Constant

Storytelling Sensing/Consenting

Peter Westenberg — 2021-11-29T09:06:19Z

With: Agustin Ramos Anzorena, Diego Valverde, Isabel Paehr & Ren Loren Britton

About the Workshop:
Talk about a time when you consented to something and that experience of expressing consent made you really glad to have done it.

This DIWO (Do it With Others) workshop will explore consent and sensing the city with inputs from three sources:

sensors from the company Sensolus,
humans who have a relationship to the cities we are in
and those humans concrete experiences of consent/sensory memory.

This workshop is a result from an ongoing research around sensing technologies and practices of consent, and is still a work-in-progress rather than a finished result. Workshop participants will be invited to care for questions of consent through telling stories around consent when it has served them. Working from consent when it has served us will enable us to consider what our requirements for asking and saying yes or no might be. Questions of scale will be discussed. Our stories will speak nearby an installation that operates with technical modes of recording and will inform a model of consent that we are building that does not automatically fail. Guiding principles for this consent model that we will create include: working with group process, developing explicit rules and principles, practicing non-assumption, making models that work for humans and identifying the place our model of consent comes from.

Though the workshop will conclude at 19:30 on the 10th of December it provides the groundwork for a poetic-sensor-walking-installation that can continue to be activated for some weeks beyond the workshop date. For more information about picking up a sensor, going on a walk & receiving a poem please come to the workshop and/or write Peter.

Accessibility Information:

Workshop is spoken in English.
Collectively written captions can be available in English, French, and/ or Dutch.
You can already start the room if you want test and familiarise yourself with the platform BigBlueButton

Please write peter(AT)constantvzw.org for any and all further access requests: we want to make access possible !

In the framework of the project Spectral Desire Paths in collaboration with Urban Species and Sensolus.

View online : Link to online meeting

Open Call: Residency Spectral Desire Paths

Peter Westenberg — 2021-04-02T11:03:32Z

SPECTRAL DESIRE PATHS
Spectral Desire Paths is a collaboration between an arts organization (Constant), a technology company (Sensolus) and a research group (Urban Species). Constant connects collective artistic work with free software and intersectional feminist thinking. Sensolus makes geolocative tracking tools for globally based companies. Urban Species develops action research on participation and urbanity.

CONTEXT
Wireless communication networks are ubiquitous and the density of equipment and radiation is increasing. This has consequences not only for the organization of our daily lives, but also for the environment of non-human fellow planet dwellers. Spectral Desire Paths explores other-connectivities and encourages re-imaginations of future techno-environments that take into account not only the quality of human life, but the impact on all involved. Alive or not. What uncharted paths can we tread on in the spectrum of bandwidths ? What orientations, frequencies, vibrations and in/outputs are desirable for everyone ? What perspectives can be opened up by using technology inappropriately, by bringing it into other contexts, by collaging it, bending it, organising it differently ?

Spectral Desire Paths is a two years trajectory. It starts with an art residency hosted by Sensolus. Inspired by the residency, the developed artistic work will give rise to a period of further research and experimentation with citizens in the urban realm. In a concluding phase, at the end of 2022, this path will be shared with other organizations and interested parties.

WE ARE SEARCHING
We are offering a residency for an artist, designer, collective, occasional formation or other artistic constellation who is / are willing to develop an artistic project in the first phase of SDP using the technology of Sensolus. Sensolus makes location and environmental sensing tracking devices that can be attached to large objects. Think for example of sea containers or tow bars or trolley or other objects that have no battery or energy source of their own. Via an online platform, the objects can be followed, mapped and managed. Features include the '0G protocol', a data integrity algorithm and a long battery life allowing objects to be tracked even when they are off grid for several months. On datalevel, features include localization and activity data and different types of analytics build upon these data.

You can find a description of the technology here: (https://www.sensolus.com/tech)

We are curious about critical practices that question common parameters of technological developments in the context of the anthropocene such as: efficiency, optimization, resource extraction, pollution, industrial normativity. From our engagements with free/libre open source hard+software, citizen participation, habitat and environment, we would also be happy to hear from practices that illuminate socially urgent issues. For example: migration, (un)equal treatment, e-waste, sustainable hardware, (s)low tech, other-urbanism and de-globalization.

Candidates should have a hands-on approach to technology and a willingness to get to know Sensolus technologies. The Sensolus team does offer support, but you need to be able to handle code, hardware, API's, ...
Because the developed work, the sources and applied methods must be able to be shared with the rest of Spectral Desire Paths, we work as much as possible with F/LOSS tools and free licenses. Experience in that area will be helpful and appreciated.

At the end of the residency we ask that a physical trace of the work remains at Sensolus, for example in the form of an artwork.

PROCEDURE
If you have an artistic practice, or want to develop one relevant to this project, please apply with a motivation, and explain why you think you can work within this framework. We don't ask for direct project proposals, but please don't hold back if you have one as it helps to understand which way your project could go. We will choose three applicants, with whom we would like to speak further. These conversations are reimbursed and can take place on-line. Based on these three conversations, we will choose one resident.

TIMING
Apply before 30 April 2021 (with a letter of interest, artistic cv, skills) by sending an email to: peter@constantvzw.org
Notifications: 7 may 2021
Conversations: 18 May 2021 afternoon.

Residency period:
last quarter of 2021
way of working to be discussed between applicant and Sensolus
final date of residency: 31-12-2021

OFFER
Fee: 6000 euro
Working budget: 2000 euro
Sensolus supports with their technology and infrastructure. Constant provides content and production support.

Sensolus: https://www.sensolus.com/
Urban Species: http://urbanspecies.org/en
Constant: https://constantvzw.org

This project is supported by the Flemish Governement

Spectral Desire Paths

Peter Westenberg — 2021-04-02T10:47:05Z

Spectral Desire Paths was a project that aim to expand the imagination and imaginative capacity of possible futures to open up new (spectral) pathways, build anti-stereotypical models and unexpected orientations towards desired technological futures.

Spectral Desire Paths was a collaboration between an arts organization (Constant), a technology company (Sensolus) and a research group (Urban Species). Constant connects collective artistic work with free software and intersectional feminist thinking. Sensolus makes geolocative tracking tools for globally based companies. Urban Species develops action research on participation and urbanity.

The collaboration explored the potential of lower power networks and tracking technology by making space for artistic, technical and scientific exchange, speculation experimentation and critical analysis.

Satellite and 5G wireless communication infrastructure is developing rapidly. Geolocation tracking technologies are benefiting from this. They are applied, for example, in transportation and urban planning and for improving mobility management. Technology and the world mutually shape each other and exist in a problematic relationship with each other. Without minerals, hardware does not work, politics drives implementation, and transnational companies cultivate habits of users. Technology generates e-waste. Tracking technologies are also associated with precarious working conditions and with disproportionate appropriation of public space for corporate purposes. The result of this tension is a sense of disconnect that is growing between industry, society and citizens. This raises new questions: In whose interest are new technologies being rolled out? How does infrastructure affect life, the city and the environment? What is the place of citizens and civil society in the adoption and application of technical standards ?