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those.tools is a software development and design studio for research, editorial and publishing practices in the arts and social sciences. We develop free and open source tools for writing, archiving, mapping, designing and publishing research. 

We activate and adapt each tool to the context of every project we collaborate on. Wether for self-initiated projects or commissioned work, our aim is to explore new ways of doing things, recognizing the epistemological function of tools with a strong focus on collective creative processes.

These processes can produce a variety of objects: books, web platforms, sound installations… They may also, we hope, produce new ideas, new perspectives, new relations.

Open to collaborations, those.tools welcomes fellow designers, developpers, artists with an interest in these topics.

articles

2024-05-18

Mapping reconnecting

Map of the connections between the individual research projects in the context of the exhibition "Branching Streams. Sketches of Kinship" by the international research team Reconnecting 'objects' (reconnecting.art) at Théodore Monod African Art Museum, Dakar. The map was designed and hand drawn by Ayoh Kré Duchâtelet and Lionel Maes.

digital and physical map
tool → Chemins
by → Ayoh kré Duchâtelet, Lionel Maes (La Villa Hermosa)

The project ‘re-connecting “objects”: epistemic plurality and transformative practices in and beyond museums’  is a project involving three African universities, two European universities and two museums (the Théodore Monod Museum of African Art in Dakar and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford). The project, structured around five post-doctoral research projects for the partner universities, ran from 2022 to 2025 and gave rise to several meetings, including an exhibition in Dakar, at the Théodore Monod Museum, in May 2024.

From the outset of the project, La Villa Hermosa (Ayoh kré Duchâtelet and Lionel Maes) has been involved in the design of research tools; online dialogue space for researchers, document sharing, websites, etc. and graphic supports; visual identity, communication media, exhibition signage. 

For the exhibition at the Musée Théodore Monod in Dakar, La Villa Hermosa also designed, in collaboration with Isabelle Kany Ndiaye Sarr, a media library space, Mbokk.

Within this space, common to all the research projects, we drew a map of the relationships between the terms specific to each research project, highlighting the thematic crossovers between projects.

The map was designed with Chemins in collaboration with the project researchers. The axes were then cut out on vinyl and the labels were hand-typed during the exhibition set-up.