Future Tools

Future Tools grew out of a long interest in the relation between tools and practice. The blog runs parallel to activities at the Libre Graphics Research Unit that are developed in collaboration with Medialab Prado, WORM, Piksel and others.

www.lgru.net/blogs/ft

FS @ January 27, 2012

Shape Shapes Shape

PH works on a teaser for the next LGRU Research Meeting. Launch at FOSDEM next weekend.

FS @ January 21, 2012

Word, Work

A group from Chicago visited Constant Variable last week. One student explains his mother is a publisher and that she compiled an on-line glossary of terms used in her mixed practice of printing, publishing and writing. It is stunning. For example, under W: word spacing: The amount of space between each word in typeset text. [...]

FS @ January 15, 2012

Bravo

Bravo was the first WYSIWYG editor (…) Previous editors rarely made any attempt to match the display to the printed page; this meant that users could not check whether they had formatted the document correctly, except by printing it out.1 Newman, W. (2012). Design case study: The Bravo text editor. Interactions, 19(1), 75-80

FS @ January 12, 2012

Meaningful transformations

A conversation with Tom Lechner We discovered the work of Tom Lechner at the Libre Graphics Meeting 2010 in Brussels. Tom traveled from Portland, US to present Laidout, an amazing tool that he made to produce his own comic books and also to work on three dimensional mathematical objects. His software interests us for several [...]

FS @ January 1, 2012

What you can learn from digging a hole

In an intense discussion about ‘the interface of the future’, John Lilly (then CEO Mozilla Corporation, now working for another company); Aza Raskin (then Head of User Experience at Mozilla Labs, now running his own company) and Dan Mills (then Lead Developer of Weave, now leading the Account Manager project at Mozilla Labs) debate what [...]

FS @ December 23, 2011

The Dilettante Expert

‘Dilettante expertise’ as a way to make practice meet theory: Expertise is the classical foundation of all geekdom, whether it is encyclopedic knowledge of Shakespeare, of the Star Trek universe or the registers of an 8-bit controller. Dilettantism is the unavoidable condition of drawing the bigger picture. It can end up badly like with the [...]

FS @ December 18, 2011

A flow of material across different sources

The first ever Research Meeting in the context of the Libre Graphics Research Unit took place now more than a week ago. Organised by Worm and themed Networked Graphics, 30 participants from across Europe gathered in Rotterdam for five days. We traversed “The extremes of Networked Graphics” as WL puts it: From demo-scene classics to [...]

FS @ December 6, 2011

Tying the story to data

In the summer of 2010, Constant commissioned artist and researcher Evan Roth to develop a work of his choice, and to make the development process available in some way. He decided to use a part of his fee as prize-money for The GML-Recorder Challenge, inviting makers to propose an open source device ‘that can unobtrusively [...]

FS @ November 3, 2011

Écriture automatique

WVW is making beautiful bristlebots from paper cups, felt-pens and the kind of vibrating motors you find in mobile phones. The drawings it makes are interesting too: video | more images

FS @ October 31, 2011

WORM open

Last Friday, WORM opened it’s new location in the center of Rotterdam. It was nice to see lots of people show up to celebrate this event, to see their new book- and recordshop back in such good shape and to discover forms of architectural re-use we only dreamt of, until now. The first LGRU-research meeting [...]

Constant

Constant is a non-profit association, an interdisciplinary arts-lab working from Brussels since 1997. The artistic and activist practice of Constant is inspired by the way that technological infrastructures, data-exchange and software determine our daily life.

www.constantvzw.org

January 27, 2012

LGRU Live

An evening of performances in dialogue mode. With amongst others Alexandre Quessy (CA). Alexandre will perform Toonloop, a live stop motion animation software. It aims to show the creation process the the audience as well as the result of the creation. http://toonloop.com This evening is hosted by FOAM in the context of the Libre Graphics Research Unit, a collaboration between Medialab Prado (Madrid), Worm (Rotterdam), Piksel (Bergen) and (…)

-
Libre Graphics Research Unit

January 27, 2012

Round-table discussion: Co-position

How can we re-imagine lay-out from scratch? What tools do we need to support decentralized collaboration? How can we bring together canvas editing, dynamic lay-outs, web-to-print and Print On Demand in more interesting ways? A conversation with designers and programmers about future Libre software for arranging texts and graphical elements. Discussion chaired by Angela Plohman (Baltanlabs, Eindhoven). This roundtable concludes the second ‘Research meeting’ organised by the Libre Graphics (…)

-
Libre Graphics Research Unit

January 27, 2012

Yoogle! receives the Winston Award

During the Belgian Big Brother Awards ceremony organized by the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme, Constant received the Winston Award for the game Yoogle!. This award is given to a person or project defending the privacy rights of the citizens.

-
Yoogle!

/
,

January 27, 2012

Digital Flux #2

Digital Flux #2 is an exhibition organised by La Vènerie. The theme of the exhibition is the flow of digital data and how it infiltrates our daily life. Michel Cleempoel will present three projects among which the game Yoogle! The exhibition also presents works of Sylvain De Vreese and David Dufour.

-
Yoogle!

/
,

January 27, 2012

Radio La Cage #14: La langue…oiseau

Radio La Cage #14: La langue…oiseau avec Milady Renoir, écrivain, performeuse et schaerbeekoise et les créa-sons de Daniel Martin-Borret, artiste sonore

-
Langue Schaerbeekoise / Schaarbeekse Taal

/

January 27, 2012

Poésie à l’écoute

Poésie à l’écoute sur Radio Panik mercredi 1er février de 19h à 20h en direct sur 105.4 fm ou en streaming sur www.radiopanik.org Mélanie Godin invite les éditions Esperluète et La Langue Schaerbeekoise. plus d’info sur www.poesiealecoute.be

-
Langue Schaerbeekoise / Schaarbeekse Taal

January 27, 2012

Poésie à l’écoute

Poésie à l’écoute sur Radio Panik mercredi 1er février de 19h à 20h en direct sur 105.4 fm ou en streaming sur www.radiopanik.org Mélanie Godin invite les éditions Esperluète et La Langue Schaerbeekoise. plus d’info sur www.poesiealecoute.be

-
Langue Schaerbeekoise / Schaarbeekse Taal

/
,

OSP

OSP (Open Source Publishing) is an interdisciplinary and international design collective. OSP tests the possibilities and realities of doing design, illustration, cartography and typography using a wide range of Free, Libre and Open Source Software tools.

osp.constantvzw.org

OSP @ January 20, 2012

OSP public meet

January 30th Finally a moment of meeting with you for 9000 km of drawings, tools, stories. Interested in the libre? Curious about our practice? OSP studio welcomes you for a first public session at Variable. 18h30 – Welcoming Presentation and dis…

Femke @ January 12, 2012

Meaningful Transformations

A conversation with Tom Lechner We discovered the work of Tom Lechner at the Libre Graphics Meeting 2010 in Brussels. Tom has traveled from Portland, US to present Laidout, an amazing tool that he made to produce his own comic books and also to work on…

Femke @ January 2, 2012

In preparation: Research meeting Co-position

Over at the Libre Graphics Research Unit we are preparing a second ‘Research Meeting’ that will take place in Brussels from 22 to 25 February 2012. Developers, designers and theoreticians from all over Europe will gather to imagine future L…

OSP @ December 12, 2011

Might

Our friends Nadine and Überknackig have opened a nice place, the Might shop, just a few hundred meters of our Variable house using the Crickx font at its full potential!

OSP @ November 18, 2011

Reglo

We used Reglo Bold for the new identity of Radio Panik and we are happy to release it today on the OSP foundry under open source license

Harrisson @ November 16, 2011

OSP in Designblast 2011

OSP is invited to talk on friday at Designblast’11 — Toys, Tricks & Tools — 18.11.2011 “Is it better to restrict yourself or to allow everything?” Stand up talk by OSP Canal Historique. An open code to Love, Destiny, Fate, Pa…

OSP @ November 12, 2011

Relearn

Un essai en plusieurs parties, écrit pour ∆⅄⎈, la nouvelle revue des éditions BAT. 5 ans après le début d’OSP, il est temps de faire un point sur les influences sociales des logiciels libres sur notre pratique du design. Aussi disponibl…

Pierre @ October 26, 2011

interpunctie samples all.pdf

From Thursday 20th to Sunday 23rd November OSP went to contemplate the Bolwerk archives landscape from the window of Frans Masereel Centrum. As part of Bolwerk‘s residency, we were invited to propose a reading of Bolwerk’s material inbetwee…

OSP @ October 22, 2011

Building archives landscapes plotter

Invited at Interpunctie project van Bolwerk, we excavate into the 10+ years of archives by building the first bricks of tools to draw a landscape thanks to bash and python scripts + the legacy Fontforge scripting language.

Eric @ October 11, 2011

Warming up the house

Housewarming October 14th 15:00 onwards / Constant Variable / Rue Gallait 80 Brussels The 19th century town house at Rue Gallait 80 is now known as Constant Variable. For three years, it will house an arts lab for free, libre and open source software. …

Les Samedies

Les Samedies (Femmes et Logiciels Libres) rassemble un groupe de femmes très différentes qui ont en commun le désir d’être maîtresses (ou du moins avoir la possibilité de l’être) des outils et donc des normes qui définissent notre travail avec la machine.

samedi.collectifs.net

sans titre

sans titre

Packaging

De Geuzen

De Geuzen is a foundation for multi-visual research and the collaborative identity of Riek Sijbring, Femke Snelting and Renée Turner. Since 1996 they have employed a variety of tactics to explore female identity, narratives of the archive and media image ecologies. Exhibitions, workshops and online projects operate as thematic framing devices to investigate and test ideas collectively with different publics.

www.geuzen.org

Anxiety Monitor @ oddstream

2-5 June 2011
http://www.oddstream.org

Here, there and other dislocations

Layered on-line maps for Mappamundi at the Museu Colecção Berardo (Lisbon, January 2011). Also on display: The Dress of Jeanne Terwen-de Loos and The Dress of Here, There and Other Dislocations.

The Tailored Alphabet

Workshop with students from the typography masters at the Muthesius Kunsthochschule, Kiel (DE)

Patterns and Projections

Workshop in the context of Open Code vs. Military Culture / Israel Digital Artlab Holon (November 2010)

View By Thread

De Geuzen @ STUK
Leuven (B)
04/05 – 06/06 2010

On Gaps and Silent Documents

9-14 February 2010
De Geuzen participates in Artefact Festival, Leuven (Belgium) with a new version of the Global Anxiety Monitor

Celebrate With A Little Wearable Resistance @ StudioXX

Art’s Birthday is an annual event first proposed by French Fluxus artist Robert Filliou. Read more…

Wearable Resistance // Typographical Craftivism

Read more about our adventures with electricity, LED’s, typography and skill sharing.

FEED TO READ

Performed @ The Network as a Space and Medium for Collaborative Interdisciplinary Art Practice (Bergen, Norway) View archived project.

Wearable Resistance // Résistance portable

15 > 17 October 2009
De Geuzen @ Artivistic, Montréal (CA)

Uncategorized

May 29, 2011

The filing cabinet and other stories

Dealing with database forms, filing-cabinets and Resource Description Frameworks, archivists carefully prepare objects before they can enter the archive. This talk knits together snapshots of archival work, zooming in on the specialist tools that support such a process of fitting, the serial micro-decisions which ultimately define any collection.

At Shared Memory, Merz Akademie Stuttgart

May 17, 2011

a romance of many dimensions

Imposition plays a key-role in a pre-press workflow. Working with the constraints of paper size, creep and standard folding plans, imposing is also an act of imagination, a fantasy about the potential of a digital object to become physical and vice versa.

At http://e-boekenstad.nl/unbound

April 3, 2011

Postcards from Africa

Notes from Mali, Senegal and Morocco.

texts/postcards.html

April 1, 2011

Hoe zie je deze aanpak voor jezelf?

Antwoord op de vragen van Mandy Cobussen (ArtEZ Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, Arnhem)

?id=notes:questions

June 5, 2010

acb

Voetnoot bij een gesprek met Pieter Van Bogaert

/acb

February 23, 2010

Scenes of pressure and relief

Texts performed and added to on various occasions since 2007

texts/pressure.txt

February 3, 2010

Emma II

Add some Anarchist Feminism to your YouTube comments (Firefox Greasemonkey userscript)

/files/emmatube.user.js

November 2, 2009

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever

“Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and create derivative works of. 9. We can analyze your application. We can remove any ad for any purpose, including Connect sites. * Payment Terms: These guidelines outline the policies that apply to users. 5. If any portion of this Statement must be the difference between a Mrs. Weston, only sixteen miles off, was always disagreeable”

/files/EmmaWoodhouse.odt

August 27, 2009

Playlist (caleidoscope version)

Developed with Michael Murtaugh for De Geuzen Feed: project.

Download scripts: /files/playlist.zip

July 5, 2009

Future Tools

Project New Media Pathway, Merz Akademie, Stuttgart
October 2009 – January 2010

/files/future_tools.pdf

May 19, 2009

Corset, Skeleton, Skin

Workshop with design students at Merz Akademie, Stuttgart (29-05 → 03-06)

/texts/skeleton.pdf
Project weblog

April 28, 2009

Feral Labelling

Catalogue text for Kate Rich’s exhibition Feral Trade in HTTP gallery.

/texts/labelling.pdf

February 15, 2008

As the commander of an army

Python script running through Isabella Beeton’s Book of Household Management.

Download script: /files/isabella.zip

January 1, 2008

Catherine

Een performatieve lezing die aan de hand van kookboeken, manuals en magische formules de parallel tussen code en recepten onderzoekt.

/catherine

April 17, 2007

CSS textures

/files/textures