Etherpad, a free and open-source collaborative live text editor, combines the minimal comfort of plain-text writing with the collective experience of writing with others.
A long-running thread through the manifold work of Constant is an interest in collaborating with machines on installations, worksessions, and publications.
Where oral histories have long been anchored in practices of repetition and versioning, systems of publishing are still learning to trust and fully incorporate these dynamics, finding room for changes that are not based in the singular but in the collective.
How can we create conditions for re-use which acknowledge different kinds of contributors? Oriented by a feminist and intersectional understanding of authorship, Constant considers cultural expressions as always already situated within the communities with which we exist.
As part of its ongoing work exploring the importance of infrastructure, Constant searches for ways to explore the feminist potential of free software, practices of maintenance, short and longer time frames, and how technology both produces norms and marginalizes – and they find inspiration in the figure of the sponge.
Élodie Mugrefya and Peter Westenberg introduce Publishing As Protocol partner organization Constant, an association for arts and media run by artists, designers, researchers and hackers based in Brussels, Belgium. Subsequent essays will be written by additional members of Constant, each bringing their interests and professional perspective into play.