Application a.pass collective research residency
by OSP (Open Source Publishing)
Our research happens through projects like opportunities: squirrelling away bits of code, social protocols, fonts, reflections, stylesheet, hacks and lots of other useful tidbits in various places. Like the squirrels that hoard nuts, while being scattered, the distribution they create on their way plays a fundamental role in the maintenance of ecosystems.
APPLICATION LETTER
Dear reader,
We, Open Source Publishing (OSP), are a Brussels-based design collective working solely with Free/Libre Open-Source Software (F/LOSS). Our collective formed in 2006 and uses making graphic design and publishing experiments as applied research into digital tools and creative practices.
Over the nineteen years we've been active, the configuration and focus of the collective has continually evolved. Presently, we are in a phase of reformulating our practice, by inviting new members, by acknowledging the asymmetries in our group and by looking back at the body of work and research produced within the collective.
During the laying fallow residency we want to take the practice of OSP out of its studio and bring it into a new context of collective learning. We hope to nourish our collective with the time, space and possibilities the residency and previously selected collectives provide. Reciprocally, we hope to contribute with our practice, experience and developed methods.
We intend to take advantage of the opportunity offered by this residency to sharpen our positioning towards sharing, openness, access, the commons, pedagogy, collective learning and our own archives. We'd like to share our digital expertise and our culture of free software for a moment of diversions, encounters and surprises. It's a time for us to share our library, our tools and our pedagogical approaches and to enter into a permaculture mode with the resident collectives, a series of guests and collaborators from the past and the future.
As our practice is based in Brussels most of us live there (or close by). But we would need lodging for one member. Further, we have a studio in the city, but would prefer to work in a different space during the residency. A space where we can work, as well as cook together. As we are seven people instead of five, but most likely will not all be there all weeks, we propose to work seven weeks instead of eight and a half.
Traveling through cycles of OSP
OSP began in 2006 within the research of Constant VZW, starting with the question "Is it possible to get a graphic design professional workflow with open source softwares?". This question was posed in response to the purchase of Macromedia by Adobe Inc. the same year, and Adobe's subsequent dominance of the market for tools for design in academies, studios and printshops. Since then we've developed a research based graphic design practice which uses solely F/LOSS software.
F/LOSS (software) comes with four freedoms: to use, study, modify and distribute, and two obligations: to not close the source code and to give attribution to those who have contributed to its development. These freedoms are in contrast to proprietary software where users can buy the right to use, but are permitted from studying or changing the technology. Open-source is not a precise political, or strictly anti-capitalistic, position. Many tech giants maintain, and profit from F/LOSS projects. For us using alternative tools (working with F/LOSS) has introduced frictions around publishing, technologies, permissions, economies and collective work. As such, it is a strategy to question the practice of making graphic design, aesthetics, pedagogy and collaboration, in order to contribute to a commons and the ecologies that support it. We aim to publish and document the outcomes of our work and the tools we develop whenever possible and we try to convince our collaborators to do the same.
Within our practice we conduct artistic research through initiatives of the collective, collaborative projects and workshops. Whether ideas are explored through methodologies of gathering and experimentation with Print- and Plotter- parties, performance with Up-Pen-Down, collective learning with Relearn or by exploring methods of collaboration with Ecotones, we seek to develop an intimacy with our tools and collective practices to share traveling folkloric knowledge. Doing while everyone learns.
Looking back at the development of OSP we recognize three phases; sprouting, solidifying, reformulating.
In the first prospective/sprouting phase we explored the field of F/LOSS tools and design. Those first moments were full of an energy to look for others grappling with similar questions and for practical tools. While digging into the history of our new tools to better understand their history and usages, we joined events such as the Libre Graphics Meeting to get to know the community who made and used them. To better understand their contexts and to build links with others locally and internationally. We learnt together as a collective and shared our learnings in workshops, print-parties and as teachers at art-schools. Workshops were and are important opportunities to share traveling folkloric knowledge. To learn collectively in doing. Main traces of this phase (next to commisioned publications) are the OSP blog, the publication Conversations by former member Femke Snelting, which bundles interviews with the makers of tools, and the summer school Relearn. Based on our experiences in teaching and inspired by the way F/LOSS challenges traditional education paradigms, we wanted to create a learning environment outside institutional borders, where participants move easily between roles of teacher, student, developer and user.
While solidifying our practice, in the second phase OSP moved into a mode of operation closer to that of a graphic design studio. We entered a long-standing collaboration (from 2011 until 2022) as associate artists with the Théâtre de la Balsamine, where each year was an opportunity to experiment with tools as well as collaboration, mainly with illustrators and photographers. During the same period we began working with the investigative journalism magazine Médor, for which we created the identity, layout tools and content framework. This project is still active, and some of us continue to work regularly on its layout and artistic direction. Above all, it marked an opportunity to deploy our tools on the scale of a large public project within the context of another type of applied research, that of journalism.
The commissioned projects during the second phase enabled us more opportunities to explore new areas of applied research. To be less reactive we solidified the scattered research into research lines: collaborative publishing platforms, html2print, meta and strokefonts which we explored by using and developing our tools and recipes on a larger scale in long-term collaborations and workshops. In 2016 we started to organise a yearly retreat to discuss questions on the structure of our collective. During these small moments we were able to take distance from our daily rythym to listen to the needs of us, as individual members and the collective.
In response to changing personal conditions, and a desire for a more sustainable work rhythm our collective entered a third phase around 2022 which is characterised by a desire to reformulate our collective practice, to open up, and to find new means to pursue self-initiated collective research. In an act of opening up the collective we published an open call to find new members and wrote a readme to make them feel welcome; the readme is a living document describing the working of our collective structure.
During this third phase we also became individually involved in parallel collective research projects. Gijs de Heij with Algolit, a workgroup around e-literature, free code and texts. Ludivine Loiseau with the ByeByeBinary Collective on post-binary typography: research on the uses, appropriations and pollination of typefaces (FRArt 2023). Doriane Timmermans, with the project Declarations, an ongoing artistic research project into the poetic materiality of the CSS web-standard and its echoes on design and artistic practices (FRArt 2023). Over the last year the new members of OSP (Clara Pasteau, Vinciane Dahéron, Simon Browne) have brought in new ingredients and perspectives and helped to reformulate OSP's objectives and structural elements.
Over the past years members have left and joined our collective rendering the embodied knowledge of OSP distributed through many peers. While laying fallow we want to first look inwards, at the methods and strategies we've learnt and developed over time. We then want to bring them into contact with the new context the residency provides in internal sessions, encounters with the other collectives and public moments. Through these moments of collective learning we want to sharpen our practice and develop a better understanding of what it can offer to others. Through reformulation and documentation we want to render our tools, methods and learnings more inviting. While acknowledging they can't nor want to be accessible for everyone all the time. We propose to organise the residency as shorter periods of one to two weeks - the subjects and themes can be found in the timeline and are below further described as a panorama of entry points and itineraries.
Looking back: gather -> read -> annotate
During the first week we want to look back at the notions, ideas and texts that have been developed in, or influenced our practice since 2006 to develop a new common ground. During the laying fallow period we would like to work with what is already there, with methods that are well-defined within OSP and also within what OSP is becoming. This means revisiting past methods to discover new ways to approach them and exploring current reflections on our practice and with others in their practice. In collective reading sessions both internal and public we want to re-assess these texts and recontextualize them through collective spatialized annotations. By inviting former members to join us in this phase we want to benefit from their embodied knowledge of OSP and insights developed in their recent practice.
We are confident the outcomes of this week will infuse and nourish the subsequent weeks of the residency.
Open isn't a state (openness) but an action (opening): between archives and internal infrastructures
In this week we continue our introspective posture by looking at our collective infrastructures and the archives they contain. We want to consider the various protocols of organisation of these tools, how they shape our practice of archiving within them. We want to discuss which parts of our archive should be made public, or open, with the persective that openess isn't only a status but a form of maintenance care.
We present our ongoing work by publishing it on our website which is based on the tool Visual Culture and provides and alternative interface to our shared repository of projects, software, fonts and scripts (being) developed by the collective. The website shares outcomes and process of both finished and projects in progress. We write together on a self-hosted instance of etherpad pads and maintain a collective archive in a Nextcloud instance to facilitate collaboration.
Finally we want to update our readme.
Meta / infrastuctures of the collective
The meta research line gathers the tools we've developed to enable our practice. During the chapter 'Reconsidering Agreements' we are interested in these specifically: the collaboration agreement, the asymmetrical pay self-assessment tool.
The collaboration agreement is a document which intends to develop a mutual understanding between us and any future collaborator of our respective practices (way of working), concerns and interests and get around false assumptions. Through the document we want to make space for our practices in the collaboration, especially the frictions introduced by F/LOSS tools. As our practice and collective shifts we'd like to revisit the document, both to align it with the changing realities and concerns of our work, as well as to make more space for the collaborator in the document, to make it spark a conversation rather than it being a contract (that needs to be signed).
How inviting is this document? Does it exist in other groups? In what form?
To pay for the costs of running OSP we have long contributed 25% of the budget of commissioned projects to the collective. These individual contributions are influenced by the amount of commissioned projects a member is able to work within the collective. With the collective becoming less homogenous in terms of time spent on commissioned projects and in (personal) economic conditions this approach has raised more and more questions. Therefore, we have decided to shift towards a system of voluntary contributions inspired by the "pay what you can" model. Based on a workshop facilitated by Laura Oriol and Justine Maxelone we started to develop the asymmetrical-pay self-assessment tool which indicates the suggested contributions based on a wide range of factors. During the residency we want to further develop this tool through internal reflection, through feedback of Laura and Justine, and by discussing it with the other selected collectives.
The real treasures were the tools we made along the way (seamful patchworks)
The looping sentence practice shapes tools, tools shape practice describes how tools are designed to facilitate (an interpretation of) a practice, and how the affordances of tools influence the work that is done with them. Tools are neither neutral nor passive. The publication 16 Case stories re-imagining the practice of layout resulted from a research which imagines what graphic design can be when it uses tools optimised for other concerns: for example a packing algorithm. During the long standing collaboration with the Balsamine Theater we took the opportunity to make graphic design with various recipes and to explore tools which weren't made for graphic design. For example, a spreadsheet. Over time we've become more and more makers of our own tools.
We use the choice of our tools as a strategy to shape the collaboration. As such, we extend what is being designed from the object to the process itself. Our tools are often seamful patchworks, constellations of smaller tools, rather than an open source clone of a proprietary tool. Where proprietary tools often try to be seamless to facilitate a singular intended use and hide in transparent 'neutrality', we acknowledge the seam as a site for expression. As a place where pieces are stitched together, the seam is both a ridge, an opportunity to get stuck, and a trace of a decision. A decision which can be reconsidered; the seam can be torn, making space for a new piece to be inserted.
During the residency we want to take stock of the tools we have made on our trajectory so far explicitly express their seamfulness by graphing their composition and make them more accessible through documentation. We hope to organise a public workshop which welcomes the resident collectives One Field Fallow and Topote de Acahual, and wider audiences to make their own patchworks.
A new situated glossary for "open"
In the 2021 publication Aesthetics of the Commons, OSP is described as 'question[ing] the role of digital tools in visual creation, and to invent alternative practices privileging sharing and mutual aid rather than secrecy and competition'. We do this by releasing our work under permissive licenses, publishing our tools, and advocating for F/LOSS infrastructure where possible. If indeed our work is about contributing to a commons we've come to question the use of (overly) permissive licences.
Open source licences act within the universalist legal framework of copyright. A license creates permission for use or access. (Permissive) open source licenses create transparency and grant wholesale permission with few conditions or restrictions. To make licenses viable within a legal framework they seldom touch upon more complex questions, such as equity. By foregrounding openess and freedom, these licenses have enabled extractive data practices and abuse of collective labor. In this context, OSP is inspired by initiatives which propose collective conditions as alternatives. These conditions use friction and ambiguity as strategies to avoid exploitation.
During the residency we want to further explore the friction between the commons and open source by reading open licenses and conditions and develop a glossary around open, traveling, folkloring, fragile work and knowledge. With the other collectives and a wider audience we propose to explore conditions as tools to facilitate sharing while avoiding exploitation.
Collaborative publishing platforms
Initially developed for Relearn summer school, Ethertoff is a collaborative publishing platform wrapped around the collective text editor etherpad. Content is structured much like a wiki; each document is a page or pad. The content can be rendered to different forms of output: a website, printed documents or presentation. The layout of these different forms is defined through CSS styles, text instructions describing how the content should look. As these styles are written on a collaborative document, even the tools' own, Ethertoff proposes a playful way to write, publish and design collectively. As such the tool is also related to the html2print research line. Ethertoff has been used, amongst others for:
- The State Of The Arts, Kin Arts Almanac,
- Futurology of Cooperation, a collection of activities for fostering togetherness. As a member of the research group OSP contributed both to the research and the design of the publication.
- Caveat and Emptor was collective research project initiated by Jubilee, reflecting and acting on the ecology of artistic practice. As well as setting up a collective identity and platform, we have also conducted and published research in the form of meetings, called Écotones
- kitchen.apass.be was a digital platform to support the researchers in a process of exchange by enabling collaborative documentation and discussion.
In the course of these projects, we understood how the work to set up collective publishing platforms is both technical, social and pedagogical. With the collaborators we had to design the publication but also the process of how contributors were taught the use of the tool. We learnt not all were able to make the investment to learn the tool, which raises questions on accessibility, or the compatibility of our tool with the situated practices and realities of the contributors.
In the chapter 'Alliances and Networks of usages' we want to explore these questions further. We are also in process of forming an Ethertoff user group to bring together the users of the various instances of the tool. Through this alliance we want to develop sustainable funding strategies to support the continued development of Ethertoff.
Seeds of milestones
In the final week we want to take the time to bring together the diverse outputs and learnings from the developments over the previous weeks. We want to chart new steps in our journey. To facilitate and finance continued structural work and periods of laying fallow, we want to explore adjustments to our asymmetrical pay system.
Finally we want to organise a looking back dinner, cooking together, binding of the printed outcomes of the previous weeks, following the seams of our common tablecloth.
"I don’t want burning bridges to light my way, I want to leap off the bridge into a bioluminescent sea." — Maja Kuzmanović
TIMELINE
The preferred weeks for now are:
- June : week 3 — week 4
- July: week 1
- September : week 1 — week 2 — week 3 — week 4
- October : week 1 — week 2 — week 3 — week 4
As we are seven people instead of five, but most likely will not all be there all weeks, we propose to work seven weeks instead of eight and a half.
WEEK 1 : Looking back : gather -> read -> annotate
Questions :
- What texts, ideas have influenced us?
- What is already within the commons ?
Methodology :
- gather texts, ideas that have built OSP since 2006, using Zotero.
- develop plugins/interfaces for Zotero into an archiving-collecting-curating tool.
- reading time (alone, internal, open to public)
- collective spatialized annotations on the printed texts
Outcomes :
- notes: annotations, Etherpad transcription of discussion, comments public session, recorded form (podcast)
- tools & protocols for gathering & annotating
WEEK 2 : Open isn't a state (openness) but an action (opening) : between archives and internal infrastructures
Questions :
- We have a huge archive, how can we organize it better? make (parts) public? (And which ones deserve to be?)
- Where is the line between internal infrastructure (admin, notes...) and archive (project, work...)?
- What are the interdependencies within our archives and internal infrastructure? Do we cherish them, or do they cause fragility?
Methodology :
- Look collectively at our many archives/structures (Nextcloud, Gitlab, Visual Culture, Readme)
- Protocols for organisation: defining syntax, family of keywords and folder structures, depending of each space. And for each, which one is open (acknowledging opening is work).
- Interviewing past members about older projects
Outcomes :
- Update the OSP readme, and other transversal indexes creating trajectories through the archives
- Public opening index evening
WEEK 3 : Reconsidering Agreements
Questions :
- What are the agreements we (and other collectives) are using? (From F/LOSS, Licences, to collaborations agreements and Asymmetrical pay)
- How to make space for (the practice of) the collaborators in our agreements?
- How to self-assess & solidify asymmetrical pay?
Methodology :
- Listing and opening our many agreements
- Interview One Field Fallow and Topote de Acahual on their own internal/external agreements
- Discuss & present asymmetrical pay systems with the other collectives
Outcomes :
- Shared open agreements online
- Discussions with the other collectives
- Printing agreements through Print parties (performative public events)
WEEK 4 : A new situated glossary for "open"
Questions :
- If the "Open" ideology doesn't guarantee radicality anymore, what other words matter? (accessible, flexible, sustainable, commons, seamful, collective, conditions, ecosystems, fragile, friction, punk, self-hosted, handmade, ...)
- How to make commons accessible? AND regulate access to the commons?
- Under what conditions falls what we do? How to transfer responsibility by making commons?
Methodology :
- Resituate ourselves through a new collection of documents that escape the simple open-close binary (CC4R by Constant, CUTE by Byebyebinary, c-c-conditions by creative crowds)
- Write stories/tales that we experienced that showed frictions with openness
- Making a new glossary for "open"
Outcomes :
- Shared prototyped glossary of alternate vocabulary for "open"
- A reader of tales of frictions with openess
- A (semi-)public library (part on- and part offline)
WEEK 5 : The real treasures were the tools we made along the way (seamful patchworks)
Questions :
- Which tools have we created since 2007?
- Tools inherit attitudes from the practices that shaped them, and shape our practices back; Which"attitude" is present in our tools?
- From what type of seamful patchworks are our tools composed of, so far?
Methodology :
- Mapping our tools and the patchwork they are made of
- Shoulder2Shoulder teaching moments, especially for Ethertoff
- Seamful patching session: public workshop on combining open source tools into new usages
Outcomes :
- Map of tools and their relationship & attitudes
- Documentations and notes
WEEK 6 : Alliances and Networks of usages : map -> interview -> tell
Questions :
- Which practices & networks either use our tools or tools with similar attitudes? Designers? Academics? Artists?
- While accepting that universalist, scalable, widely shared tools aren't desired, how can we create more federated, particular uses of those tools?
Methodology :
- Interview people who have used our tools so far
- Tell stories/tales of how using our tools has influenced their practices
- Map networks and alliances togethers, which links or practices are involved?
- Revisit the summerschool Relearn
Outcomes :
- Reader of stories on the ecosystem of practices
- Prototype structure for alliances and federations
- Crossing paths with the Open School organised by One Field Fallow
WEEK 7 : Seeds of milestones
Questions :
- How does this residency set milestones for the rest of the OSP journey?
- How to compile the different chapters of the residency like a carpet to be unrolled?
- How can asymmetrical pay finance non-productive structural labour like this residency?
Methodology :
- Sensible observation of the steps of the residency
- Collective writing of an introduction or a postface for the printed outcomes of the previous weeks
- Cooking with guests, with guided discussions
Outcomes :
- Binding of the printed outcomes of the previous weeks
- Strategy to finance meta labour
- Organise a big looking back dinner, cooking together
"Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire" — Gustav Mahler
BIOGRAPHIES
OSP (Open Source Publishing) is a Brussels-based design collective working with Free/Libre Open-Source Software (F/LOSS) to make graphic design and publishing experiments, as applied research into digital tools and design practices. OSP began in 2006 starting with the question "Is it possible to get a graphic design professional workflow with open source softwares?".
Simon Browne (he, him - 1978) is an artist, designer, researcher and self-described "contingent librarian" based in Rotterdam. His practice travels between; DIY (Do It Yourself) and DIWO (Do It With Others), designing and publishing, software and hardware, books and library collections, the collectives OSP and Varia, Brussels and Rotterdam. Simon’s work touches upon libraries, graphic design, knowledge distribution, experimental publishing, free/libre open-source software and free culture.
Vinciane Dahéron (she, her - 1999) is a graphic designer and artist, member of Open Source Publishing in Brussels. Through publications, installations, discussions and protocols she explores alternative ways to build and publish collectively with open source tools and language. Her research is focused on online collaborative spaces and collective organisations. Documentation and transmission are thus part of her practice, she regularly leads workshops in schools and socio-cultural institutions.
Gijs de Heij (he, him - 1989) is a graphic designer and programmer. Since 2013 he is a member of the collective Open Source Publishing in Brussels. As a member of the group Algolit he researches the potential of algorithmic literature. He lives and works in Brussels with a particular interest in pen plotters. He makes graphic design, tools, websites and installations. Through his practice he wants to understand the technology he uses and encounters and study its context.
Ludi Loiseau (she, her - 1983) is co-founder and active member of the association OSP. She puts this practice in relation with her intervention at erg where she is currently a professor of typography and lecturer in digital cultures. In parallel Ludi is co-founder of the of the cooperative Médor, a Belgian media of investigation and storytelling. She is a regular layout designer and art director for the magazine. Within the team she insists and digs the articulations between texts and images and works on the visibility of new drawing practices. Since 2018 with the collective BBB, she revisits the history of typography and is active in twisting the standards and digital formats, hacking the binarity of our interfaces. Ludi recently joined Poxcat collective who supports WMXMUSIC Parties, DJ mixes & Radio Shows in Brussels.
Sarah Magnan (she, her - 1985) is a graphic designer in Open Source Publishing and takes part in several collective practices within other collectives at the intersection between feminism, decolonial strategies, open source softwares and online knowledge tools. She is co-founder of Médor and of the (irl and url) feminist asbl Just For The Record. She works part time at La Cambre art school, helping to shift to open source tools, facilitating care practices, proposing methods for a more diverse and inclusive school.
Clara Pasteau (she, her - 1994) is a graphic designer, web developer and a member of OSP (Open Source Publishing) in Brussels BE. She is particularly interested in viewing coding as a craft, treating HTML and CSS as raw building materials. She ran a series of coding workshops : Estienne Paris, FR / ENSAD Nancy, FR / Condé Paris, FR / KABK Den Haag, NL and taught at Campus Fonderie de l'Image in Bagnolet, FR. Her artistic and research practice focuses on websites as a medium of analysis, exploring technological, political and ecological dimensions. She also employs writing as a foundational element in her projects, adopting intuitive and automatic methods.
Doriane Timmermans (she, her - 1994) an artist-designer-developer-teacher who uses web technology as her main medium. She likes to think about systems and automatised processes as sensible ways of doing. She has an infinite love for the idea of designing with words and language, in 2023 she initiated a research on declarative web-standards called Declarations. Through the making of patchwork of folkloric tool she investigate how the tools we use shape our practices, and how, conversely, through our practices, we shape our tools.
CVs
OSP
2025
- Workshop Metapost at ANRT, Nancy (FR), Automatic Type Design 3
- Workshop in Berlin at Offline Space with the Declarations research group
- Workshop in Amsterdam at Fanfare with the Declarations research group
- Médor Issue #38
2024
- iMAL NaturArchy exhibition identity using bio inks and pen plotters
- iMAL End and Beginning exhibition identity using pen plotters and permacomputing principles
- Médor magazine issue #34 to #37
- Meyboom artists run space open days exhibition
- Ancho, a three part publication with Jara Rocha
- Workshop Cobbled Paths, Besançon
- Workshop Cobbled Paths, plottersation, Brussels
- Workshop in Rotterdam at Varia with the Declarations research group
2023
- Médor issue #30 to #33
- Overtoon Instead of “sound art”, say website
- Tekhne, identity and website
- Identity and website for Cifas
- State of the Arts, Kin Arts Almanac
- Website Majubois
- Identity and website A Seat for the Sea
- Publication New Beginnings
- Workshop HfG Karlsruhe
2022
- Médor issue #26 to #29
- Identity for the Balsamine theater, Brussels: programme, posters and website
- Identity and website Oscillation festival, Brussels
- Poster series for Caveat Emptor research, in collaboration with Jubilee
- APRJA Research Refusal publication gathering articles generated by the conversations of 9 researchers groups. With Geoff Cox and Christian Ulrik Andersen - Transmediale time frame.
- Hybrid graduation publication for the Experimental Publishing Master programme of the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam
- Residency in Besançon (FR)
2021
- Médor issue #22 to #25
- Identity Balsamine: programme, posters and website
- Newspaper for A Peer-Reviewed Journal About
- Identity Meyboom Artist run Spaces
- Website Futurology Grimoire
- Publication recherce en cours, ISELP
2020
- Médor issues #18 to #21
- Identity Balsamine: programme, posters and website
- Identity Iselp
- Book Aesthetic Programming
- Workshop Open Design Course, KASK
- Workshop Post-Digital Itch, Piet Zwart Institute (Xpub Special Issue)
- Tool ether2html : A skeleton to use an Etherpad to make a booklet with paged.js
- a.pass kitchen, ethertoff instance instance at a.pass
- Collectiveioning, ethertoff instance for Piet Zwart Institute
- Diversions, publication and website
- Publication for A Peer-Reviewed Journal About
- Website, The Oceanographies Institute
Simon Browne
Professional experience
- 2023-present Member of Open Source Publishing
- 2022-present Peer at Creative Crowds
- 2021-present Member of Varia
Education
- 2020 Master of Art and Design, Experimental Publishing, Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam. Graduated cum laude
- 2010 Graduate Diploma in Graphic Design, RMIT University, Melbourne. Graduated with honours
- 1999 Bachelor of Fine Art, RMIT University, Melbourne
Research
- 2024 Tool Sheds Fellowship (as part of Varia), Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam
- 2021-2023 Going Hybrid! (as part of Varia), Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam
- 2022 Counter Narratives, Tangible Cloud, Brussels
- 2021-2022 The Whole Life Academy, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
- 2021 Parallel Library Services, Varia, Rotterdam
- 2020 Bureaucracksy, Constant Association for Arts and Media, Brussels
Exhibitions, Workshops and Worksessions
- 2025 (upcoming) What's Hard about Software, Exhibition residency, Leitrim Sculpture Centre (IE)
- 2025 Why Bootleg Books?, Exhibition at École Supérieure d'Arts & Médias de Caen/Cherbourg (FR)
- 2024 Declarations Pen Pals (as part of OSP), Varia, Rotterdam (NL)
- 2024 Discount Cui-Zine, Workshop at International Festival of Computer Arts, Maribor (SI)
- 2024 Content Form Research workshop, Transmediale, Berlin (DE)
- 2023 Toward a Minor Tech Research workshop, Transmediale, Berlin (DE)
- 2023 PrePostPrint Local Meetup, Worksession at Varia, Rotterdam (NL)
- 2022 Publishing Partyline, Worksession at Varia, Rotterdam (NL)
- 2022 Hands-on handover of hands on cards, Worksession at documenta 15, Kassel (DE)
- 2020 Notes on Texts, Workshop at Art Meets Radical Openness, Linz (AT)
Teaching
- 2025 Guest Lecturer at Esam Caen (FR)
- 2023 Guest Lecturer at La Cambre, Brussels (BE)
- 2022 Guest Lecturer at Piet Zwart Institute, Master in Experimental Publishing, Rotterdam (NL)
- 2022 Guest Lecturer at Willem de Kooning Academy, Bachelor of Art and Design, Rotterdam (NL)
- 2021 Guest lecturer at Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle, Editorial Design Seminar, Halle (Saale) (DE)
Vinciane Dahéron
Workshops
- Ésac, Cambrai // Cabanes Numériques // workshop // 2025
- Offline Space & Well Gedacht Publishing, Berlin // publish style ↻ style publishing // workshop with Declarations research group // 2025
- Varia, Rotterdam // Declaration Pen Pals // workshop with Declarations research group // 2024
- Hackers & Designers Summercamp // Web Jockey Protocol // workshop with Declarations research group // 2024
- Ésac, Cambrai // Chantier Collectif workshop // 2023
- Lycée Saint-Luc & Ésac Cambrai // ça bouge ! & vestibule // workshops with Aline Jan // 2022-2023
- Centre Eclipse, Cambrai & Urban Boat, Douai // Spoiler Alert web to print publication workshop // 2022
Projects, Exhibition and Publications
- H du Siège art center identity // with Léna Monot // ongoing
- N-ième Galerie website and publication // with Circlar & Palais de Tokyo // 2024
- The end the beginning* exhibition identity // with iMAL & OSP // 2024
- Parabole publication layout // with Marie Verdeil // 2024
- Visual identity // Labo Divagation // 2024
- Ancho publication // with OSP & Jara Rocha // 2024
- Meyboom Festival poster // with Daphnée Paris & Châtaigne // 2024
- Instead of sound art say..* // podcast webpage // with OSP & Overtoon // 2024
- Médor magazine layout // with OSP // 2024 - now
- CODE residency // Impakt - Centre for Media Culture, Utrecht // 2023
- Jardin d'hyperliens research residency // Création en Cours // Atelier Médicis, Paris // 2024
- Research with Declarations Group // 2024 - now
- Plotterstation // Research with OSP // 2024 - now
- Publication TOP 10 CRAZY HACKS THAT ACTUALLY WORK !!! // with Marion Lissarrague, Théo Hennequin & Laurent Mbaah // 2023
- Pay With Your Gaze project exhibition // Ars Electronica, Linz // 2023
- Altermorphose project exhibition // 11 éphémères, Lille // 2022
- Virage Nord project exhibition // Semis Lieu de Fabrication, Berny-Rivière // 2022
Education
- EESAB Lorient, DNA, Graphic design, 2017-2020
- Esac Cambrai, Master, Graphic design, 2020-2022
Gijs de Heij
- Experience with: Python (Django, Flask), javascript (React, jQuery), HTML, CSS, git, MySQL, PHP (4 & 5).
- Languages: Dutch (native speaker), English (very good), French (basic understanding).
- Gitlab profile: https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/gijs
Teaching Experience
- Willem de Kooning Academie (2020 - 2023) Teacher Graphic Design and coding, with a focus on hybrid / single-source publications and generative design. The last six months active as a researcher within the research project Going Hybrid!
Workshops
- ISBA, Besançon, 2024
- HFG, Karlsruhe, 2023
- La Cambre, Brussels, 2023
- Piet Zwart Institute, 2022
- Burg Halle, Halle, 2021
- KASK, Gent, 2020
- Karel de Grote Hogeschool, Antwerpen, 2020
- Aarhus University, Aarhus, 2019
- ArtEZ, Arnhem, 2019
- Merz Akademie, Stuttgart, 2018
- Arts2, Mons, 2018
- Villa Arson, Nice, 2018
- ESAD Amiens, Amiens, 2018
- EESAB Lorient, Lorient, 2018
Work Experience
- Freelance developer (2013 - now)
Selected projects:
- Whistling - Python (flask), HTML, CSS, javascript
- Rivers - Python (Django), HTML, CSS, javascript (React, d3.js), MySQL
- Atelier Cartographique - Typescript, React, Openlayers, HTML, CSS
- WTC a love story (implementation) - javascript, HTML, CSS
- mirtevanduppen.nl (implementation) - pelican, javascript, HTML, CSS
Open Source Publishing (2013 - now)
- Designer and full-stack developer. Design and development of websites and web applications, using amongst others: Django, Flask and the static site generator Pelican. Front-end development in javascript. Set-up and maintenance of servers. Extensive experience with the design of printed publications using HTML & CSS. Preparation and facilitation of workshops around printed publications made using web-technologies and generative typography. Both independent and as part of a team.
Selected projects:
- Oceanograhies - Python (Django), javascript, HTML & CSS
- Caveat - Python (Django), javascript, HTML & CSS
- Leaky Archives - Python (Flask), javascript, HTML & CSS, nextcloud
- Diversions - Mediawiki, javascript (paged.js), HTML & CSS
- Aesthetic Programming - Python (pelican), javascript (React, paged.js), HTML & CSS
- Metapost workshops - Python, metapost, etherpad, hpgl, bash
Algolit (2015 - now)
- The work group Algolit focuses on digital and / or generative literature, inspired by, or made with (machine learning) algorithms. Research of (machine learning) algorithms. Preparation and facilitation of workshops. Development of installations and exhibitions. Set-up and maintenance of servers.
Selected projects:
- Exhibition Dataworkers
- Installation ‘Michel, Cassandra, Google et les autres’
- Generative book ‘Walk along the threes of Madrid’ Technologies: Python (Flask), TensorFlow, scikit-learn, machine learning, bash
Education
- Graphic Design, Bachelor of Design (BDes), ArtEZ Arnhem, 2008 - 2013
Ludi Loiseau
Teaching Experience
- École de Recherche Graphique, erg, Brussels (since 2010). Teaching typography, type design and digital cultures. In her teaching, Ludi likes to combine stories and tools, those of amateurs and those of experts, from analog anecdotes to questioning our digital standards.
Selected projects
- 2024-2025 : Co-research and design of a high-readability font as part of the FRArt project Typographie post-binaire : recherche sur les usages, les appropriations et la pollinisation des fontes with Eugénie Bidaut and Clara Sambot.
- 2021-2024. Participation in the Crickx research group which led to the print and web publication Publifluor, Letter Business in Brussels. The books is a non-standard collective essay attempts to tell the life of a type model, its successive authors and their tools, all while broadening the field and exploring the interstices between the many stories that Chrystel Crickx's practice gave rise to.
- 2023-2025 : Plotter-station research project, with OSP. Initiating, designing and writing the online platform.
- 2022-2025 Bye Bye Binary typotheque, design, developpement and documentation of an online platform were inclusive fonts are distributed. Bye Bye Binary is building common practices, soft and raging standards, which together form the Queer Unicode Initiative (QUNI). QUNI allows us to gather our fonts, in all their diversity, around the same encoding system in order to make them useable by a large public.
- 2020-2023 : Identity and catalogue to accompany the renovation of the ISELP, Brussels in collaboration with the architecture studio Nord and the artist duo Denicolai & Provoost.
- 2011-2022. Théâtre de la balsamine, with OSP as associate artists. A graphic identity deployed in perpetual renewal over 10 years and the occasion of many visual collaborations (Nina Casco, Julie Kern Donck, Karl Nawrot, Hichem Dahes)
Recent conferences and workshops
- ANRT, Nancy, Automatic Type Design 3, February 2025 : Metapost workshop, with Eugénie Bidaut, Antoine Gelgon and Pierre Huyghebaert
- Brussels Ass Book Fair, December 2024 : Talk Tu me fais me sentir très très réel: Publi Fluor, une typographie orientée with Nathan Izbicki, David Le Simple et Olivier Bertrand.
- Constant vzw, Brussels, November 2024 : Bye Bye Binary Conditions d'utilisations typographiques engageantes with Laura Conant and Mariel Nils
- VROOM, Brussels (BE), October 2024 : Printers’ Speeches festival, Three stories of dismantling layout with Gijs de Heij
- Meyboom Artist Run Spaces, Brussels (BE), May 2024 : OSP Cobbled Paths workshop with Doriane Timmermans
- KASK, Gent, March 2024 : PubliFluor workshop Crickx, cut & flock with Nathan Izbicki.
- La Bellone, Bruxelles (BE), September 2023 : FAME festival round table Écriture inclusive. Le langage par et pour toutxs.
- Ésad Amiens (FR), March 2023 : Imaginaires typographiques post-binaires, Bye Bye Binary talk and workshop with Enz@ Le Garrec
- BAK, Utrecht, February 2023 : Publifluor workshop in the frame of the Ultradependent Public School, with Clara Balaguer and the Crickx research group.
- HEAR, Strasbourg (FR), December 2022, talk and workshop Post $cript – Typographie : usages, économie, fichiers, licences. with Laure Giletti, Pierre Huyghebaert
- Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Bruxelles (BE), September 2022 : BBB in FIDÆ festival with Eugénie Bidaut and Camille Circlude
Education
- 2004 - 2006 Training in type design at the École Estienne, Paris. Master diploma in applied arts in Communication Arts and Techniques, typographic design option.
Sarah Magnan
Experiences, research groups and boarding
- OSP member (2012 - today)
- Médor (2014-today) : co-founder, board member (2021-2024), artistic director and layout for some issues
- Quality coordinator La Cambre (2020- today) : coordinating and supporting the shool to reach a genders equality and diversity plan, tools empowerment.
- Board member of Constant vzw (2024-today), association for arts and media
- Satelite member of SPIN (2024-today), research platform for arts practices, currently carried by Hans Bryssinck, Kate McIntosh, Diederik Peeters, Anna Rispoli and Marnie Slater
- Part of the Gender commission at ARES, Agence pour la Recherche de l'Enseignement Supérieur (2023-today)
- Member of the cyber feminist colletif Just for the record (2015-2022), with Loraine Furter, Mia Melvaer and Myriam Arsenault-Goulet.
Selected projects
- 2025 : Research and plotter experimentation within the FRIABLE project, Preservation and Valorisation of Friable Media on Paper, with Estelle Van Geyts (La Cambre)
- 2023-2025 : Identity and website of Cifas, performing art space — cifas.be
- 2020-2023 : Book and website design for the F̶a̶i̶r̶ Kin Arts Almanac 2023 – ’24 of States of the art, artists contribution collection on artists condition — almanac.state-of-the-arts.net
- 2020-2023 : Identity and catalogue to accompany the renovation of the ISELP, Brussels in collaboration with the architecture studio Nord and the artist duo Denicolai & Provoost.
- 2019-2023 : Identity, website and spellbook and research within the performing art projet Futurology of Cooperation, initated by Ana Czapski and Diedrick Peeters —futurology.
- 2011-2022. Théâtre la balsamine, with OSP as associate artists. A graphic identity deployed in perpetual renewal over 10 years and the occasion of many visual collaborations (Nina Casco, Julie Kern Donck, Karl Nawrot, Hichem Dahes)
- 2019-2022 : Identity of the collective research project Teaching To transgress, developed transnationally by three art schools: erg (Brussels), HDK-Valand (Gothenburg) and ISBA (Besançon) — ttttoolbox.net
- 2017-2019 : digital and printed publication of DiVersions research projets, engaged with the potential of on-line cultural heritage for welcoming various forms of collaboration
Selected Workshops
- 2025 - Wiki edit-a-ton workshop at erg
- 2024 - Formes de la piraterie at La Cambre
- 2024 - Futurology exercices during Whispering pages & interrogation hearts at Beursschougourg
- 2014-2020 - Wikipedia workshops with a focus on gender within Just For The Record
- 2019 - Metapost workshop at the school of art of Sao Paolo, Brasil
- 2018 - Metapost workshop at the school of art of Port au Prince, Haiti
Education
- 2006 - 2012 Type design, engraving and digital art at erb, Brussels
Clara Pasteau
Professional Experience
- Freelance Graphic Designer and Web Developer, between France and Belgium, since 2020. Collaborators (institutions, artists, designers) include : Kaaitheater (BE), Giorno Poetry Systems (US), Foam Museum (NL), Le 104 (FR), Gerrit Rietveld Academie (NL), Centre d’Art Contemporain Les Capucins (FR), Centre d’Art Contemporain Passages (FR), Dutch Design Week (NL), re:arc institute (DK), Atelier Brenda (BE), The Overkill Festival (BE), danced stances (CH), HaYoung (KR), Auriane Preud’homme (FR)…
Collective and Group Involvement
- Member of OSP (Open Source Publishing) in Brussels (BE), design, development and research collective
- Co-initiator and participant of Gobstoppers, a self-initiated research group of practitioners, Paris (FR)
Upcoming Projects
- Residency with Marie-Mam Sai Bellier at Art Center Les Capucins, Embrun (FR), for their new identity, 2025
- Publishing HTML: Hyper Tensions Mindful Liberation (Text) in Beginnings, a collective attempt at questioning protocols and forms of narration (FR), February 2025
Education
- BSSA Coding Bootcamp, Amsterdam (NL), 2018
- Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Graphic Design, Amsterdam (NL), 2016–2018
- École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Graphic Design, Lyon (FR), 2013–2016
Research, Publications, and Projects
- Workshop with Declarations research group, publish style ↻ style publishing at Offline Space & Well Gedacht Publishing, Berlin, January 2025
- Workshop with the Declarations research group, *Pen Pals at Varia, Rotterdam (NL), December 2024
- Ongoing Research with Declarations Group, published article on a Scrapbooking Extension created during a one-week research, October 2024
- Workshop at Hackers and Designers Summer Camp, Html Hyper Tensions Mindful Liberation writing workshop, July 2024
- Online tool writing tool tranquil-words.today, February 2024
- Published "The Computer Store", research essay for the issue At the Interface in Soapbox Journal (NL), May 2023
- Residency with Marie-Mam Sai Bellier at the Art Center CAC Passages, Troyes (FR), May–August 2023
- Video discussions in 3 episodes What’s More Important Than Two Women Talking About Web Development? with Maisa Imamović, initiated by the Institute of Network Cultures (NL), October 2022
- Online Journal Clarisa published in collaboration with Melisa Zaimovic, Issues 1 and 2, 2020–2021
Teaching and Professional Roles
- Guest Teacher: KABK, Den Haag (NL), 2024
- Guest Teacher: La Sorbonne, Paris (FR), 2024
- Guest Teacher: Campus Fonderie de l’Image, Bagnolet (FR), 2022
- Guest Teacher: École Estienne, Paris (FR), 2021, 2022
- Guest Teacher: ENSAD, Nancy (FR),2021
- Lecturer: KABK, Den Haag (NL), 2024
- Thesis Jury Member: Masters Graphic Design, Campus Fonderie de l’Image, Bagnolet (FR), February 2022
- Junior Front-End Developer: UNSEEN Contemporary Photography Fair, Amsterdam (NL), 2019–2020
Internships
- Studio Colophon & Sandra Kassenaar (MacGuffin Magazine), Amsterdam (NL), July 2016
- Studio Hato, London (UK), June–August 2015
- Chez Rosi, Risograph Printing Studio, Brussels (BE), April 2015
Skills
- Softwares: Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, XD, Glyphs, Cinema 4D
- Open Source softwares: Inkscape, Gimp, VSCodium
- Printing Techniques: Silkscreen, Riso, Offset
- Web Development: HTML, CSS, Sass, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP, Ajax, Git, Angular/React
- Fabrication Tools: Woodworking, molding, latex, epoxy, metal
Doriane Timmermans
Education
- Bachelor in Digital Arts, ERG (École de Recherche Graphique), Brussels
- Master in Mathematical Sciences, ULB (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Brussels
Commissions/Design (selected)
- (Website, Identity, Research) LabEl, a Belgian Electronic Litterature relational database, 2024-2025
- (Website, Identity) tekhne.website, a collaborative project of six European organisations on music and technology, 2023-2024
- (Website) meyboom.space, The artistic community of Meyboom and a mapping of their practices, 2023
- (Website, Research, Flyer) moonwalks.be, evening full/new-moon walks in the Sonian forest organised by Anaïs Berck, 2022
- (Website, Identity, Research, Flyers) cifas.be, performing art in the city and its fringes, 2022-2024
- (Website, Stickers, Print) tsfb.be (Trans Solidarity Fund Belgium), A solidarity fund to help trans people to deal with precarity, 2022-2023
- (Layout, Software, Artistic direction) Médor, A quaterly belgian independent investigative journalism magazine, 2020-2023
- (Website, Identity, Posters) La Balsamine, Changing visual and web identity for the seasons of the theater La Balsamine, 2020-2022
Art/Research/Tools (selected)
- (Coordination, Workshop, Artwork) Deckarations @ Offline (Berlin), Post Platform Digital toolkit, on styling publication and publishing style as intertwine practices, 2025
- (Coordination, Workshop, Artwork) Declarations @ Varia (Rotterdam), Declarations Pen-pals, on CSS inside emails and the boundaries between publishing and conversations, 2024
- (Performance) Web-language live coding performance for an exhibition opening at Le Wonder (Paris), 2024
- (Coordination, Workshop, Artwork) Declarations @ Hackers&Designers (Amsterdam), participating to the Hackers&Designers summercamp through 5 differents workshops (including LARPing, a beauty salon, and making browser-extensions), 2024
- (Coordination, Residency, Artwork) Declarations @ Constant, coordinating a one week artistic worksession and the creation of a vitrine exhibition, 2024
- (Commissioned Artwork) Arnhemse Bomen Vertellen, a situated installation creating portrait of trees using sensors to measure biologic datas, 2024
- (Software) Cobbled Paths, developping a collaborative tool on experimental DIY typography using FIGLet, ASCII art and pen-plotters, 2024
- (Software) Against, developping a critical CSS color palette tool playing with contrast ratio and named colors, 2023
- (Software) Nested, developping a CMS tool generating static websites from NextCloud, 2022-2024
- (Residency, Artworks) An algoliterary publishing house, 6 days artistic residency together with 10 international artist on algorithms and publishing, 2020
Teaching (selected)
- (Workshop) All Access Archive at fanfare (Amsterdam) invited by Sea Salt Peace, on spatially annotating text using pen-plotter, 2025
- (Classes) Special Issue 26 at XPUB (Rotterdam), investigating web-languages as an artistic research, 2025
- (Workshop) Cobbled Paths at ISBA (Besançon), a workshop on experimental DIY typographic tools using FIGLet and pen-plotters, 2024
- (Workshop) Wiki-Scratching at le75 (Bruxelles), customizing wikipedia as user-hackers, one week graphic design workshop, 2024
- (Workshop, Lecture) Graphviz at HFG (Karlsruhe), Exploring design language for schemes and standards with Graphviz, 2023
- (Workshop) HS Mainz (Mainz), customizing wikipedia as user-hackers, for communication design students
PORTFOLIO
Performance with Up-Pen-Down
The performance Up, Pen Down explored various programming languages as recipes for drawing and movement, with the pen plotter as a special guest. Performed at Balsamine Theater as a part of Saison des Cultures Numériques 2017. This performance was the first public moment of a research focused on that which is between digital type design and bodies. Letters and movements, dance notation and programming, digital codes and coded physical gestures, plotters and body parts interacted with each other and blurred the distinction between choreographic and digital practices. During the performance a printed foldable was plotted. On this page we reinterpret and document the performance using recorded fragments and material from the research.
Collective learning with Relearn Summer School
In 2013, we organized the Relearn Summer School where we invited participants to actively contribute and share their savoir-faire and infatuation, an attempt to challenge traditional and hierarchical models of pedagogy.
Collaboration with Caveat
Caveat is a collective research project initiated by Jubilee, reflecting and acting on the ecology of artistic practice.
Futurology
https://grimoire.futurology.be/
Futurology of Cooperation is a collective research project gathering artists with different practices and initiated by Anna Czapski and Diederik Peeters. During 3 years, we experimented on different technics, helping to imagine and live alternative scenarios of the future. We gathered and shared these experiments in a publication that we called the Grimoire: Een Grimoire is a book of magic spells and recipes. Les sorts en toverspreuken qui se trouvent in deze Grimoire take the form of practical tools, technieken, jeux et structures à utiliser par toute personne interested in l'expérimentation met tijdreizen and time-travel in collectieve processen.
Théâtre de la Balsamine (2011-2022)
A graphic identity deployed in perpetual renewal over 10 years and the occasion of many visual collaborations (Nina Casco, Julie Kern Donck, Karl Nawrot, Hichem Dahes).
Médor
Médor is a Belgian investigative magazine made only with open source (some homemade) tools developed by OSP.
ISELP
New identity and renovation of ISELP (Institut Supérieur pour l'Enseignement du Langage Plastique) in collaboration with architecture studio nord and artist duo Denicolai&Provoost.
iMAL
OSP were commissioned by iMAL to design a graphic identity for the exhibition NaturArchy: Towards a Natural Contract, taking place in Brussels, from the 25.05 till 29.09.2024. As the exhibition is comprised of art/science collaborations on the theme of nature, we began with an intention to experiment with pen plotters and bio inks. The bio inks were previously used in a 2018 collaboration between OSP and María Boto Ordonez, a scientist working at the Laboratorium.
OSP collaborated further for their next exhibition the identity of Fin et début / Einde en begin / The End and the Beginning. We looked into Permacomputing, a community and movement around degrowth and small-scale, low-carbon and low-impact computing with both sustainability and environmental concerns. Several key references and approaches, as well as a the use of pen plotter and the idea of patchworking shaped our work.
Majubois
Website for a team of woodworkers based in Brussels. Precise colours and sharp vision of what a website can be.
Workshops in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Germany, etc.
Declarations Pen Pals workshop about styling emails with CSS at Varia in Rotterdam, December 2024.
All Access Archive #1 workshop about annotating using the pen plotter in Amsterdam, January 2025.
OSP foundry
OSP has published all fonts produced on their foundry website. Some of them are complete typefaces, others works in progress. They are all Libre Fonts, meaning they are released under free software licenses that allow modification, re-distribution and use.
Ethertoff
Ethertoff, a collaborative publishing tool which allows to make websites and publications in (a-)synchronous collaborations through Etherpad. It is currently used within collaborative research projects like caveat, A Seat for the Sea and the Oceanographies Institute.
https://etherport.org/publications/
Plotter station
In 2022 several co-renters left our studio. Rather than finding new cohabitants we decided to use this space to install the printing machines we had collected over time a plotter station. A pen plotter is a machine that draws. Or rather, a machine that takes instructions to plot coordinates on the x- and y- axes with a pen, while it is up or down. These machines pre-date the modern office printer as a way to output vector graphics on paper. We often use plotters in projects or during pedagogical moments, such as workshops.
Cobbled paths
In June 2024, the plotter station hosted a workshop of posters make using an OSP tool for text-based drawing. Cobbled Paths is a web interface that brings multiple tools together to allow experimental and direct collaboration on pen-plotted drawings through the making of ASCII art on Etherpads. The first step is in ASCII art fashion, to draw shapes and lines using characters such as ( ) / \ | ' - . _ = + on Etherpads. An SVG vector interpretation of the shapes and lines is rendered in a side view that can later be translated to HPGL to draw them with a pen plotter.
BBB
Since 2018 with the collective Bye Bye Binary, OSP member Ludi revisits the history of typography and is active in twisting the standards and digital formats, hacking the binarity of our interfaces. The Bye Bye Binary typotheque is an online platform where inclusive fonts are distributed. These fonts offer many new glyphs (mutant letters, ligatures, symbiosis elements) in addition to the middle dot and other solutions regularly used to write and compose texts in inclusive writing. Our keyboards do not (yet) contain the keys for these characters. So to make this rainbow of signs usable by all, Bye Bye Binary is building common practices, soft and raging standards, which together form the Queer Unicode Initiative (QUNI). QUNI allows us to gather our fonts, in all their diversity, around the same encoding system in order to make them useable by a large public.
Algolit
Algolit is a workgroup around i-literature, free code and texts. It was initiated by Constant in 2012. The group meets regularly following the principles of the Oulipo-meetings: they share work and thoughts and create together, with or without the company of an invitee. The work group Algolit focuses on digital and / or generative literature, inspired by, or made with (machine learning) algorithms.
Declarations
Declarations is an ongoing artistic research project into the poetic materiality of the CSS web-standard and its echoes on design and artistic practices. This research is initiated and coordinated by OSP member Doriane. Other OSP members are part of the research and have run workshops in Berlin and Rotterdam.
2024 OSP retreat
Each year, OSP goes on a short trip outside of Brussels to prepare the AG documents, discuss the previous and comming years, express new directions for the collective.