Publication launch

We are very happy to invite you to the launch of the online Cqrrelations publication.
Cqrrelations was a worksession of two weeks we organised in deBuren in January 2015. As one year counts for fifty in the world of Cqrrelations, we thought it might be interesting to transform this gathering into another reflection moment.

The following guests will be sharing their ideas with us:
* Geoff Cox will merge thoughts developed in his book ’Speaking Code’ with recent developments - http://www.anti-thesis.net/
* Antoinette Rouvroy will be respondent. As a researcher and thinker she coined the concept ’Algorithmic governmentality’ to name the kind of policy making that relies on big data. https://unamur.academia.edu/AntoinetteRouvroy
* RYBN presents Dataghost 2, an update of http://rybn.org/dataghost/archives/
* Manetta Berends & Ruben van de Ven, both finishing their masters in Media Design at the Piet Zwart Institute, present their graduation work for which they found inspiration at Cqrrelations.
http://www.manettaberends.nl/
http://www.rubenvandeven.com/

PROGRAM
14-19h presentations & discussions
19-20h: drinks & snacks

Where: FoAM, Koolmijnenkaai / Quai des Charbonnages 30-34, 1080 Brussels

Please register by sending a mail to info||||| at||||| constantvzw||||| dot|||| org

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More information about the presentations

Geoff Cox - Speaking algorithms
In 2012, Geoff Cox published Speaking Code, a book written with Alex
McLean, examining some of the economical and political conditions of
coding and the analogy to free speech. Starting from the idea of code as
speech act, it unfolded its argument in dialogue with code fragments. In
his presentation, Geoff will further develop some of these ideas in the
light of an apparent shift in software studies: in which algorithms
increasingly replace source code as objects of critical concern. What are
the lines of continuity and discontinuity in this apparent shift? What has
been displaced in the shift of discourse? How does this relate to big data
and how value is produced through correlations? From there, Geoff will
return to the question of speech and ask: if algorithms could speak, what
would they say? If data were able to speak for itself, what would it say
about itself and its value? Geoff’s presentation will be interspersed by
code fragments selected from different machine learning software libraries
selected by the Cqrrelations team.
Geoff Cox is Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Culture, and Participatory IT Research Centre, Aarhus University (DK), currently engaged on a 3 year research project The Contemporary Condition funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research (with Jacob Lund). He is also Adjunct faculty Transart Institute (DE/US), an occasional artist/curator, and part of the self-institution Museum of Ordure.
http://www.anti-thesis.net

RYBN - Dataghost2
Dataghost2 explores the use of hermeneutic interpretation systems of the Kabbalah applied to communication networks, in the attempt to update the hidden messages that hide there. A /daemon/, installed on a server, spies on all electronic communication and captures the content that is been generated by the active processes at work in the management and administration of the network. All this content is fed to different decipherment algorithms that reproduce the emblematic techniques of the Kabbalah - /Gematria, Temura et Notarique./
RYBN.ORG is an artistic collective based in Paris since 2000. They’re specialised in the creation of installations, performances and interfaces that refer as much to the codified systems of artistic representation (painting, architecture, counter-cultures) as to human and physical phenomenons.
http://rybn.org

Manetta Berends - i-could-have-written-that
The large amount of digital text available these days, is presented as the problem that text mining can solve. Written language from social media users, product reviews and even essays from students are turned into data. Text mining is executed with untenable enthusiasm and a strong belief in the reading abilities of a text mining system. However, an actual text mining process is messy and chaotic. Although the eventual results are presented as being read or mined from the text, they show more similarities to something that is written. This research project shows how the software, workprocess and vocabulary together construct text mining results.
Manetta Berends has been educated as a graphic designer at ArtEZ, Arnhem before starting her master-education at the Piet Zwart Institute (PZI), Rotterdam. From an interest in linguistics, code and a research based design practice, she currently works on the systemization of language in the field of natural language processing and text mining.
http://www.manettaberends.nl/

Ruben van de Ven - Choose how you feel; you have seven options
What does it mean to feel 64% happiness and 12% disgust? The video work ’Choose how you feel; you have seven options’ revolves around this question as it looks at software that derives emotional parameters from facial expressions. It interrogates a discursive apparatus that is being erected.
Combining his backgrounds in filmmaking and programming, Ruben van de Ven (NL) challenges alleged objective practices. He is intrigued by the intersection of highly cognitive practices and ambiguous experiences. In his last works he wonders: "what does it mean to feel 47% happy and 21% surprised?"
http://www.rubenvandeven.com/


@ FoAM

Koolmijnenkaai / Quai des Charbonnages 30-34, 1080 Brussels