Brussels, December 2016

Worksession: DiVersions
=======================

<div id="x">

 **DiVersions
was inspired by the way versions are inscribed in daily
software-practice, and explored how parallel to their conventional
narrative of collaboration and consensus, they can produce divergent
histories through supporting difference. This one week session was
organised by Constant and hosted by the Royal Museum of Art and History
in Brussels.\
By the end of 2016, the Museum was in the final stages of digitizing its
very diverse collection: some 330,000 objects including clay tablets,
tapestries, mummies, ancient jewellery, vases, coins had been
inventoried. Our presence at this moment in time allowed us to put the
concrete practices of art-history, cataloguing and digitisation
technologies in relation with the reflections, prototypes and other
types of experiments generated during the worksession.\
Version-control systems, Wikis, Etherpads and other digital writing
tools save log files and ’diffs’ routinely, potentially changing linear
relations between original and copy, redefining questions of authorship
and the archive through technological conditions. Meticulously logged
workflows promise to make the process of shared editing a transparent
process because any action can be reversed or repeated at any time, and
errors or unwanted inputs can be later corrected. But what types of
alternative collectivity do they make possible and impossible? How can
we use these timelines, histories, traces not just in terms of
safeguarding production, but for other ways of inscribing multiplicity
and variety?**
 The
worksession brought together collaborative practices, active archives
and Free Software tools; each of them long time interests of Constant.
By working through and with tools that operate on data along temporal
and social dimensions, DiVersions explored the potential for divergence
within technological infrastructures. We wanted to experiment with
conditions for multiple authorship (including machines as author) and
explicitly make space for ambiguity. We wanted to speculate on digital
practices that do not erase conflict and variation, and can work with,
not against, misunderstandings between people and machines, and among
machines and people themselves. Worksessions are intensive
transdisciplinary moments, organised twice a year by Constant. They aim
to provide conditions for participants with different types of expertise
to temporarily link their practice and to develop ideas, prototypes and
research projects together. We primarily use Free, Libre and Open Source
software and material that is available under Open Licenses.

-   References + resources: <https://diversions.hotglue.me/> +
    <http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/diversions.resources>
-   Call for participants:
    <http://www.constantvzw.org/site/Call-for-participants-DiVersions.html>
-   Worksession programme:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/etherdump/programme.diff.html>
-   Notes and traces: <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/>
-   Pictures:
    <http://gallery.constantvzw.org/index.php/DiVersions-Worksession>
-   Pictures (selection): <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/images/>

Research visits and interviews
------------------------------


-   05/10/2016: Serge Lemaitre (curator The Americas) + Emiel van
    Binnebeke (curator furniture and wood sculpture)
    <http://video.constantvzw.org/diversions/2016-10-05/>
-   13/10/2016: Sophie Balace (curator metals, precious metals) + Saskia
    Willaert (curator African instruments, MIM)
    <http://video.constantvzw.org/diversions/2016-10-13/>
-   08/12/2016: Interview Nacha Van Steen (e-Collections)
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/2016-12-08-thursday/2016-12-08-interview-nacha.mp3>
-   08/12/2016: Visit to plaster workshop
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/2016-12-08-thursday/2016-12-08-plaster-workshop-01.mp3> +
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/2016-12-08-thursday/2016-12-08-plaster-workshop-02.mp3>
-   09/12/2016: Saskia Willaert (curator African instruments, MIM)
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/etherdump/saskia_machine-transcript.diff.html>
    (automated transcript)

An afternoon in the museum about collaboration, divergence and the digital archive
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 *Diversions
started with an afternoon in the Royal Museum for Art and History. The
program included two lectures and a performance exploring tools,
processes and infrastructures that invite different and divergent
histories.*

### Laurence Rassel

Laurence Rassel joined us to reflect on how digital archives can
transform institutions. How to do things when we consider the
institution as a space for encounters, creativity, possibility and risk?
Laurence Rassel (Brussels) is a cultural worker who can act as a
curator, teacher or organizer. She was recently appointed director of
the école de recherche graphique (Brussels). As director of the Fundació
Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona, Laurence initiated Arts combinatòries, a
place for education, exhibition and research situated within the archive
of the institution.

-   Video:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/2016-12-04-sunday/DiVersions_LR.webm> +
    slides:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/2016-12-04-sunday/041216.pdf>
-   Sound recording:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/2016-12-04-sunday/2016-12-04-laurence-geraldine.mp3>

### Geraldine Juárez

Organizing information is never innocent. This is the motto for
Geraldine Juárez’ preemptive history of The Google Cultural Institute,
an effort to "make the world’s culture accessible online". Viewing
Google Art, Google Cultural Institute and Google Art & Culture through
the lense of digital capitalism, she critically tracks the evolution of
services that appears at a moment in time when public institutions are
increasingly de-funded. Geraldine Juárez (México, Sweden) works with and
across different media-technologies and its histories, stories,
materials and contexts to understand how how information, knowledge and
property is organized, regulated and exchanged under technological
culture and within the market economy.

-   Video:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/2016-12-04-sunday/DiVersions_GJ.webm>
-   Sound recording:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/2016-12-04-sunday/2016-12-04-laurence-geraldine.mp3>

### Christine De Smedt

Christine De Smedt performed a first sketch of a series of movements
based on her work Untitled 4. 4 choreographic portraits. Her radical
appropriations have now become historical material that could be
archived in a museum context. These transformative gestures allow for
new readings that are not only determined by the logic of the archive,
but also by the context in which they are read. Christine De Smedt
(Brussels) is a choreographer. As a way to come to a self-portrait she
created choreographic portraits of four artists who have influenced
present-day contemporary dance and still do: Jonathan Burrows, Alain
Platel, Xavier Le Roy and Eszter Salamon. She assumed their words and
stories based on interviews about their relationships between life and
work.

-   Video:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/2016-12-04-sunday/DiVersions_CDS.webm>

Startingpoints
--------------

*Four cases were brought to the table in the beginning of the
worksession. They each provided food for thought, startingpoints for
discussion and ideas to work with and from.*

### The Architecture of collective writing (Just For The Record)

Wikipedia is an interesting playground for future collective uses of the
more 'pragmatic' archives that are developed today. If we look at
Wikipedia as an enormous architecture and consider every page as an
office space, with a history, discussions and a permanent stream of
changes up to the most radical gesture of deleting content, we can
easily get a sense of the working atmosphere of each room. Some are
enjoyable spaces where respect, dialogue and negociation rule; others
can be war spaces where the 'truth' is hold by bots correcting each
other every fragment of a second; or the winning word is held by humans,
amongst which the admin seems to have the most power, although it is
never clear who exactly is sitting around the table, nor how the people
around the table are perceived. Most women are still 'wifes of', or
categorized as 'men' instead of 'humans'. 'Separatism' and 'tea house'
are words used for 'feminist' parallel spaces on Wikipedia. JFTR is
looking for new tools that allow for interference in the atmosphere of a
space, by looking f.ex. for patterns in the use of language in the
talking pages, visualisation of the bots operating and what they're made
of, a thermometer to indicate atmospheres, ...
<http://justfortherecord.space>

-   Presentation text and notes:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/etherdump/just_for_the_record.diff.html>
-   Related reading:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/Architecture_Queer_Theory/>

### One commit doesn't make a story (Alex Leray)

Open Source Publishing is a collective of designers and programmers
working with Free, Libre and Open Source tools. A few years ago, as part
of their daily workflow, they started to use the versioning software
tool 'git', and many other collaborative tools (etherpad, owncloud,
...). Each of these tools has its own way of keeping archives, logs and
timestamps. The result is a treasure trove of very rich and at the same
time fragmented traces that could potentially tell the story of their
collective design practise, but always almost, or not yet. So far OSP
made several attempts to knit together these fragments into stories,
bridging gaps in temporality and materiality. There is a tension between
capture and narration, between automatic logs and storytelling. What
should be integrated in the story? How to account for the heterogeneity
of processes and data? How can the context be made (in)visible? Maybe
some visualisation might help? Or other generative tools? Alex presents
us some of OSP experiments on rendering their practice legible and
invites us to think together about how to tell stories between a
collective of people, projects and tools.
<http://osp.kitchen/work/stories/>

-   Sound recording:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/2016-12-06-tuesday/Conference_Alex.WAV>
-   Notes:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/etherdump/One_commit.diff.html>

### Histories of conflicts and confusions (Zeljko Blace)

Established museums and archives are currently considering to
re-approach or re-label their sedimented and consolidated collections
through incremental interventions (changing labels and interpretations
of post-colonial artworks for example) or even they invite artists and
activists for special projects (queering the van abbemuseum). Newly
established initiatives are struggling with incoherence and gaps (Gay
Museum in Berlin). How do we come to terms with all this? Zeljko is not
only interested in how we could produce divergent histories (of
minorities) through supporting different interpretations, but also in
how to produce histories of conflicts and confusions and make spaces for
future antagonisms and divergences. This is especially interesting when
oral histories meet material ones and when artefacts (as 'evidence')
meet artworks (as 'subjectivities'). Their juxtaposition asks us to take
unexpected confusions into consideration or even confluences of
methodologies and perspectives. We could think of developing discourses
that could be extrapolated from ontologies and vocabularies. He is
particularly interested in participatory systems that could foster not
collaboration, but contestation and multiple contextualizations in
coordinated and parallel ways.

-   Presentation text and notes:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/etherdump/conflicts_and_confusions.diff.html>

### Different orders coexist (Michael Murtaugh + Nicolas Maleve)

"Computational vandalism means working with this and other qualities of
computing; the capacity for repetition, speed, interpretation by
combination, the layering of operations and so on. In this sense,
computational vandalism works with the aesthetic, social, material and
imaginal forces that are gathered as compositional terms within
computing." (Matthew Fuller in an interview with SICV, Vandalist
Iconophilia <http://editorialconcreta.org/Vandalist-Iconophilia)> As the
Scandinavian Institute for Computational Vandalism, Nicolas Malevé and
Michael Murtaugh have developed a series of experiments in connection
with the archives of the artists Erkki Kurenniemi, Asger Jorn and Guttom
Guttorsgaard. Probing into large collections of digital and digitised
collections, they employed Computer Vision algorithms as interlocutors,
to explore alternative interpretations, different orderings and seeing
through other eyes. The images started to masquerade as text, and texts
start to behave as images. For DiVersions, Michael and Nicolas turned
the SICV toolkit onto the actual files and databases of the
Cinquantenaire museum itself. Working on the archive as a whole, SICV
redrew relations and genealogies in the order(s) of art history.
<http://sicv.activearchives.org/logbook/>

-   Sound recording:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/2016-12-06-tuesday/Conference_Michael_Nicolas_01.WAV> +
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/2016-12-06-tuesday/Conference_Michael_Nicolas_02.WAV>
-   Notes:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/etherdump/different_orders_coexist.diff.html>

### Terms of use: opening and closing the archive

 *For Constant
worksessions, we developed etherbox, a custom local server
infrastructure for collaborative situations. During DiVersions we tested
a first iteration of a ritual for the opening and closing of this
temporary collective space.*

-   Notes:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/etherdump/terms_of_use.diff.html>
-   Interview with etherbox:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/etherdump/interview-with-an-etherbox.diff.html>

Prototypes
----------

*Ideas, concepts and prototypes developed during the worksession.*

### Woman, visibility and an essay on representing women on Wikipedia -- a call for action and images (Catherine Lenoble)

*A reflection on possible new types of contributions on Wikipedia,
filling the gap in the production of a visual culture specific to
representing female personalities, and more generally, women on
Wikipedia.*

-   Video:
    <http://video.constantvzw.org/diversions/presentations/MVI_0229.webm>
-   Link:
    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Visual_representation_of_women>
-   Notes: <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/etherdump/woman.diff.html>
-   <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_about_women>
-   <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_about_men>
-   <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Portrait_drawings_of_women>
-   <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Portrait_drawings_of_men>

### A Wikipedia template for conflicts and confusions (Zeljko Blace, Myriam Arsenault-Goulet)

 *A
strategic proposal for a set of 'progressive' banner templates to be
added to Wikipedia. One would for example allow logged-in users to call
for additional voices and dynamic balancing, another to flag
normativity.*

-   Video:
    <http://video.constantvzw.org/diversions/presentations/MVI_0230.webm>
-   Link:
    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:L%C3%A9onie_Butler/sandbox>
-   Notes:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/etherdump/conflicts_and_confusions.diff.html>

### DiyVersions (Lionel Broye)

*A proposal to bring the collection outside the museum walls and to link
the objects to different and external contexts in order to create new
narratives with and around them.*

-   Video:
    <http://video.constantvzw.org/diversions/presentations/MVI_0231.webm>
-   Presentation text:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/projects/DiyVersions/DiyVersions.txt>
-   Visuals: <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/projects/DiyVersions/>

### Hexatic (workingtitle) (Alexandre Leray, Magnus Lawrie, Adva Zakai)

*Exploring tools and processes related to software versioning such as
'git add note', a series of experiments with narration and editorial
processes through conversation, disagreement and conflict.*

-   Video:
    <http://video.constantvzw.org/diversions/presentations/MVI_0233.webm>
-   Recording of the script:
    <https://asciinema.org/a/cel358ytg5o3uhi2n8z95yzwe>
-   Notes:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/etherdump/One_commit.diff.html>
-   Repository: <http://gitlab.constantvzw.org/diversions/hexatic>

### Other orderings exist (Michael Murtaugh, Nicolas Maleve)

*Background and forground, scraping and structured data. Computer Vision
algorithms employed as interlocutors, to explore alternative
interpretations, different orderings and seeing through other eyes of
digital and digitised collections.*

-   Web: The collection of the Music Instrument Museum (MIM) ordered: [BY NAME](http://diversions.constantvzw.org/scrape/mim.name.html) [BY DIMENSIONS](http://diversions.constantvzw.org/scrape/mim.bydim.html)
-   Video:
    <http://video.constantvzw.org/diversions/presentations/MVI_0234.webm>
-   Notes:
    -   <http://http://diversions.constantvzw.org/etherdump/different_orders_friday.diff.html>
    -   <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/etherdump/different_orders_friday.diff.html>
    -   <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/etherdump/different_orders_wednesday.diff.html>
-   Tools:
    -   <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/etherdump/Scraping.diff.html>
    -   <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/etherdump/erasing_the_background.diff.html>

### Stacks & volumes (Mia Melvaer, Phil Langley, Julie Boschat-Thorez, Michael Murtaugh, An Mertens)

*Using 'volume' as an ordering device, Stacks & Volumes prototypes a
different kind of inventory, 'cutting across' current categorisations
and groupings.*

-   Video:
    <http://video.constantvzw.org/diversions/presentations/MVI_0235.webm>
-   Notes:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/etherdump/Stacking.diff.html>
-   Images:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/projects/stacking/Presentation%20visuals%20Diversion%20Stacks%20and%20Volumes.pdf>
-   Materials: <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/projects/stacking>

#### Objects made of ... (Mia Melvaer)

-   Audio guide:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/projects/stacking/Second%20Take%20Corridor.m4a>

### Tracking dates / Plotting timescales (Phil Langley)

*Plotting the multiple dates (acquisition, production, addition to the
database) of objects in the Carmentis data base*

-   Video:
    <http://video.constantvzw.org/diversions/presentations/MVI_0236.webm>
-   Visuals:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/projects/tracking%20dates>

### Notation as a parasite (Cristina Cochior)

*Following the description of a plugin for the image manipulation
programme The Gimp as parasitic activity.*

-   Images: <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/projects/gimpparasites>

### Objects made to speak / voorwerpen spreken / objets parlants I (Mia Melvaer, An Mertens)

*Based on existing descriptions, this algoritm proposes new objects, to
be added to the museum catalogue.*

-   Video:
    <http://video.constantvzw.org/diversions/presentations/MVI_0238.webm>

### Objects made to speak / voorwerpen spreken / objets parlants II (An Mertens)

*What do objects have to say, when we listen to them through the
catalogue? An algorithmicly generated catalogue of "women" present in
the museum catalogue.*

-   Video:
    <http://video.constantvzw.org/diversions/presentations/MVI_0243.webm>
-   Materials:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/projects/objects_made_to_speak>
-   Gift to the Museum on Women's Day 2017, 40 catalogues of 'Objects
    with Hair':
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/projects/objects_made_to_speak/For_the_museum_40_x_20_objects_with_hair/>

### Objects and stories in the Mesoamerican room

 *Could we
imagine an audio-guide that whispers multiple voices into our ears?
Could they tell a different story in each ear? Would they enter in
conversation with each other?*

Videos:
<http://video.constantvzw.org/diversions/presentations/MVI_0239.webm>
Notes:
<http://diversions.constantvzw.org/etherdump/objects_and_stories.diff.html>
Materials:
<http://diversions.constantvzw.org/projects/objects_and_stories/>

#### Not just Pretty Ladies (Loraine Furter)

*A new Wikipedia page for Pretty Ladies, detailing their problematic
naming.*

-   <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Ladies_(female_figurines)>

#### On goddesses, ladies and other maids (Donatella Portoghese)

*A possible guided tour of some of the objects exhibited in the
Mesoamerican room. It investigates in a playful way how the information
we get influences our perception of the artworks. What do we communicate
and what do we omit? How do we talk about women and beauty outside
Western colonial parameters? What does the World Wibe Web have to tell
us about these concepts?*

#### The absent context (Arianna Marcolini)

*Speaking from the Pretty Ladies in familiar and unfamiliar tongues to
evoke absent contexts*

#### Underneath the Goddess (Wendy Van Wynsberghe)

*A sound recording from under the Mesoamerican room*

-   <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/projects/objects_and_stories/Tour04_under_the_americas_EDIT.wav>

### Carmentis

*From the past into the future and back again. Prototyping a
decolonization of the museum collection through critical observations of
its digital infrastructure, and how it changed in time.*

-   Video:
    <http://video.constantvzw.org/diversions/presentations/MVI_0240.webm> +
    <http://video.constantvzw.org/diversions/presentations/MVI_0241.webm>
-   Notes on digital infrastructure:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/etherdump/cloud.diff.html>
-   Conversation notes:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/etherdump/decolonize_ZLS.diff.html>
-   Presentation notes:
    <http://etherdump.constantvzw.org/p/new_fire_ceremony.diff.html>

#### 1996 vision (Gottfried Haider)

*Speculative software proposal. A research into the history of the
museums' digital infrastructures and collection management systems lead
to a re-imagination of the current digital collection through the tools
and styles that would have been state of the art in 1996.*

-   Screenshots + letter:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/projects/1996>

#### Printing/exporting the catalog, a geneology (Martino Monti)

*A closer look at the Museum catalogues over time, their publication
processes and politics, on paper and on line.*

#### Stanley in the database (Sam Muirhead)

*Re-narrating the story of Carmentis, a caring goddess in the database.*

#### A new fire ceremony (Seda Guerses, Zoumana Meite)

*A poetic proposal for a new start of the collection and its
institution, moulded to not forget its own history. Inspired by an Aztec
ceremony that was performed once every 52 years.*

### Background, foreground: differences that matter (Cristina Cochior, Nicolas Maleve, Peter Westenberg)

*Experiments with the distinction between foreground and background in
the digital images scraped from the museum collection's website*

-   Video:
    <http://video.constantvzw.org/diversions/presentations/MVI_0242.webm>
-   Notes:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/etherdump/introDifferences.diff.html>
-   Materials:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/projects/Differences_that_matter>

### A collection of incertitudes (peut-etre, maybe, sometimes, possibly, ...) (Marie Lecrivain, Martin Campilo)

*A query into the online catalogue following the parameter of
uncertainty. How do you find doubts in the database if the "question
mark" (?) is not taken in account by the search engine of Carmentis?*

-   Video:
    <http://video.constantvzw.org/diversions/presentations/MVI_0244.webm>
-   Notes:
    <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/etherdump/incertitudes.diff.html>
-   Materials: <http://diversions.constantvzw.org/projects/incertitudes>

</div>

Colophon
--------

DiVersions worksession, 4-10 December 2016, organised by
[Constant](http://constantvzw.org) in collaboration with [The Museum for
Art and History](http://www.kmkg-mrah.be/cinquantenaire-museum),
Brussels.

With: Adva Zakai, Alexandre Leray, André Castro, An Mertens, Arianne
Marcolini, Catherine Lenoble, Cristina Cochior, Donatella Portoghese,
Laurence Rassel, Femke Snelting, Christine De Smedt, Gottfried Haider,
Geraldine Juárez, Julie Boschat-Thorez, Kristien Van denbrande, Lionel
Broye, Loraine Furter, Magnus Lawrie, Marie Lecrivain, Martin Campilo,
Martino Monti, Mia Melvaer, Michael Murtaugh, Serge Lemaitre, Sophie
Balace, Emile Van Binnebeke, Saskia Willaert, Chris Vastenhoudt, Myriam
Arsenault-Goulet, Nicolas Maleve, Peter Westenberg, Phil Langley, Sam
Muirhead, Sarah Magnan, Seda Guerses, Wendy Van Wynsberghe, Zeljko
Blace, Zoumana Meite.Video- and soundrecordings: Stefan Piat, Peter
Westenberg, Wendy Van Wynsberghe

Food: Joris Vermeir, Guillaume Bernier

License (unless otherwise noticed): FAL
<http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en/>

[EDIT](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/diversions.prototypes)