Libre Graphics Research Unit: Co-Position

1st LGRU Research Meeting, Worm (Rotterdam, 2011)

> Introduction
> Program
> Participate

Introduction

How can we re-imagine lay-out from scratch? What tools do we need to support decentralized collaboration? How can we understand what workflows, distributions of work and media are coded into our tools? How can we bring canvas editing, dynamic lay-outs, web-to-print and Print On Demand together in more interesting ways? What kind of messages do we propagate and how does this change the tools we need? Participants from all over Europe will speculate about the answers to these and many more questions during four intense days of presentations, discussions, development sessions and prototyping.

LGRU has been initiated by Constant (Brussels),  Worm (Rotterdam), Piksel (Norway) and Medialab-Prado, four European medialabs actively engaged with free software, open code and free culture. This transdisciplinary project involves artists, designers, and programmers, and aims to develop a dialog with the free graphics community. 

Program

Wednesday, 22 February: Visual Versioning

At the first day of the meeting the aim is to address the obvious need for another approach to versioning tools. Distributed and decentralized work necessitates such collaborative tools; also in creasingly design- and code development run parallel. But there are multiple issues with the disciplinary character of existing versioning tools, with it's lack of place for visual exploration and subsequently foregrounding of textual production; the linearity of its mental model and issues of validation. The starting point are various experiments already underway. Day chaired by Femke Snelting.

10:00 am – 12:30 pm: Introduction to Visual Versioning, lectures and discussion
2:30 pm– 6:30 pm: Three parallel worksessions followed by a presentation of each session
7:30 pm – 10:00 pm: Kitchentable presentations plus buffet (lightning talks)

Thursday, 23 February: Collision

Collisions potentially happen when two or more active elements share a space, and the chance of one occurring grows exponentially when the semantic, graphic or functional links between the elements is stronger. Design could be seen as a practise that seeks to articulate collisions; to organise them, to make them visible and legible. By describing lay-out as 'the spatial arrangement of texts and other graphical elements', it is possible to explore these collisions more specifically. Day chaired by Pierre Huyghebaert.

10:00 am – 12:30 pm: Introduction to Collision, lectures and discussion
2:30 pm– 6:30 pm: Three parallel worksessions followed by a presentation of each session

Friday, 24 February: Shared Vocabularies

When developers and designers work together, precise and share-able vocabulary is missing. Even if that seems trivial at start, that vocabulary is needed before start imagining the tools that responds to it. API's and other frameworks prescribe certain types of interaction, and are usually path-dependent on both the software's internal history and conventional ideas of what should be interfaced with. How can design practices and the (technical) vocabulary they are surrounded by, interact in a more productive way?. Day chaired  by Nicolás Malevé.

10:00 am – 12:30 pm: Introduction to Shared Vocabularies, lectures and discussion
2:30 pm– 6:30 pm: Three parallel worksessions followed by a presentation of each session
8:30 pm – Midnight: Performance de Alexandre Quessy (Toonloop)

Saturday, 25 February

The last day of the meeting will be used to collaboratively develop the work in the days before into three prototypes that can be shared and archived.

10:00 am – 12:30 pm: Three parallel worksessions: Visual Versioning, Collision and Shared Vocabularies.
2:00 pm – 3:30 pm: Presentation of prototypes and roundtable discussion

Partipate

Participation is free, includes food and drinks. Places are limited.
If you are interested in contributing to this research or for more information please write to donatella[at]constantvzw[dot]org

This work programme has been funded with support from the European Commission. This information reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

With the support of the Culture programme of the European Union.