Christoph Haag explores and creates relationships throughout design and software across different fields of visual cultures and technologies.

He understands practice as a feedback loop of using and making, transforming requirements into prerequisites and back again; technology not as an instrument for streamlined production, but as creative matter to engage with. Maybe in a spirit of artisanal nostalgia. Definitely towards questions of literacy in relation to contemporary ideas of convenience.

As a user and maker of technologies he has a particular interest in free/libre/open source methodologies, both theory and practice.

https://chchch.de

Varia is a member-based organization in Rotterdam (the Netherlands), focused on everyday technology. It uses the term everyday technology to break through the vision of old and new technology, or smart and not so smart technology by looking more at the appropriateness of what each technology does in a particular situation, while trying to understand whose everyday is meant by the term, to not include one single world view, but to acknowledge that everyone engages with technology in a different way.

https://varia.zone

In this workshop we will follow through some python code for creating PDF pamphlets, layouts  and zines. We will look into the PDF libraries FPDF and Borb and work with an extension of the FPDF module to create page layouts, signatures, covers and colophons. Our experiments will be printed by Potato Publishing at Linz.

structure

This will be a hands-on workshop, where participants will be introduced to python functions and classes for making custom scripts to generate PDF publications by feeding text and image files to their script. We will start with an overview of specific python libraries that work with PDF format, and we will continue with the zine generator code accessible here. While prior knowledge to python is not required, participants shall be comfortable with using the terminal.

Please register to the online workshop at the following link (limited space 12 people).

Mara is an artist, developer, tech zinester and python instructor, who regularly muse about culture and foss on mastodon (systerserver.town/@mara) and publish their zines at psaroskalazines.gr. Together with other queer peers, they run the feminist servers anarchaserver & systerserver.

git repo: https://git.systerserver.net/mara/zine_maker

mastodon: https://systerserver.town/@mara

website: https://psaroskalazines.gr/

Ruben Pater (1977, NL) works between journalism and graphic design. Under the name Untold Stories, Pater creates visual narratives that support solidarity, justice, and equality. Pater finds himself being a designer at a time when design is last thing the world needs. Until more ethical approaches present themselves, he designs, writes, and teaches. He is a tutor at the BA Graphic Design, and the MA Non Linear Narrative at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. The Politics of Design (BIS, 2016), is his first book about cultural bias in graphic design. His second book CAPS LOCK (Valiz, 2021) retraces the role of graphic design in capitalism. Pater is based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. 

www.untold-stories.net

Inkscape, Scribus and GIMP by Libre Graphics Club (LGC)

For this iteration LGC will explore how to make a 8 page booklet or brochure by using French fold technique. We’ll be focusing on three popular tools: Inkscape, Scribus and GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). They are a great combo for making flyers, posters, web graphics, booklets and zines. We’ll explain the differences between them and show how to use them together.

All 3 are available for Windows, Mac and Linux. To get the most out of this session, please take a moment to download and install it in advance and look around the LGC website for info on what we’ve been up to so far.

Inkscape GIMP Scribus

Please register to the online workshop at the following link (limited space 12 people).

Libre Graphics Club is an artist-led pilot project to develop and deliver a series of free workshops and open access online educational resource for experimentation with free/libre arts & technologies. The project provides artist, community organisers and activists with exciting opportunities to explore Libre Graphics tools above and beyond those taught within the conventional art/design curricula, so they can do more to enchant their practice in these extraordinary times.

More information and archive of workshops we held form April to September 2021 can be found here >

https://libregraphics.club

Potato Publishing is a non-commercial label and artist collective. We offer an open risography printing workshop, an open archive/library, and organize events and workshops in the field of self-publishing. Collaborative work processes, interdisciplinary networking and low-threshold, collectively used infrastructure form the foundation for our activities. The workshop and archive can currently be visited in at Waldeggstrasse 116, 4020 Linz, Austria.

Cachichi is a creative studio and curatorial platform for sound art and experimental music, based in Linz, Austria. Through experimental music happenings, Cachichi seeks to give audibility to unheard sounds and to establish a network of creative commons between artists.