Worksession

This chapter was done with: Camilo Garcia, Daniel Murray, Doriane Timmermans, Florence Walker, Karl Moubarak, Lara Dautun, Martin Lemaire, Sohyeon Lee, vo ezn.

During a one-week worksession with artists, writers, amateurs, designers and hackers, we inspect a shift in design practices emerging from the nature of the web: as it is made of text, designing become writing. This fundamentally differentiates it from other design paradigms that imposed themselves as the normative way to publish with software (namely Adobe software). We no longer place elements or delimit spaces with gesture but with words.

We explored how the malleability of this language is used to dialogue with technology. Similarly to choosing words to tell a story, designing with declarations means we state our intentions and encode narrations into the things we make.

The worksession was hosted by Constant VZW, in their studio space Chaussée de Jette. The worksession was made on open call to seek for transdisciplinarity, and performing a research in a common space. The profile where selected with diversity of practices and backgrounds in mind. The call can be found here.

The first day was open to the public and for artist to present a story. The following stories where told:

• 14h, Declarations Companion Tools, Doriane Timmermans, Simon Browne, Vinciane Daheron
• 15h, Building web process in tangible manner ("open me" and "alt museum"), Sohyeon Lee
• 16h, Always Your Pal, spacial dispositions on the maybe mood of electric promises (a guided sensible tour of melonkink.net), Daniel Murray
• 17h, Web accessibility, from a Constant worksession, Imane B.K.
• 18h, Chatty-pub as a social declarative practice (making a publication from a group chat), Karl Moubarak

The structure of the 4 next days was centered on conversations and cross-over that emerged out of those presentations. Slowly certain thematics became clearer.

Outcomes so far

It took the form of a generous and playful research by doing experiment, not all with a need for documentation of completness. The transdisciplinary aspect became effecient and exciting, as this constituted an opportinity for new type of collaborations for most of the present researchers.

• Florence with a litterary background saw a potential for role-playing in a custom hacked CSS-focused group chat tool brought by Karl, initially used by members of the hackers and designers Amsterdam-based collective to create printed publications. ChattyLARP
• The bringing of a thermal printer by Martin influenced artists, designers and developpers to rethink about materializing piece of the web throught this specific format. a thermal printed scrollbar (4m x 68mm)](https://declarations.style/a-thermal-printed-scrollbar-4m-x-68mm.html)
• Another hybrid experienced outcomed from cross-discussion on: a presentation on web-accessibility standards by Imane, a presentation on the language INK made to create interactive fiction by Florence; leading to fabulation.focus.
• Daniel is the coordinator of a web-community that exist through a forum named melonland. From the rich telling of different conversation this online community of web amateurs has been having over the past year, it sparks the wish to take certain of those conversation somewhere else. Where is te sky of a website?.
• Conversation brought by Karl about how drag as a declarative practice (declaring both gender and social performance) and the declarativeness of CSS (reshapping standard design through language, as live performances), found an echo with Daniel's online community through a rich forum thread named "is webdesign like fashion design?".
• An already made piece of software brought in by Martin was made into a collective server of websites customisation following the fiction track, fabulation.shovel.
• A final experiment where everybody participated into making the current weather influenced webpages fabulation.weather.

Most importantly, the discussion and feedbacks from those different experiment where archived on multiple etherpads.

Constant Public Window (from 15 April 2024 to June 2024, Constant vitrine, Saint-Gilles)

The vitrine acted as the rendering of the April worksession. It was part of the parcour d'artiste de saint-gilles, and counted around 30 persons on the opening, alongside a presentation of the research coordinator Doriane Timmermans, which was recorded by Constant for archival. The crafting of the vitrine itself tried to play with the various experiment in an analogic and symbolic format, trying to put forward simpl ideas rather than indepth digital research. It was made with the help of some people from the preceding week worksession.