a bubbly insiders view of the tech-art brewery

f0amfr0th is a series of events organised by FoAM and whoever happens to be visiting the organisation. The events have an open format that can range from a theoretical talk to chill out rooms, from improvised networked performances to orchestrated bio-chemical experiments. Spontaneity, improvisation and informality are keywords that will grant access to this programme to the public and anyone interested in the process of working in the field of art and technology.

A variety of activities will be served from FoAM's kitchen, including a workshop on scent extraction by Maki Ueda, presentation on food-pairing by Bernard Lahousse, Kitchen-radio by Constant, a conversation about 'public diets' of Brussels-based arts organisations, a tea-party & feral-trade hamper raffle by Kate Rich, ending on the 22nd of November with the grand "Open Sauces, On food and coding", where we will attempt to demystify the production, distribution, presentation and consumption of food in a degustation dinner, with matched artists, scientists and other trans-local food enthusiasts.

For the first edition of the Juni-Kunst Maand festival in the Amsterdam district ‘de Baarsjes’ a series of multi-cultural gastronomic feasts are created on a very distinct bridge in the neighbourhood. On three occasions, three teams of chefs bring pleasure to the taste buds and stomachs of ordinary Amsterdamers. With a team of helpers recruited from the community Foamlab serves a South-American meal, a Moroccan meal and a Balkan meal spread over three weekends.

Recipes for Disaster
A feasibility dinner for sustained sustenance...

Artists, cultural organisations and members of the assorted cultural proletariat are invited to a potluck dinner and round table conversation on nutrition, catering and survival in the art world and the cultural sphere.

This event is a part of FoAM’s yearly theme ‘nourish’. The process of preparation, presentation and consumption of food, its related cultural rituals, and their informal breaking are used to achieve the synaesthesia of sensual perception in responsive environments.

Semiotics of the Kitchen Radio (Verbindingen/Jonctions 11.4)
by Constant

Saturday November 15, 15:00 (doors open: 14:30)
FoAM, Koolmijnenkaai 30-34 Brussels and on-line

With Martha Rosler’s classic performative alphabet 'Semiotics of the Kitchen' as a point of departure, Constants' design collective Open Source Publishing (OSP) presents a live radio broadcast from the FoAM kitchen. Experimenting with the displacement of multi sensory experiences, they reflect on the preparation and distribution of food as metaphor, structure, vocabulary and rhythm.

Edible Perfume is a hands-on workshop on extracting and composing aromas & flavours, inspired by the concept of flavour pairing.

The workshop is led by Maki Ueda (http://scent-lab.blogspot.com/), assisted by Nik Gaffney (FoAM).

A natural smell is often extracted from a material using chemistry techniques for retrieving essential oils, such as distillation, ethanol extraction, or oil maceration. In the Edible Perfume workshop, these techniques will be adopted in the kitchen.

Bernard Lahousse, an internationally renown food scientist, one of the founders of CREAX Food (http://creaxfood.com/) & consultant to creative chefs worldwide (in Belgium: L'air du temps, Oud Sluis, In de wulf, Kasteel Withof,...) will prepare a nutritious lecture on food pairing, molecular gastronomy and new kitchen techiques. Bernard will talk about the concepts of coupling and replacing ingredients based on their chemical components. He will explain how to use his food pairing website (http://www.foodpairing.be) and introduce "The Flemish Primitives" (http://www.theflemishprimitives.com/).

Kate Rich will introduce Feral Trade (http://feraltrade.org), serve ferally traded tea & coffee & conduct a raffle of the Feral Trade Hamper, a seasonal selection of goods sourced and transported over social networks.

FoAM and the Guild for Reality Integrators and Generators invite you to a synaesthetic dinner, to jointly sample, celebrate and debate the future of food.

Food is a nutritious and delectable product of our reciprocal, sustaining relationship with the environment. It is also one of the oldest cultural expressions, rooted in hospitality and sharing. As the gastronome Brilliat-Savarin noted three centuries ago, “the discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star.”

Nik Gaffney and Maja Kuzmanovic will participate in the Real Code experiment at the Piksel Festival. As a part of FoAM's series of Future prehearsals (inspired by ex-yu "Nothing Can Surprise Us" drills), they will conduct various experiments with food, flavours and expectations, in an environment filled with machinery and software, with little access to organic ingredients.

Rethinking Food #2

FoAM, a cross-disciplinary, trans-local laboratory and the artist Kate Rich complicate the equation of food miles. This meal is prepared with products and ingredients freighted in from around the globe, in the spare luggage space of social and cultural travellers.

Feral Trade is a grocery business trading outside commercial systems. Goods hitchhike on other sources of movement, often using the art world as an energy source, harnessing the surplus freight potential of the many journeys logged by artists, curators and audiences to move grocery items intercity.

The gRig Research retreat in Slovenia, organised by Kibla and designed by FoAM will focus on the topic of food & environment. This retreat will be a part of the series of research retreats organised by gRig partners. About 20 artists, scientists and
researchers from different cultural and professional backgrounds will be brought together to discuss their methodologies, exchange experiences and experiments. The retreat will be facilitated by Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino (http://www.designswarm.com/)

Rasa Alksnyte is one of the participants at the Design for Design event at Toegepast: Fit to boost.

The ever-growing Libarynth is exactly what its name implies – a hybrid between a library and a labyrinth, a maze of pages in various stages of completion. FoAM's collaborators and friends use the Libarynth as their research diary, sketch-book, or activity log. Some pages are valuable references, on a variety of topics; from visual programming, to inflatables and even vegetarian-friendly restaurants around the world. Others are fully-fledged research reports, or concept documents.