March 2017 - February 2018

  • January

  • For the first Constant_V of 2017, Pascale Barret installs a selection of artworks in the window of Constant: a catalogue and a rice wine experimentation developed during her last residency at TEMI in South Korea.
    Spending this residency between wild and urban life, mountains with shamans, city (…)

  • March

  • "This is a book of translations - because translation permits dissemination - of certain selected texts which seem ti us to pose important questions, and which enable us to conceptualise our actions and our position in the future, in technology, in society, and in the network. Questions such as: (…)

  • DiVersions took place from 4 to 11 December 2016 and was inspired by the way versions are inscribed in daily software-practice. With 35 participants we explored how we could produce divergent histories through supporting difference. At http://diversions.constantvzw.org you can find links to the (…)

  • Algolit continues to explore neural networks to see how their process can be made legible, visible, understandable. We will follow up on the Deep Learning and Natural Language Processing course from Stanford University, by Richard Socher (https://cs224d.stanford.edu/syllabu...). Please make sure (…)

  • ESPACE AUTOUR is an invitation for you to map out your personal perception of space. Those tangible spaces show the relationship to what is around you. The classic codes of communication are thrown overboard and make way for a nonverbal, physical encounter.
    Katrien shares her practice with (…)

  • April

  • From 7 until 12 June, the Techno-Galactic Software Observatory will explore practices of proximate critique with and of software. This worksession has been called an ’Observatory’ because we are interested in different ways to look at software, and at the implications of how it is currently (…)

  • Peter Westenberg and An Mertens are invited to Aalborg University, to give a workshop and a masterclass for a group of students of the Erasmus JMD program in Media Arts Cultures. This program is organised in collaboration with Universities of Danube, Lodz, Hong Kong.
    Their presentations and (…)

  • From 20 until 23 April, the twelfth edition of the Libre Graphics Meeting will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
    Our colleagues from Open Source design caravan OSP will contribute to the meeting with amongst others Metabrasil, a two day workshop proposing to draw a parametric font using (…)

  • Algolit explores neural networks to see how their process can be made legible, visible, understandable. We follow up on the Deep Learning and Natural Language Processing course from Stanford University, by Richard Socher (https://cs224d.stanford.edu/syllabus.html). Please make sure you watch the (…)

  • May

  • Every year Constant commissions another designer or design collective using Free, Libre and Open Source tools, to work on the two-monthly flyers for Constant_V.
    In 2016, we invited Antoine Gelgon. He decided to use the flyers to develop and experiment with the typeface Ocr-PBI that he designed (…)

  • Possible Bodies interrogates corpo-realities and their orientation through parametric interfaces and looks at anatomies that are computationally constrained by the requirements of mesh-modeling.
    From 6 until 14 May, Femke Snelting and Jara Rocha gather a transdisciplinary group of researchers (…)

  • In the maker movement, information and sharing - primary library territory - are under scrutiny. During this session, (part of the CultuurConnect "Inspiratiedag: Focus op Makerspaces") you will get an introduction on the basic ideas and concepts behind creative commons, licenses, repositories (…)

  • Algolit explores neural networks to see how their process can be made legible, visible, understandable. We follow up on the Deep Learning and Natural Language Processing course from Stanford University, by Richard Socher (https://cs224d.stanford.edu/syllabus.html). Please make sure you watch the (…)

  • The Festival Mondial des Cinémas Sauvages (World Festival of Wild Cinema) is an open space and an open event traversed by contradictory currents. It aims to bring together films and practices that defy notions of property, authorship or copyright. Sometimes consciously through free licence; (…)

  • Every year on January 1, copyright expires on thousands of works that subsequently enter the public domain. In Belgium, copyright protection lasts 70 years after the death of the author and so in 2017, the works of authors who died in 1946 will be liberated. This year we welcome the creations of (…)

  • Let’s Build a Library Together invites designers, artists, theoreticians, hackers, librarians and activists to join forces during an intense week of discussion, collective prototyping and exchange on the future of Public Libraries in the digital age.
    Femke Snelting contributes to the workshop (…)

  • June

  • In 1945 the fifteen year old girl Anne Frank died in the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen. Her diary would have entered the public domain on 1 January 2016, but the arrival of this event caused a lot of commotion. The Anne Frank Foundation, an organisation that was set up by Anne’s father, (…)

  • In a world where digital practices are omnipresent, everything is measurable, including the number of steps we make, the amount of water we drink daily or even one’s level of happiness. Self-quantification inhabits everyday practices. It becomes a game in which our body is envisioned as a set of (…)

  • Do you suffer from the disappearance of your software into the cloud, feel oppressed by unequal user privilege, or experience the torment of software-ransom of any sort? Bring your devices and interfaces to the World Trade Center! With the help of a clear and in-depth session, at the (…)

  • How to defend the access to knowledge in the current intellectual property regime? Interfacing the law is an attempt to experiment with and to openly discuss shadow libraries, piratical text collections and other forms of disobedient sharing. Interfacing each in their own way with legal and (…)

  • Masterclass with Adva Zakai (Thursday) and presentation (Saturday) on the BioVision Hierarchy file format.
    BioVision Hierarchy (.bvh) is an ASCII file format used to import data from various motion capture systems into 3D-animation software. It was developed in the mid-nineties and remains one (…)

  • Algolit explores neural networks to see how their process can be made legible, visible, understandable. We follow up on the Deep Learning and Natural Language Processing course from Stanford University, by Richard Socher (https://cs224d.stanford.edu/syllabus.html). Please make sure you watch the (…)

  • Masterclass with Adva Zakai (Thursday) and presentation (Saturday) on the BioVision Hierarchy file format.
    BioVision Hierarchy (.bvh) is an ASCII file format used to import data from various motion capture systems into 3D-animation software. It was developed in the mid-nineties and remains one (…)

  • July

  • In the frame of the installation QUANTIFY WHOLEHEARTEDLY in the window of Constant, Natacha Roussel and the Samedies organise a feminist workshop of design of environments of personal quantification tools.
    This workshop proposes a reflection on the measurement of bodies. This pervasive (…)

  • An Mertens and Sarah Garcin will take part in .ORG, a 5 days / 5 nights residency of a collective work time that has been proposed to 50 persons, with discussions, creations, writing, hybridations, making , destroying"¦ 1 open space of potentialities, 1 space-time, 1 isolated mountain place.
    50 (…)

  • This summer, the Possible Bodies inventory travels to Hangar (Barcelona) to mutate with local affinity networks and communities of concern. During a two-week residency, the collective research will focus on biomedical 3D imaging and how it models, scans and renders "real bodies". Possible Bodies (…)

  • THIS CALL IS CLOSED The participants to the Transmarcations session are: Arkadi Zaides, Jonathan Chaim Reus, Mia Melvaer, Jerome Giller, Elvira Korman, Rajwa Tohme, Femke Snelting, Pacôme Beru /Pierre Marchand, Gabi Sobliye, Pierre Tandille, Samuel Rivers-Moore, Anne Goldenberg, Benjamin de (…)

  • August

  • During the Summer Books with an Attitude, a series of Constant’s books, will be on display. You can also find an overview on the website: http://www.books.constantvzw.org/
    Books with an Attitude are published by Constant, made with 100% Free and Open Source Software and published under open (…)

  • This summer Relearn is travelling to Rotterdam. After the organisers collected track proposals in the previous weeks, they are now looking for participants to make this week of relearning happen (29/08 - 02/09).
    Relearn is a collective learning experiment with as many teachers as it has (…)

  • September

  • Gijs de Heij, Manetta Berends and An Mertens will propose a workshop on the notion of public domain when it comes to machine learning practises, in the framework of ’Summerschool #2 Making Public Domain’ in Middelheim Museum in Antwerp.
    Read more about the program on (…)

  • October

  • This seminar was the first activity of the European project Iterations (2017 - 2020). It was organised and hosted by Hangar in Barcelona.
    The objective of the seminar was to create a framework of common ethics for the project Iterations. For doing so we worked together with practitioners (…)

  • November

  • In the framework of the exhibition The Materiality of the Invisible, Femke has been invited together with Eyal Weizman to dig deeper into the topic of the relationship of objects – and their devised narratives – to the body and social, political, technological or cultural power-structures, a (…)

  • In the framework of Saison Numérique the Maison du Livre opens its space for Algolit during three days in a row. The group presents lectures, workshops and a small exhibition about the narrative perspective of machine learning models. These selflearning algorithms are based on algebra and (…)

  • In the framework of Algoliterary Encounters, we will be hosting two lectures on Friday 10 November. Generative Models and the Digital Humanities: Towards Synthetic Literature, by Mike Kestemont
    Mike Kestemont is assistant professor in the department of literature at the University of Antwerp (…)

  • In the framework of Algoliterary Encounters Nicolas Malevé proposes a workshop on computer vision. Language, words, writing, descriptions and formulations are intimately linked to the way the millions of images on the internet are organised. Over the years, algorithmic techniques have evolved (…)

  • ’A Sentiment Thermometer’ is one of the installations in the exhibition of Algoliterary Encounters. It will be the starting point for the workshop.
    It asks questions to commonly used language models based on machine learning, like GloVe and word2vec. Using part of the Internet as training (…)

  • RECLAIMING THE CITY
    Redelijk Eigenzinnig / Reason and Engage (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) is an interdisciplinary course for students and a series of lectures and activities open to all. The third edition of Redelijk Eigenzinnig / Reason and Engage (VUB) with the title: RECLAIMING THE CITY (…)

  • RECLAIMING THE CITY
    Redelijk Eigenzinnig / Reason and Engage (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) is an interdisciplinary course for students and a series of lectures and activities open to all. The third edition of Redelijk Eigenzinnig / Reason and Engage (VUB) with the title: RECLAIMING THE CITY (…)

  • RECLAIMING THE CITY
    Redelijk Eigenzinnig / Reason and Engage (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) is an interdisciplinary course for students and a series of lectures and activities open to all. The third edition of Redelijk Eigenzinnig / Reason and Engage (VUB) with the title: RECLAIMING THE CITY (…)

  • What norms are shaped through 3D technologies? Who invented those three "dimensions" in the first place and why to stick with them as "true"? Can tools produce realities and presences and if so: what possible bodies do they activate?
    With Phenomenal 3D. Possible Bodies turns to the modern (…)

  • With a Model for a Politician, Gijs de Heij researches the role of language and image profiles in politics and their ability to influence our judgement. Constant will host The Weekly Address in its window, a device that employs speech recognition and machine learning to analyse patterns in a (…)

  • December

  • This evening is organised in the framework of the Constant worksession Transmarcations that takes place simultaneously in De Beursschouwburg. Speakers A. Alexander Antonopoulos and Nishat Awan approach politics of locations and bodies, representations of biological, biographical and geographic (…)

  • Meeting point: Grand Hall

  • Constant_V is a series of installations that usually take place in the window of Constant, rue du Fort 5, in Saint-Gilles. Constant_V prefers showing work in progress, highlighting the conceptual, technical and collaborative processes part of creating an artwork. The installations are made with (…)

  • Constant_V is a series of installations that usually take place in the window of Constant, rue du Fort 5, in Saint-Gilles. Constant_V prefers showing work in progress, highlighting the conceptual, technical and collaborative processes part of creating an artwork. The installations are made with (…)

  • Constant_V is a series of installations that usually take place in the window of Constant, rue du Fort 5, in Saint-Gilles. Constant_V prefers showing work in progress, highlighting the conceptual, technical and collaborative processes part of creating an artwork. The installations are made with (…)

  • OLA is the TLA for the Parisian organisation Outils Libres Alternatifs (Alternative Free Tools). They will host a workshop with An Mertens on using Python code for literary creation.
    A line of code is like an action of a recipe. One prepares an ingredient, applies the aciton and the ingredient (…)

  • 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 (…)

  • In the context of the series Close Encounters, Nicolas Malevé, Femke Snelting and a.pass researcher Pierre Rubio will discuss the long history of Active Archives. Active Archives started in 2006 as a Constant project concerned with the digital archiving and publishing practices of cultural (…)

  • February 2018

  • 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 (…)

  • The first Algolit session of 2018 welcomes Nicolas Malevé, with the second part of a workshop he organised in the framework of the Algoliterary Encounters in November 2017 in Maison du Livre in Brussels.
    The morning from 10h till 12:30h will be open for participants who were not present at the (…)

  • In this workshop we write loveletters using the material from the archive developed for the installation: the weekly video addresses by Barack Obama, cut to precise clips of words and small sentences. We start with a quick exploration of the the software, algorithms and interfaces used to (…)

  • The lifecycles of different species are linked via electronic circuits with limited lifespan: accessories that measure biorhythms or monitor the growth-rate of specimens; interactive medical implants, networked pacemakers or wireless defibrillators are an everyday reality. As minerals, plants, (…)

  • 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 (…)