such as little motors, a lens, microphones or a little amplifier! In this workshop you will learn how to (…)

  • Constant members An Mertens and Wendy Van Wynsberghe will present the e-traces project and Yoogle! at the conference For Your Eyes Only, organised in the framework of the EMSOC-project.
    The objective of the conference is to bring together young and senior academics, representatives from public (…)

  • Constant member Wendy Van Wynsberghe was part of this radio series on copyright and free licenses.
    You can re-listen to the broadcasting here:
    http://www.radiopanik.org/spip/Les-droits-d-auteur-a-la-hauteur
    http://www.radiopanik.org/spip/Brevette-bien-qui-brevettera-le
    or here (…)

  • December

  • *Invitation*
    *Relaunch of CC-BE on 8 December @ iMAL!*
    Creative Commons is celebrating it’s tenth birthday this year. For this occasion there will be events all over the globe between December 7th and 16th and Belgium is taking part in the festivities. Creative Commons Belgium is (…)

  • The launch of the publication WJ-SPOTS #2 edited by Anne Roquigny will take place in Paris at La Gaité Lyrique (Digital art Center) during the Mal au Pixel Festival. It includes a text of Constant member Nicolas Malevé, a follow-up to his presentation in Imal on the Future of the Internet.

  • Neokinok.tv is a collective co-ordinated by artist Daniel Miracle who works in the field of experimental audiovisuals and television. From 1998 onwards Neokinok.tv has worked with streaming, temporary UHF and VHF channels, analogue channels, social participation, alternative internet access. (…)

  • During this session, we’ll have a look at different techniques and methods to "detect and react" to some conditions, in order to have an interactive behavior of a patch.
    As it is a need to be able to separate some interesting moments in a sensor/recording, we’ll see different ways that we can (…)

  • Blender worksession with focus on using Blender as render engine.

  • January 2013

  • Our best wishes for 2013 to everyone who reads this message, supports us, inspires us, works with us!
    Our wishes are enriched by the impressive wealth of knowledge, information and beauty that today, like every year on this day, becomes freely available to humankind. Every year on New Year’s (…)

  • The Libre Graphics Meeting will take place 10-13 April in Madrid. The event welcomes your contribution and is looking for in-depth presentations on Libre Graphics technologies, showcases of excellent work made using Libre Graphics tools and new ideas for future approaches, tools and standards. (…)

  • Since march 2012 Jonathan & Yves Poliart started a workshop called « open
    sound lab » , a sound workshop devoted to the teenagers of the « Variable »
    neighborhood in Schaerbeek with no software or music practice.
    The idea is to give some tools to build instrumentals using only three (…)

  • Constant members Michael Murtaugh and Nicolas Malevé present a project that investigates the vast body of material generated by Finnish artist, nuclear scientist, futurologist and technology pioneer of the 1960s Erkki Kurenniemi. Entitled ’Data Radio: Erkki Kurenniemi (in 2048),the project is a (…)

  • Diverse collection of press articles on the group exhibition Systemics #1: Certain Peculiar Things And Ideas, Often Failed (Or, On Humans, Machines And Running Algorithms) in Århus Kunstbygning, Denmark in which Constant is represented with the work Dataradio on the legicy of Erkki Kureniemmi. (…)

  • Article about the Assange work conceived in Variable during Bitnik residency in november2012:
    "Two Swiss artists have used GPS tracking and live webcam to follow the progress of a parcel intended to reach Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
    Domagoj Smoljo and Carmen Weisskopf have posted (…)

  • Post parcel travels to Julian Assange Article by Ine Poppe Appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 18 january.
    text in dutch, translation below:
    On January 16, at 12.30, the Swiss art group Bitnik sends a box by mail to the Internet activist Julian Assange. The box contains a mobile phone and a (…)

  • The Patching Circles are open workshop session to learn and share about the pure-data software and other.
    During this session, we’ll see how we can stream sound video and datas from and to pure-data. we’ll look specially how to connect to an Icecast server (streaming audio-video).
    The (…)

  • February

  • Monthly meeting on using Blender as a render engine for Python. The packages BPY and BGE provide api’s for the modelling and game-engine functions of Blender that can be scripted using the programming language Python.
    registration compulsory !
    please send a mail to: frankiezafe@gmail.com

  • Arab, Turkish, Berber, Dutch, Brussels, Swahili, Polish"¦ these are only few of the languages that colour the shared French language in the area around La Cage aux Ours/Place Verboeckhoven. The dictionary of La Langue Schaerbeekoise/De Schaarbeekse Taal shows the influences of the many (…)

  • Join this informal moment to taste some of the work that is being done in the collective studio’s in Variable. Between 17:00 - 19:00 there are micro presentations, drinks, chats.
    Variable Loop takes place every first thursday of the month,
    between 17h and 19h, with flexible extensions after 19h.

  • The artistic dictionary ’Mots de la Cage aux Ours/Woorden uit de Berenkuil’ will be presented in the Bibliothèque Sésame in presence of the makers and slammer Maky. Maky who spent his adolescence around La Cage aux Ours will improvise with rythm and rhyme on a series of words the audience (…)

  • *//*The Patching Circles are open workshop session to learn and share about the pure-data software and other.
    This session will make us a loop, permitting us to revisit sound processing techniques as well as exploring more the RaspberryPi, with the presentation of the ongoing project of Pierre (…)

  • If we consider typographic and cartographic objects as "spatial arrangement of texts and other graphical elements", than their design is essentially the work of organising collisions. In a conventional design practice, many systems are at work to prevent accidents from happening. Tension is (…)

  • March

  • Monthly meeting on using Blender as a render engine for Python. The packages BPY and BGE provide api’s for the modelling and game-engine functions of Blender that can be scripted using the programming language Python.
    registration compulsory ! please send a mail to: frankiezafe[AT]gmail.com

  • In the framework of the Data Radio project, Michael and Nicolas organize a live listening session of the Kurenniemi audiocassette’s archive. They will be joined by Yves Poliart and other guests.

  • This meeting about the 3D-animation tool Blender is an open discussion between participants in which we talk about the desires for the content to be treated in the upcoming series of Blender workshops Blender.
    Infos and reservations: send a mail to collignon.d-AT-skynet.be

  • Join this informal moment to taste some of the work that is being done in the collective studios in Variable. Between 17:00 - 19:00 there are micro presentations, drinks, chats: barcamp style.
    Variable Loop takes place every first Thursday of the month.

  • *//*The Patching Circles are open workshop sessions to learn and share about the pure-data software and other.
    Nicolas d’Alessandro will come to present us his approach to speech synthesis, working on an analog model of a voice flux filtered by organs, different from classical analytical (…)

  • An afternoon focussing on Public Domain works and the problems of institutional digitisation. As the event will be in French and Dutch, please read the full program there.
    A collaboration with CRIDS Namur and the Royal Library of Belgium.

  • Michael Murtaugh and Nicolas Malevé, members of Constant will share their enthusiasm for Kurenniemi’s practice that involves various experiments in audio recording, diaristic practice and playful vocal exercises.
    They will present an exercise of live annotation of Dataradio’s audiostream and (…)

  • As part of Systemics #1 programme, Kunsthal Aarhus hosts a public seminar on the issues of experiencing, remembering and curating sound art/sound archives. Members of Constant, Michael Murtaugh and Nicolas Malevé will present their work on the Data Radio.
    Participants include: Constant (…)

  • The Marginalia project developed by Aimar Arriola articulates a proposal of critical reactivation of the Pepe Espaliú Library: http://www.eremuak.net/0303marginalia.
    Various collectives are invited to contribute and Equipo Re proposed to connect the Espaliu archive with its investigation (…)

  • An afternoon of short presentations and discussion with Diana McCarthy, Reni Hofmueller, Seda Guerses and Femke Snelting

  • At the occasion of the open days of the Ecole de Recherche Graphique, students, teachers and guests invite you to a demoparty of brief interventions around Open Source and digital practices.
    Connecting graphics, sound, video, radio and fablabs, the presentations show how education at the school (…)

  • Monthly meeting on using Blender as a render engine for Python. The packages BPY and BGE provide api’s for the modelling and game-engine functions of Blender that can be scripted using the programming language Python.
    registration compulsory ! please send a mail to: frankiezafe[AT]gmail.com

  • Join this informal moment to taste some of the work that is being done in the collective studios in Variable. Between 17:00 - 19:00 there are micro presentations, drinks, chats: barcamp style.
    On the programme: Knitic presents their Open Source Knitting machine at the end of their residency. (…)

  • Constant members Peter Westenberg and An Mertens were invited to discuss La Langue Schaerbeekoise/De Schaarbeekse Taal, the language of ’Escarbeque’ in the Spanish speaking community of Brussels, in the research group Euraca. Euraca is part of 404: school not found, and looks into the political (…)

  • The yearly Libre Graphics Meeting (LGM) gathers users and developers of Free, Libre and Open Source software for creative work. LGM is a self-organised event, put together by designers, artists, free culture activists and software developers because they want to make their Libre Graphics toolbox (…)

  • *20 April 2013*
    *EN :* *//*The Patching Circles are open workshop session to learn and share about the pure-data software and other.
    /_Workshop: 13h - 19h_/
    This time, apart from Easter eggs and digital bunny stories, there won’t be any specific focus on the circle. Come up with your (…)