User:Magazijnmeester/sandbox

this is the sandbox for magazijnmeester

Constant describes its workfield as: collaborative work, technological innovation, pipelined networks, software infrastructures, data-exchange, algorithms, experimental archives, new forms of (re)presentations, copyright alternatives, (cyber)feminism and the ethics of the World Wide Web.

The networked, Brussels-based collective constitutes a group of artists, designers, engineers, academics, free software enthusiasts and curious creative professionals who share an interest in Free_Culture, taking knowledge from their respective areas of expertise and applying it to the field of digital arts. As an association of people and organisations, the practice of this multidisciplinary and international research group is experimental and is shaped by its various participating members and associatives, who have sensed a need for mediation between the artistic, the social, the political and the scientific worlds.

Constant was founded in 1997. Since 2004, the organisation was recognised as artistic laboratory (Kunsten werkplaats) by the Flemish_Community. The core group of the association is a multidisciplinary group af artists active in new media, net art, design, visual arts, electronic literature, hacking and net culture. Artistic directors between 2000 and 2016 were Laurence Rassel and Peter Westenberg. The current director is Femke Snelting. Its members include representatives of international academic and cultural networks.

Over the years Constants activities have explored related topics that pose a critical view on the use of technology in arts. Among them: gender and technology, alternatives for copyright legislation in a digital surrounding, open content licensing, free software for artistic practices. In this way, the capacity for change in technologically enhanced spaces is gauged by observing the playful explorations between physical and digital surroundings, and the accompanying fluid dialogues between people, materials and media. A representative example of this interest is the festival Verbindingen/Jonctions. V/J is a series of 14 multi disciplinary events that took place between 1997 and 2013. Over the years V/J evolved from an audience oriented conference, with workshops and a temporary show of innovative art into a series of workdays for professional artists, in which collective experimenting, research and exchange became the focus point.

Work sessions
From 2014 onwards a series of worksessions were started. Examples of worksessions include:

GenderBlending invited body hackers, 3D theorists, game activists, queer designers and software feminists to experiment at the contact zones of gender and technology. Starting from the theoretical and material specifics of gender representations in a digital context, the meeting, which took place at the was an opportunity to develop prototypes for modelling digital bodies differently. More specifically, it allowed us to look at the way software conditions social readings and imaginations of gender.

The work session Cqrrelations took place in January 2015 in deBuren, inviting data travellers, writers, numbergeeks, programmers, artists, mathematicians, storytellers, and other tech creative souls to explore the world of digital non-relations, desnalysis, blurry categorisations and crummylations in the Big Data that shapes our daily reality and language. This work session was a space for theories and practices, for experiments, discussions, prototypes… Human and non-human (in-)expertise facilitated the exploration the topic. Parts of the process was documented on cqrrelations.constantvzw.org, possibly to end up in some forms of publication later on.

Publications
Constants notable publications have included the following: 
 * "Parlez_vous Saint-Gillois? / Spreekt U Sint-Gillis"
 * "La Langue Schaerbeekoise / De Schaarbeekse Taal"
 * ''Verbindingen/Jonctions 10, Tracks in the electr(on)ic fields"
 * "Conversations"

Team
Constants core team of collaborators currently includes Wendy Van Wynsberghe, Peter Westenberg, Femke Snelting, An Mertens, Michael Murtaugh, Denis Devos and Donatella Portoghese. Recent ad hoc collaborators include Nicolas Malevé, Martino Morandi and Rafaella Houlstan Hasearts.