labyratoire

This is the public start page of my personal labyratoire: an online scrapbook that I will be using in the course of the research project 'Systems that Matter' that started mid-November 2024. It is the successor to the librarinth, a similar scrapbook that I used in the project 'Dialogues With Machines' during the period 2017-2024.
I work on 'Systems that Matter' as a postdoctoral researcher in the 'Disobedient Practices' research cluster at KASK & Conservatorium, the school of arts of HoGent and Howest in Ghent. The project is financed by the HoGent Arts Research Fund.

An early (updated 020250110) description could be as follows:

In this project I investigate the performativity of the physical materials that constitute our electronic and digital media. By combining media archaeology and speculation I attempt to pry these materials (and ourselves) loose from the problematic origins of their creation and use. The materials and components involved in the early history of the electronic image are taken as the central focus of this project.
The research starts from the working assumption that all materials are artificial, and that calling material 'raw' only serves to make a distinction between visible and invisible labour. I will explore and show the 'formative drive' of materials through hands-on experimentation and the production of installations and films in collaboration with it. The aim is to develop procedures and devices that produce images, but which also stage a specific material presence. This practical activity will guide my investigations of the technical principles, social structures, and some of the concepts and narratives around the perceived and possible agency of the materials that are central to our current technologies. By developing speculative perspectives and technologies, I hope to reflect on some of the ways in which the human, the non-human and technology articulate each other.

Practical work currently consists in starting on a number of new projects.
One of these is a continuation of the research in Dialogues with Machines and is inspired by the cybernetic experimental devices built by Gordon Pask and Stafford Beer and by more recent work on evolvable hardware. I will use evolutionary algorithms to evolve patches for the analogue computer that I built over the past years. The aim is to channel the specific anarchic potential of such hardware-based evolutionary methods towards the production of complex video images. The result will be a series of single-channel works and video installations that reflect on processes of collective evolution.
A longer-running project will be to explore the sculptural and generative use of semiconducting materials other than silicon. A number of historical experiments that relate to precursors of our present-day solid-state electronic technology will be re-enacted, with the aim to develop new devices that speculate on how our technology could have been and can still be different.

Theoretical investigations take Lambros Malafouris' material engagement theory and Karen Barad's agential realism as a starting point. Currently I am reading about the philosophical and cultural history of chemistry (Isabelle Stengers, Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Hélène Metzger, Esther Leslie) and about ways to apply Whitehead to thinking about technology (Anne Fairchild Pomeroy, Mark Hansen).

• work-in-progress presentation of the 4.5Ga~24h project (a collaboration with artist David Vrbik, composer Cyril Kaplan and geologist Matěj Machek) in Bio Oko, Prague (november 2024).

Just like the librarinth, this labyratoire is inspired by Foam's libarynth, all proudly powered by dokuwiki. The term 'labyratoire' is by Constant Nieuwenhuys, who also produced a visual representation of at least one.
This scrapbook is a garden that is walled in order to allow fragile ideas and projects to grow. This may change partly or entirely as the project evolves, but eventually, all that is in here will become public. If you are one of those with guest access, your password will open this door for you.
You can always contact me here.