June 2018 - May 2019

  • May

  • Warp and weft are terms for the two basic components used in weaving to turn thread or yarn into fabric. Inspired by Constant’s rich history of events and their diverse on-line manifestations, Constant is reweaving its on-line presence.
    As a way to narrate in-between concerns, projects, events (...)

  • Plus-Tôt Te Laat occupies Constant’s window with various works printed in risograph, that are inspired by writers who died in 1947 and whose works are in the public domain in 2018.
    This installation is a re-mix of the vegetal Art Deco style of the Belgian Victor Horta, and the 9th art of William (...)

  • June

  • The installation Wonderwoman meets Horta created by Plus-Tôt Te Laat in the window of Constant, will be part of the weekends of the Parcours d’artistes St-Gilles 2018. Anyone interested in author rights, public domain and the possibilities of artistic creation when sources become a public good, (...)

  • In machine learning Naive Bayes is a simple probabilistic classifier that is widely applied for spam filtering and sentiment analysis. During this session we first look at its history, its application in daily life decisions, as well as how this classifier can be used in Python. Next, we will (...)

  • Festive launch of XPPL: Xperimental Potential Pirate Library, Xperimental Private-Public Liaison, Xperimental Pretentious Performative Labor, Xperimental Platform for Potential Legality, Xperimental Post-Public Library.
    "XPPL is a space for potential pirate librarianship aimed at people who (...)

  • From January to April 2018, Femke curates the research centre at a.pass, a programme for advanced performance and scenography studies in Brussels.
    As part of this, she proposes five Monday Readings + an additional Saturday that bring habitual tool-situations apparent in a.pass in conversation (...)

  • Life limited electronics link the life cycle of humans, animals and machines; growing older biologically intersects with the lifespan of pacemakers and defibrillators. How do ageing bodies and their technological partners keep each other company, now and in the future?
    Film programme within (...)

  • How do ageing bodies keep each other and their technological partners company? What account do they give of their generational specificities? Can we develop ecosystems that transcend time and scale in solidarity? At the closing of the worksession Ageing companions / Geprogrammeerde veroudering (...)

  • July

  • Somatopologies screens: from sunset to sunrise!
    For the summer edition of Constant_V, Possible Bodies feat. Spec presents Somatopologies, materials for a movie-in-the-making. In the vitrine you will find 3D-renderings of diverse densities, wondering about the regimes of truth that converge in (...)

  • Possible Bodies (Jara Rocha, Femke Snelting) will contribute to the conference How to relate:
    "How to relate? To each other, to something? Questions about relations are relevant for a knowledge in the arts. For just which knowledge can be produced depends on the success or failure of (...)

  • Alchorisma alludes to the relationships between algorithms, charisma, rhythm, alchemy and karma. Alchorisma is a Constant worksession which looks at integrating cosmogenetic views with the charisma surrounding technology. We look at ways to infect existing algorithmic models with positions that (...)

  • August

  • Constant will be closed from 1 till 31 August.
    We wish you all a wonderful Summer and look forward to meeting, exchanging, collaborating again from September onwards, with renewed energies!

  • September

  • Live from WTC25 and on-line at http://observatory.constantvzw.org/stream
    Door closes at 18:30. Broadcast: 19:00-20:30
    The Techno-Galactic Guide to Software Observation gathers methods from the Techno-Galactic Software Observatory, a worksession that took place in June 2017. It was (...)

  • Networks Of One’s Own is a periodic para-nodal publication that is itself collectively written in a network. Each of the episodes is thought of as the ’release’ of a software stack, contextualised in its specific practice. The series aims to document a set of tools, experiences, ways of working (...)

  • Opening: Thursday 20/09 @ 18:00
    What future for digital collective artistic work? How to stimulate sustainable art practices that consciously engage with network technology, collectivity, communality and difference?
    Iterations is an artistic relay which traverses different countries. Artists (...)

  • During this information session we explain methods and contents for the workshop that will happen in Mundaneum in Mons from 8 to 12 October 2018 (10-18h), organised by the teachers of Digital Arts ARTS² and artists from Algolit, Constant’s research group on free code and text. The workshop is (...)

  • In machine learning Naive Bayes is a simple probabilistic classifier that is widely applied for spam filtering and sentiment analysis. Based on the documentation of the previous session, we now use this technique as a recipe for potential literary creation - that can be physical, computational (...)

  • October

  • From October 1 until the end of 2018, Constant will share its studio on the 25th floor of the WTC building with Mia Melvær. Mia is a Norwegian visual artist working at the intersection of sculpture, technology and ways of archiving. Often in collaboration with the Brussels-based collective Just (...)

  • Gijs de Heij and An Mertens, two members of the Algolit team organise a workshop in Mundaneum in Mons from 8 to 12 October 2018 (10-18h), in collaboration with the teachers of Digital Arts ARTS². The workshop is aimed to students of ARTS2, University of Mons and other schools, but can be joined (...)

  • How do different flows and different forms of power intersect on the Muntplein/Place de la Monnaie in Brussels? For five days, Alex Zakkas and Kurt Tichy joined the ranks of various human and machinic agents already watching over the square. Starting from their observations, Constant hosts an (...)

  • Contribution to a debate. With Marije Baalman, Jennifer Kanary, Femke Snelting and Luis Lobo Guerrero. Chair: Danielle Arets.
    "Technology offers many people the opportunity to participate in society. Technology as enabler of accessibility. The practice is different. The paradox of technology (...)

  • For the second residency in the framework of the project Iterations, 8 artists were invited to develop a collaborative art project during a 15 days residency at Hangar. Some were selected through an open call, others ones were going to participate to the next iterations residency. At the (...)

  • November

  • At the FLAT Art Book Fair of Torino, Femke will present Books With an Attitude.
    According to Constant, books deserve the hallmark "with an Attitude" when they are made with Free, Libre and Open Source Software and published under an open content license. The books and their ingredients are (...)

  • Linear Regression is one of the most well known and well understood algorithms in statistics and machine learning. It has been around for almost 200 years. It is an attractive model because the representation is so simple.
    During this session we first look at its history, its application in (...)

  • From 19 to 21 November 2018 we organise a 3-days workshop where we will build cameras from scratch, experiment with their design and shoot SuPi8 footage.
    The SuPi8 is a digital camera ... but built inside a Super8 camera. More precisely, it is a digital sensor connected to a Raspberry Pi, (...)

  • The SuPi8 is a digital camera ... but built inside a Super8 camera. More precisely, it is a digital sensor connected to a Raspberry Pi, stuck inside a 8mm or Super8 camera.
    From November 19 to 21, Constant is organizing a 3-day workshop where we will build cameras from scratch, experiment with (...)

  • Algolit members Gijs de Heij and An Mertens will organise a workshop on ’Futures for Experimental Literature’ and algorithmic storytellers in the framework of the studyday ’Daarom lees ik’ (’Why I read’) organised by UGent.
    In the morning there will be a lecture and panel discussion about classical (...)

  • Contribution to a symposium organised by Q-02 werkplaats in collaboration with Melissa E. Logan (University of Craft Action Thought / Chicks on Speed). With Christian von Borries, Prodromos Tsiavos, Femke Snelting, Melissa E. Logan, ooooo, Yoni Van Den Eede.
    "The one-day symposium and (...)

  • December

  • Alchorisma alludes to the relationships between algorithms, charisma, rhythm, alchemy and karma. Alchorisma is a Constant worksession which looks at integrating cosmogenetic views with the charisma surrounding technology. We look at ways to infect existing algorithmic models with positions that (...)

  • On Tuesday evening, Z33 organizes, in the context of the Alchorisma worksession, a screening of two films that focus on the themes of magic and spirituality. The two films show how artists respond, in their own way, to our contemporary interaction with elements from the earth and nature. (...)

  • Bela is a multilanguage (Pure Data, Super Collider, C/C++) interactive music platform for ultra-low latency audio signal processing. The platform consists of Open Source software and hardware. Bela is used by audio enthusiasts, interactive artists, musicians, wearable technology designers, (...)

  • Linear Regression is one of the most well known and well understood algorithms in statistics and machine learning. It has been around for almost 200 years. It is an attractive model because the representation is so simple.
    Based on the documentation of the previous Algolit session, we will use (...)

  • January 2019

  • 7-13 April 2019 @ Antwerp/BE
    "Networks do not tell all stories equally. Networks, like all entities with stories, tell most readily those stories in whose reflection they see themselves." [Eleanor Saitta, 2012]
    The internet is dead, long live the internets! In 2025, the internet will consist (...)

  • In the context of Any Change Calls for Resistance, this year’s winterschool at RITCs curated by Christoph Meierhans, Constant contributes with The Streaming Hypothesis. This two week workshop will be a hands-on experience with the politics and technologies of streaming.
    On 15 January, invited (...)

  • In the course of 1948, the lives of the authors Sergej Eisenstein, Louis Jean Lumière, Marie-Elisabeth Belpaire, Jacques Feyder, Cissy van Marxveldt and many others came to an end. Seventy years later, in 2019, the intellectual property protection on their oeuvre expires. Finally, their works (...)

  • CHANGE OF PROGRAM & PLACE:
    Due to planning issues the recording session of the podcasts at Radio Panik is postponed to Friday 1-3. We will spend some time during this session on: a case of Propaganda Detection: https://www.datasciencesociety.net/hack-news-datathon-case-propaganda-detection/

  • XMPP is a long standing protocol for libre federated chat which in recent years brought the federated chat ecosystem to modern mobile clients, cross device chat and end-to-end encryption.
    Running up to FOSDEM, the XMPP community hosts a design sprint in Brussels. More info + how to join: (...)

  • The 2019 edition of transmediale focuses on the role of emotions, empathy, and cultural emergence in digital culture. Constant co-moderates one of its two Study Circles on Affective Infrastructures and in addition, is involved in multiple workshops and events:
    The Affective Infrastructures (...)

  • February

  • In the framework of De Klas van Tine Femke will present The ACB of the alphabet. It is a class about letters, signs and computers. How do you change text into code, and code into text? What does a keyboard do, who manages the Unicode standard, and what about emojis :-)? Femke shows that ’ABC’ (...)

  • In machine learning, the perceptron is an algorithm for supervised learning of binary classifiers. A binary classifier is a model which can decide whether an input belongs to some specific class.
    Neural Networks work the same way as the perceptron. Perceptron is a single layer neural network (...)

  • March

  • Wicked Technologies | Wild Fermentation is a project considering the ethics and aesthetics of fermentation in relation to artistic research.
    This project is developed by Sara Manente, a choreographer, performance artist and amateur fermentress, in collaboration with drawing artist Gunbike (...)

  • Contribution to the third lab meeting of the project "Re-configuring computing through cyberfeminism and new materialism" (CF+). CF+ is a project of the Gender/Diversity in Informatics Systems research lab at the University of Kassel, Germany. The project aims to lay the groundwork for (...)

  • Data Workers is an exhibition of algoliterary works, of stories told from an ’algorithmic storyteller point of view’. The exhibition is a creation by members of Algolit, a group from Brussels involved in artistic research on algorithms and literature. Every month they gather to experiment with (...)

  • April

  • The SNCBench is the latest in a series of free objects designed and created by the collective Libre Objet. It completes a line of street furniture that started with the uHbench a few years ago.
    Commissioned by Constant to replace the old uHbench that was made during a workshop in 2015, the (...)

  • From microperformativity to compost politics, and from the microbial commons to the microontologies of sex: How to think with live cultures of fermentation? Sara, Livia and Femke have collected texts from feminist and queer theory that reflect on microbial modes of togetherness and the (...)

  • Stories and reports on what has been happening in the first part of the worksession entitled ’The internet is dead’ and two presentations
    De-google/de-gafam your organisation/digital life Agnez Bewer will talk about several initatives which emphasize providing services like mail, federated (...)

  • Listen to a Networks With an Attitude contribution on Webgang, a radio show on F/loss culture and technology on radio centraal 106.7
    Network Jam in Toitoidrome + S14
    Go to one of the two venues to tune in, or check this page on Thursday 11/04 for potential online information (...)

  • Listen to a Networks With an Attitude contribution on Webgang, a radio show on F/loss culture and technology on radio centraal 106.7
    Network Jam in Toitoidrome + S14
    Go to one of the two venues to tune in, or check this page on Thursday 11/04 for potential online information (...)

  • Stories, presentations and reports of what happened during part two of the worksession: ’Long live the Internets’ and a booklaunch.
    Booklaunch ’Technological Sovereignty’ translation to Dutch + discussion We deserve to have other technologies, better than those we currently have and known as (...)

  • An Mertens experiments with forms that reveal the identity of algorithms. For this lecture-performance she takes on the "Bayesian naive classifier", an algorithm widely used to sort spam in our mailboxes, to analyze feelings on social media, but also to define whether a text is written by a (...)

  • In the course of 1948, the lives of the authors Sergej Eisenstein, Louis Jean Lumière, Marie-Elisabeth Belpaire, Jacques Feyder, Cissy van Marxveldt and many others came to an end. Seventy years later, in 2019, the intellectual property protection on their oeuvre expires. Finally, their works (...)

  • For the fourth Iterations Media art laboratory esc invited Nayari Castillo, Antonia Manhartsberger, Norbert Math, Mia Melvær, Constanza Mendoza, Ulla Rauter, Martin Rumori to make a collective work to be exhibited in the esc gallery.
    The esc medien kunst labor was transformed into a spatial (...)

  • Writing and reading are no longer the exclusive right of the paper. For most authors, their practice is intimately intertwined with software and a networked infrastructure. What does it mean to consciously include this technological context in the literary creation process? How does the use of (...)

  • The members of Algolit are very happy to welcome Allison Parrish for a workshop in the framework of the exhibition Data Workers in the evening before she will give a talk in Passa Porta.
    This two-part workshop examines the physical gesture and material artifacts of the act of writing, as seen (...)

  • Wicked Technologies is a project considering the ethics and aesthetics of fermentation in relation to artistic research. This project is developed by Sara Manente, a choreographer, performance artist and amateur fermentress, in collaboration with drawing artist Gunbike Erdemir.
    On Wednesday 8 (...)

  • Contribution to the symposium Making Matters organised by the Critical Making consortium:
    "Constant is committed to collaborative situations that generate proximate critiques of and through techno-praxis. Twice a year the association initiates a temporary research lab to which participants (...)

  • "As a person immensely fascinated by accents and sounds, I have never imagined that one day I would discuss the negative impacts of sounds in my life."
    From 24 May until 22 September, Yared Yilma’s soundscapes will come to life in the window of Constant. You are welcome to the opening on (...)

  • The Algolit exhibition Data Workers in Mundaneum in Mons has come to an end. Everything was up and running. And it was great. In order to be able to have afterlives, forks and other remixing deviations, we will dedicate one session to documenting the exhibition: gathering code, adding comments (...)