Constant

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denis — 2021-06-11T16:08:23Z

Algorithmic Wildlife

denis — 2015-09-21T16:50:12Z

Constant member An Mertens will take part in this evening programme of Coded Matter(s) in De Brakke Grond in Amsterdam, with a presentation of her research on 'Algorithmic storytellers'. Other presenters are: rybn, Sjef Van Gaalen, Michelle Kasprzak.
More about Algorithmic Wildlife:
As humans increasingly delegate labour to 'smart' computer systems, it's time to reevaluate how we relate to the algorithmic species. Do they engage in 'smart' or 'primitive' behaviour? How autonomous are (…)

- Algolit / Presentation, Performance art, Slow practices, Literature

Mondothèque at Otlet Salons

denis — 2015-09-21T16:40:11Z

Femke represents Mondothèque at the Mundaneum Edition of the Otlet Salons, a "network event that aims to foster new cooperation across the borders of disciplines, institutions and society." With Pieter Colpaert (Keynote: How data want to be reused), Marc Vael (ISACA, UAMS and Solvay), Jan Van Hee (Arteveldehogeschool, POLITEIA) and Philippe van Impe (European Data Innovation Hub).

- Mondothèque / Presentation, Archives, Discussion

The Death of the Authors - 1943 @ Brussels Poetry Fest

denis — 2015-09-18T16:13:56Z

"The Death of the Authors - 1943, a botopera' will be performed again in Wiels on Friday 11th September as the opening act of the Brussels Poetry Fest. The installation will be on show in Wiels untill Sunday 13th September.
With : BotsWaller, NICKola tesla, Beatrix Botter, Rachmanibot & plotter Roland.
A work by Michael Murtaugh, Anne Laforet, Gijs De Heij, Antonio Roberts, An Mertens.
Botopera uses Python, nltk, mplayer, Pure Data, imagemagick and git.
Clone or download all (…)

- Public Domain Day / Music, Collaborative, Performance, Exhibition, Intellectual property, Literature, Remix

Diverted Objects

denis — 2015-09-18T15:35:58Z

«Diverted Objects» is an installation developed by the collective LibreObjet around the "fork" applied to objects. The "fork" means an object having a common root with a second one. Initially twins, these two objects will separate and follow their own developments. The results of a one-day workshop will be exhibited for a month in the window of Constant in the frame of the project Constant V (Venster/Vitrine).
Libre Objet is Raphaël Bastide, Julien Deswaef, Mathieu Gabiot and Martin (…)

- Constant_V / Design, Hardware, Exhibition, Fork friendly

Diverted Objects workshop

denis — 2015-09-18T15:11:16Z

"Diverted Objects" is a one-day workshop developed by the collective LibreObjet around the "fork" applied to objects. The 'fork' means an object having a common root with a second one. Initially twins, these two objects will separate and follow their own developments. Starting with a specifically built object, how will it be re-appropriated physically by a third? Simple materials, a few tools and time constraints are the basic ingredients to explore and test the links and kinship boundaries of this object's family tree.

No prerequisite is required. Open to 10 participants - registration by email - hello@libreobjet.org Contribution: 10â‚¬ for materials

Libre Objet - Raphaël Bastide, Julien Deswaef, Mathieu Gabiot and Martin Lévêque - is a group of industrial and graphic designers, hackers and artists who have in common a questioning around the open source industrial design, and the processes and productions that result from it. The objective is to provide tools to make available the manufacture of design objects to a broader public.

"Diverted Objects" is part of the program of Brussels Design September.

With the support of: Vlaamse Overheid, Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie, Commission Communautaire française and Gemeente Sint-Gillis.

Apero Promiscuous Pipelines

denis — 2015-09-18T15:01:40Z

At this special edition of the FoAM apéro you can discover some of the processes that we have been running at Promiscuous Pipelines, a worksession trying to re-imagine modularity, knowing that software processes are inherently leaky and contextual. The apéro is a regular social get-together of the FoAM team, visitors and curious passers-by. You're welcome to bring food or drink contributions and join us in our proceedings.

- Promiscuous pipelines / Presentation, Meeting

The Death of the Authors, 1943

denis — 2015-07-09T14:47:57Z

The posters realized by Plotter Roland will be on auction tonight. All benefits will be donated to the new cooperative magazine for independant journalism in Belgium: Médor.

View online : http://botopera.activearchives.org

Code, text and text-to-speech

denis — 2015-07-02T13:23:18Z

Constant members Michael Murtaugh and An Mertens will give a workshop on text, code and text-to-speech in the framework of the Hackers and Designers Summercamp organised in De Punt in Amsterdam.

More about the workshop:
Picture this: In 2084, after the decay of Google and the deprecation of the Web 2.0 darknet, the web is reconstructed using the sustainable IRC protocol. In place of the burned-out centralized data centers created at the turn of the century, software in this new network is deployed as lightweight interogable bots in ad-hoc mesh networks and are rewritten and mutated as needed. Different bots crawl the different archives (archive.org, wikipedia, google, gitorious) and publish parts of conversation in different spaces (etherpad, wiki, print, epub). The result is a social space for writing (software, fiction, documentation) and file-sharing where software and services are as verbose as the participants.
After launching this idea during Relearn in Brussels in 2014, the project of a botnet has grown into a space for bot seances, in which we summon dead authors to interact via their works, the originals as much as the remixes. While developing the architecture and creating the first bots for Public Domain Day 2015 - Bots Waller, Rachmanibot, NICK Tesla and Beatrix Botter - we realized the platform is great for learning how to read and write text with code.

The workshop is open for anyone with a basic knowledge of programming. For those familiar to Python we propose to develop chatbots that can translate text-to-speech so we can give each of the AI personalities a personal voice. Using Free Software & Free Art Licenses only.

View online : http://hackersanddesigners.nl/

Worksession: Promiscuous pipelines

denis — 2015-06-19T13:16:52Z

'Universalism is not rejected but particularized; what is needed is a new kind of articulation between the universal and the particular' (Chantal Mouffe in: The Return of the political, 1993)

In computation, a 'pipe' is a method to enable various software modules to connect to each other, where the output of one program is treated as the input for the next program. 'Pipes' form the basis of The Unix philosophy, a perspective on software production where multiple task-oriented tools can be chained together to make seemingly endless software combinations possible. While interchangeable and flexible, the assumption that each element should be optimised to 'Do One Thing and Do It Well' leads to a rather predictable and ultimately normative set. If each tool is designed to be used in any context by anyone at any time, what about situated knowledge? How can we imagine modularity, knowing that software processes are inherently leaky and contextual?

To think modular systems beyond received ideas about efficiency and optimisation, we propose to first of all pay attention to the plumbing itself, to what exactly happens between 'standard out' and 'standard in'. Beautiful accidents, unpredictable U-turns, lopsided loops, porous borders between inside and outside and the pleasure of spaghetti code ... imperfect software systems stretching out their tentacles to make connections between what does not yet belong together.

At Promiscuous Pipelines we'll experiment with the principle of 'pipes' to inspire uncommon junctions and perhaps achieve the opposite of a productivity-oriented system. It is an occasion to discuss, re-work and develop tool-sets, methods or systems that generate hybrid practices, contaminate standardized working methods, and are ready to incorporate unintended results.

In parallel, we write and edit the Promiscuous Pipelines A-Manual, an impossible e-publication that will be the missing anti-manual for how the systems and proposals present in the worksession can (not) be linked up.

Promiscuous Pipelines continues and deepens various software experiments that artists and developers around FoAM and Constant and have undertaken in recent years and links them to new initiatives.

With amongst others:

Øyvind Kolås – Microraptor/GEGL – Marthe Van Dessel – bolwerK – Zeljko Blace – QueerOS – Simon Yuill – Martino Morandi – Unitary Networking – Michael Murtaugh – Active Archives – An Mertens – Gijs de Heij – Anne Laforet – The Botopera – Christoph Haag – Etherpash – Pierre Marchand – Wænd

Practical

Participants in Promiscuous Pipelines can be artists and/or thinkers and/or developers interested in rethinking tool-sets, methods or systems. You are invited to bring existing or imagined projects that care about connections between social, technical and/or physical worlds.

The worksession starts on Monday 31 August in the afternoon and ends on Saturday evening 5 September. We will work collaboratively with 20 participants from different backgrounds. The session is organised by Constant in collaboration with FoAM and hosted in their Brussels studio.

Participation is free. Constant and FoAM will provide lodging and vegetarian lunch. A basic hardware workshop, plus a library of related materials will be made available. If you need anything particular, let us know and we'll try to facilitate it.

We'll primarily use Free, Libre and Open Source software because we would like to focus on tools that invite us to speak back to their social and technological construction.

For more information, please contact wendy@constantvzw.org

Hosts

Promiscuous Pipelines is prepared and hosted by:

Constant (Femke Snelting, Wendy Van Wynsberghe). a non-profit association, an interdisciplinary arts-lab based and active in Brussels since 1997. Constant works in-between media and art and is interested in the culture and ethics of the World Wide Web. The artistic practice of Constant is inspired by the way that technological infrastructures, data-exchange and software determine our daily life. Free software, copyright alternatives and (cyber)feminism are important threads running through the activities of Constant. Constant organizes workshops, print-parties, walks and 'Verbindingen/Jonctions'-meetings on a regular basis for a public that's into experiments, discussions and all kinds of exchanges. http://constantvzw.org

FoAM (Nik Gaffney, Maja Kuzmanovic). a network of transdisciplinary labs for speculative culture. It is inhabited by people with diverse skills and interests – from arts, science, technology, entrepreneurship, cooking, design and gardening. It is a generalists' community of practice working at the interstices of contrasting disciplines and worldviews. Guided by our motto "grow your own worlds," we study and prototype possible futures, while remaining firmly rooted in cultural traditions. We speculate about the future by modelling it in artistic experiments that allow alternative perspectives to emerge. By conducting these experiments in the public sphere, we invite conversations and participation of people from diverse walks of life. http://fo.am

Draft program

Monday 31 August

16:00 Arrivals and set-up
17:00 Discussion, talks

Tuesday 1 September

10:00 - 12:00 Promiscuous Pipelines conversations
13:30 - 18:00 Development

Wednesday 2 September

10:00 - 12:00 Promiscuous Pipelines conversations
13:30 - 18:00 Development

Thursday 3 September

10:00 - 12:00 Promiscuous Pipelines conversations
13:30 - 18:00 Development

Friday 4 September

10:00 Excursion to the sewer museum
17:00 foAM Apéro / presentations / discussion

Saturday 5 September

11:00 - 13:00 Talks
14:00 – 18:00 Development