This is the public start page of my personal librarinth: an online scrapbook that I am using in the course of the research project 'Dialogues with Machines'. I am undertaking this project as a researcher in the Media Arts Studio of the KASK Conservatorium / University College Ghent, and I am pursuing a doctorate in the arts with it as part of the S:PAM, Studies in Performing Arts and Media research group at the University of Ghent. My promotors are Christel Stalpaert and Edwin Carels.

A recently updated short description of my research goes as follows:

Artists who work with technology often develop their own tools as part of the articulation of their aesthetic language. My research starts from the comparison of this process with the mutual transformations of devices, procedures, concepts and scientists that take place in a scientific lab. During the research period, I want to reflect on the mutual construction of tools and artist, as a way to take a conceptual and practical step in my work and position it more explicitly relative to recent developments in the exact sciences.
Central to formulating such a position will be a reflection on the dialogue between humans and technology, focusing on the point where concepts and materials interact. As a starting point, I am reading about mathematics, where I am especially interested in ideas about the autonomy of mathematical objects (Lochak, Lautman, Meillasoux), the role of material realization in mathematical creativity (Chatelet, Rotman), and more generally interested in learning more about mathematics as a repository of forms and modes of thinking (Zalamea, MacLane). Other important tracks for reflection are ideas about the autonomous development of technological objects (Simondon, Ellul, Winner), ideas of material agency in science (Pickering, Rheinberger, Latour), ideas about the posthuman (Stiegler, Hayles, Haraway), non-human semiotics (Uexkull, Sebeok, Cariani) and implicit types of knowledge (Polanyi, Suchman).
Practical work starts from the technologies of analog computing and electronic modeling. The short-term goal of this is to build an analog HD video synthesizer and make a series of works that give a voice to the physicality of the systems that produced them. The longer-term goal is to use the culture of analog computing and electronic modeling as a vantage point from which to explore the artistic potential of chemistry, nanotechnology and other technologies that deal with matter on the molecular scale.
By engaging in a dialogue with devices and the cultures they are part of, I want to open a space of alternative technical possibilities. These are musical, poetic as well as utopian, and form a critique of a purely functional approach to technology.

• presentation at Alchemy Filmmaker symposium in Hawick, Scottish Borders (March 2017)
• article about analog computing in Arts.Codes online magazine (May 2017)
• presentation at the symposium “Arts Filmiques et Expérimentations Optiques Contemporaines” at the ENS Louis-Lumière in Paris (October 2017)
• premiere of #57 at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (January 2018), and a blogpost about #57.

The idea and form of this librarinth are inspired by the libarynth that has grown as part of the activities of FoAm, who describe it as: “a hybrid between a library and a labyrinth, a maze of pages in various stages of completion. It is a deeply intertwingled collection of documents, notes and randomness”.

For now, there is not much to see here, as I have just started on this research project, and also because I am still navigating the question of how to reconcile my desire for openness and sharing with the need for a walled garden where ideas can safely unfold. Parts of this garden will open up soon and will be listed below, other things will find their way to my blog. Eventually, all that is here will become public. If you are really interested, you can try asking for guest access, which will open this door for you.
You can always contact me here.