Constant

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Femke Snelting — 2022-10-26T10:39:15Z

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Warp & Weft Summercollection 2019

Femke Snelting — 2021-10-01T14:52:42Z

A summery collection of on-line pages. Warps invite you to navigate to and through documentation, media and notes. Wefts are thematic constellations that establish relationships between different projects in the Constant Galaxy.

The wefts and warps introduce a specific way of writing, indexing and creating collections. They make use of etherpads (pages for on-line collaborative editing) to connect heterogeneous elements in the Constant galaxy. In parallel, we are activating our archive, developing new ways to access the many sounds, videos and images hosted on the Constant servers. The ongoing revision of Constant's website is a collaboration between Denis Devos, Martino Morandi, Michael Murtaugh and Femke Snelting together with the rest of the Constant team.

Editorial contributions to this Summer Collection: Livia Cahn, Jara Rocha, Ruby van de Watering and Gönbike Erdemir.

A (dis)continued commitment

Femke Snelting — 2021-06-23T14:42:10Z

As of 1 July 2021, Constant discontinues it's membership of the Free Software Foundation.

This withdrawal does not change Constant's continued commitment to software released under conditions that invite users to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve.

With many others, Constant was relieved when in 2019 the Foundation found the courage to condemn the oppressive behaviour of Richard M. Stallman, and to force him to step down. It is painful and frustrating that the Foundation now has invited him back into a leadership position, and this without sufficiently acknowledging the harm that was done not only by Stallman himself, but also by the Free Software Foundation. In doing so, the Foundation blocks urgent community change and erases the voices of many that for years have dared to call out his conduct. We cannot read the decision in any another way than an active endorsement of his statements and behavior. We feel the Free Software Foundation has failed to step out of one individual's shadow and does not take responsibility as a collective project.

Collective Conditions for Re-Use (CC4r)

Femke Snelting — 2021-05-25T13:32:19Z

The CC4r articulates conditions for re-using authored materials. It is inspired by the principles of Free Culture but tries to respond to a growing discomfort with licenses that remain bound to the idea of authorship as ownership and which rely on an universalist approach to openness. The CC4r considers authorship instead to be already part of a collective cultural effort and wants to remind current and future authors of the social and historical conditions that may be reasons for refraining from release and re-use of a work.

In an on-line session organised in collaboration with Severine Dusollier (SciencesPo, Paris), we will close-read and comment this first version of the CC4r in preparation of a new release.

Meeting link: https://bbb.constantvzw.org/b/fem-wjx-dcj
Agenda and notes: https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/cc4r.review

View online : https://constantvzw.org/wefts/cc4r....

Radio Implicancies

Femke Snelting — 2021-04-26T13:01:14Z

Testing 2, 1, 4. test. test.

Radio Implicancies is back with eight weekly self-hosted broadcasts developed for and with XPUB, Piet Zwart Media Design Master in Rotterdam; Thursdays from 16:00-17:00.

Radio Implicancies emits the signals of changing constellations, bringing forth different responses and creating new approaches to the way knowledge and technology interplay and create inherent structures.

With amongst others: The XPUB Department of Digital Records - Case Number: 92 / MIPOLONI - Us / Mozzarella X Gouda - echo / Radio Legends - Macintosh and Windows share a little boogie / Clara X Sugar

View online : https://issue.xpub.nl/15/

Sponge

Femke Snelting — 2021-04-08T08:58:16Z

"Digital snapshots, audio recordings, screen grabs, recorded video streams, radio programs, posters, publications, mind maps: for 20 years dribs and drabs of digital detritus have washed ashore the various servers of Constant. Over the last three years, together with Martino Morandi, Femke Snelting, and other members of Constant, we have worked on what we call the sponge, an ecosystem of tools to index, link, and rewrite these digital materials to tell (new) stories of more than two decades of activities."

Article by Constant member Michael Murtaugh on the Sponge

Collective Conditions @ Code & Context

Femke Snelting — 2021-04-04T19:24:08Z

Elodie and Femke present and discuss Collective Conditions with students of Code & Context, an interdisciplinary Bachelor programme at the Technische Hochschule in Cologne, Germany.

View online : https://coco.study

RDI 4: Hiding trees among the forest

Femke Snelting — 2021-04-04T18:43:10Z

Reclaiming Digital Infrastructures is a research collaboration with KASK School of Arts in Gent taking serious the question how to understand digital networks and communication tools as an integral part of the art education.

RDI4: Hiding trees among the forest

During this session, Seda Guerses and Femke Snelting will share concrete cases, readings, art-projects and hands-on exercises to explore how obfuscation strategies might evade surveillance, protect privacy and improve security. But could it also be a way to protest, contest, resist and sabotage the increasing grasp that technology has on managing our daily lives?

The pandemic condition intensified our dependency on technologies that survey, extract and optimize data-flows. This changes social, workplace, political, health and educational spheres where technical systems have become central and inescapable. Whether you book your jury via Eventbrite, join an on-line class in Zoom, get notified by your Coronalert app, chat with your colleagues in MS-Teams or work for Deliveroo, the digital expands into the physical to govern both the human and the more-than-human.

Obfuscation methods render data more ambiguous, difficult to exploit and interpret, less useful. They rely on the addition of gibberish, meaningless data; they pollute, add noise, randomize. Obfuscation invokes an intuitive form of protection: it distorts that which is visible to render it less (or in)visible. It hides the trees among the forest.

SCHEDULE
10.00 - 12.00 part I
15.00 - 17.00 part II

Language: English

This online session can be joined at: https://bbb.constantvzw.org/b/elo-mkk-2je
Register by sending an email to: peter@constantvzw.org

Seda Guerses is a member of the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, TU Delft in the Department of Multi-Actor Systems, and also a member of Constant. Her work focuses on privacy enhancing and protective optimization technologies (PETs and POTs), privacy engineering, as well as questions around software infrastructures, social justice and political economy as they intersect with computer science. http://vous-etes-ici.net

Femke Snelting works as an artist and researcher, developing projects at the intersection of design, feminisms, and free software. In various constellations, she explores how digital tools and practices might co-construct each other. Femke is member of Constant, and collaborates as/in Possible Bodies and The Underground Division. http://snelting.domainepublic.net

With Helen Pritchard and Miriyam Aouragh, Seda and Femke initiated The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI), a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. Together they convene communities to hold computational infrastructures to account and to create spaces for articulating what technologies in the “public interest” might be when “public interest” is always in-the-making. http://titipi.org

View online : https://autonomousdesign.hotglue.me...

Warp: Bureaucracksy documentation

Femke Snelting — 2021-04-03T19:40:13Z

This Warp* documents the worksession Bureacracksy.

Bureaucracksy took place between 7 and 12 December 2020 and brought together artivist practices around the imaginative re-appropriations of rules and regulations. Critical attitudes, artistic positions, creative bureaucrats re-purposed and re-oriented operators of bureaucratic power. The Warp links recordings, images, notes and other outcomes of the session.

*Warp and weft are weaving terms, which Constant uses to weave stories about and in-between different projects.

View online : https://constantvzw.org/wefts/burea...

How to infrastructure otherwise

Femke Snelting — 2021-03-01T12:18:06Z

A hands-on conversation on the ongoing techno-political transformations in (remote) learning environments. How to infrastructure otherwise in more just and solidary ways? On de-schooling, interdependent learning and The bundle theory of the student-user. With Martino Morandi, Jara Rocha and Femke Snelting.

In the context of the series Commoning Education/Educating the Commons organised by Station of Commons.

View online : https://stationofcommons.org/events...