labyratoire

This is the public start page of my personal labyratoire: an online scrapbook that I am using in the course of the research project 'Systems that Matter' that started in 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 fairly recent description could run as follows:

In this project I am investigating 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 their problematic origins. The materials and components involved in the early history of computing 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. The early 19th-century concept of the 'formative drive' of materials is mobilized to further question the divisions between visible versus invisible labour and human versus non-human activity. I am exploring the 'formative drive' of materials through hands-on experimentation and the production of installations and films in collaboration with it. This practical activity is guiding 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 two larger projects and several smaller experiments.
In the first larger project I am exploring 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. Currently I am working to re-enact the 'Salt Transistor' experiment by the early solid state physicist Robert Wichard Pohl from the late 1930s, and to follow through on some of the ideas it suggests. I am intrigued by the vision of a non-toxic, anti-fascist, fully transparent technology that is several orders of magnitude too slow to be of any obvious practical use, and which has a historical link with what seems to be an important example of technological refusal. I am working towards a lecture-performance in which I re-enact the public presentations of Pohl's experiment and address his views on science, transparency and the highly visual physics demonstrations for which he was famous. On the basis of my re-enactments I am developing an installation that hopes to actualise some of its speculative potential.
The second larger project 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. This will be used as a platform to interface with different reconfigurable materials. The aim is to channel the specific anarchic potential of such hardware-based evolutionary methods towards the production of complex video images. I am especially interested in how such methods are able to circumvent human beliefs about the demarcation and limitations of systems. The result will be a series of single-channel works and video installations that reflect on processes of collective evolution.

Theoretical investigations continue to build on my earlier engagement with the writings of Gilbert Simondon and Isabelle Stengers, attempting to articulate a vision of a technology that includes unpredictable material processes. Currently I am reading about the philosophical and cultural history of chemistry (Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Hélène Metzger, Esther Leslie, William R. Newman), about the possible intersection of material engagement theory and materialist ecological theories (Lambros Malafouris, Karen Barad, Val Plumwood, Ariel Salleh, Jason W. Moore, Baruch Gottlieb), and about ways to apply Whiteheads process metaphysics 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).
• screening of short films, including live reading of “Ueda's Shattered Egg”, RPM festival, Boston, US (march 2025).
• screening of “Mechanisms Common to Disparate Phenomena; #59”, Hallwalls, Buffalo, US (march 2025).
• “Liberate the Machines!” talk, PLASMA lecture series, Department of Media Study, SUNY Buffalo, US (march 2025).
• “Liberate the Machines!” talk, LASER talk, Texas A&M University, College Station, US (march 2025).
• screening of “Mechanisms Common to Disparate Phenomena; #59”, co-organized by Signal Culture, Denver Digirati, Collective Misnomer, Astro-Kino and hosted by Rainbow Dome, Denver, US (march 2025).
• “Liberate the Machines!” talk, Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History, University of Texas, Dallas, US (march 2025).
• “Listening to Devices: Lightning Empiricism and Darwinian Machinery”, online presentation and panel discussion with Charissa N. Terranova, and Ken Rinaldo, part of “Circular Currents: Feedback, Intelligence, Emergent Systems”, organized by the Art, Media and Cybernetics working group of the American Society of Cybernetics (april 2025).
• presentation of the “Liberate the Machines!” book and panel discussion as part of “Disobedient Bodies”, an event around three book projects, organised by the 'Disobedient Practices' and 'Body Plural' research clusters of KASK & Conservatorium, in Kunsthal Gent, Belgium (may 2025).
• Research presentation as part of the autumn lecture series around practice-based research of the Institute for Digital Communication Environments (IDCE), HGK Basel, Switzerland (november 2025).
• Presentation of the book “Liberate the Machines!”, including screening of the film “Mechanisms Common to Disparate Phenomena; #59” and discusssion with Marloes de Valk, as part of the “Ground” series of events at Creative Coding, Utrecht (november 2025).
• Exhibition of installation #71.1 in the group exhibition “Deep Fields” at the Centre Wallonie Bruxelles, Paris (february, march 2026).
• Try-out of lecture-performance “The Salt Transistor” at the KASK & Conservatorium Research Days, Ghent (march 2026).
• Participation in panel discussion “Playing with Objects: Thinking, Making and Material Agency”, together with Kate Fletcher and Lambros Malafouris, moderated by Anca Uşurelu, at the KASK & Conservatorium Research Days, Ghent (march 2026).
• Two screenings, one a programme of six of my films spanning the period 1991-2013, the other a screening of “Mechanisms Common to Disparate Phenomena; #59” together with “#5”, a triple projection piece from 1994. Organized by Mount Analogue Art+Cinema in collaboration with the SIFF film center and Mini Mart City Park Gallery, Seattle (april 2026).
• Exhibition of my film “Mechanisms Common to Disparate Phenomena; #59” in the group exhibition “Amateur Detection” at Various Artists Gallery, New York (april, may 2026).
• 'Liberate the Crystals!' talk and participation in roundtable with Alanna Stuart, Marie Thompson, Gary Stewart and Femke Snelting, moderated by Elena Biserna, at Q-O2 as part of the Oscillation Festival, Brussels (may 2026).
• Screening of my film “Mechanisms Common to Disparate Phenomena; #59” in Disarm Cinema, Columbia, Missouri, US (may 2026).
• Screening of “Mechanisms Common to Disparate Phenomena; #59” and informal book presentation at the IPEM Art and Science Interaction Lab, Ghent University (may 2026).

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.