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Biohacking and yeastograms

As university researchers fall foul to increasing metric and bureaucratic demands, time and energy for creativity is ever decreasing. At the same time, access to formal learning in the UK is becoming harder with increased university fees. A niche is opening...Biohackspaces, or community biology labs, are popping up globally – offering anyone the opportunity to learn and play with biology, without committing to a long, prescriptive, and expensive university course.

Earth Coding

I See I See What You Don’t See

Every time before meeting kids from a new class, I get excited and a little nervous. I prepare a full programme and choose the theme. But one can never be sure in advance if the ideas and methods will be interesting or work for the children. Every group brings its own energy, creative potential and willingness to experiment. This year I chose the theme of “I See I See What You Don’t See” – inspired by the well-known game, “I Spy with My Little Eye”.

FoAM digest - Winter 02015

Greetings from FoAM’s wintry studios. The weather is still chilly outside, but the atmosphere at FoAM is warming up and increasingly festive: in March FoAM will be 15 years old and there is much to celebrate. In this digest we bring news from all FoAM studios, with their recent and upcoming activities. We hope you enjoy an inkling of timelessness by sitting back in your favorite climate simulation to read all about what's been germinating in the FoAM Petri dish during the winter.

15 years of FoAM

It’s been fifteen years since FoAM began as a department in Starlab in Brussels. Since then, hundreds of amazing people, ideas and initiatives have emerged or diverged from our studios. In 2015 we have set aside the time to celebrate, commemorate and reflect on this creative period.

Navigating the Anthropocene

A short update on FoAM’s recent initiatives entangling environmental and techno-social phenomena, including a trip to the Russian Arctic with Dark Ecologies, Earth Coding at Geologic Imagination in the Netherlands, collecting data on the evolution of sociality in India, live coding with environmental drones, and re-valuing the oceans in the UK.

Bartaku's winter update

An update from FoAM member Bartaku, including news about the works on aroniacentrism, agave power plants and transformations of a Serbian mining truck.

Seeker In the Wild

Seeker is a worldwide series of co-created starship sculptures that evolve over time. It's a community art project that invites people to fundamentally rethink the future of human habitation and survival by interconnecting technology, ecology and people. Since 2012 five different versions of the project have been realized in Slovenia, the Netherlands and Belgium. New Seeker versions are currently in pre-production in both Chile and Kosovo. Each new version builds on the history of the project, and as such Seeker is an ever-evolving global art work.

Foam Kernow mini update

A short update on the things currently going on at Foam Kernow alongside the stuff I've been blogging about recently. We are near completion of a new version of the butterfly hunting game - this time being developed for the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, where it will be a citizen science exhibit to collect data on visitor's perceptions of the wing patterns. A brand new Open Sauces web tool is under development as well, much conversation concerning database models for cuisines, menus, recipes, ingredients and flavours.

3D warp weighted loom simulation

One of the main objectives of the weavecoding project is to provide a simulation of the warp weighted loom to use for demonstrations and exploration of ancient weaving techniques. Beyond the 4 shaft loom dyadic calculator we need to show the actual process of weaving to explain how the structures and patterns emerge. Weaving is very much a 3D process and these visualisations fail to show that well. It also needs to be able to be driven by the flotsam tangible livecoding hardware so running on a Raspberry Pi is another requirement.

Coding structure with threads

One of the most inspiring things we heard from Leslie Downs (our Advisor on textile innovation) was about the way he manufactures high specification structures for aerospace engineering by weaving on ordinary looms, sometime even hand looms for their flexibility. It turns out that some of these techniques are also possible with tablet weaving: I came across this mysterious diagram in 'Byways in Handweaving' by Mary Meigs Atwater

Coding with threads: Tablet loom

Tablet weaving is an ancient form of pattern production using cards which are rotated to provide different sheds between warp threads. It's used to produce long strips of fabric, or the starting bands and borders that form part of a larger warp weighted weaving. We'll come to the second use later in the weaving codes project.

Coding with threads: Frame loom

After writing the 4 shaft loom simulation the next job was to try weaving the structures with real threads. Would I be able to replicate the predicted patterns and structures? Ellen warned me that the meander weave would result in unstable fabric, but it would depend on the nature of the material used so was worth trying. Originally I planned to warp up the Harris loom but I need to work up to that as it's a big and complex job, so I quickly built a frame loom with some bits of wood and nails at 5mm intervals to hold the warp in place.

MidWest Experimental Station

In 2015 FoAM ams works to establish an urban experimental station in Amsterdam West at the MidWest neighborhood coop, aimed at horticultural, ecological and culinary field experiments. The 40 x 12 meter area used to be one of two playgrounds belonging to the former school building. The old pavement will be replaced by a lush orchard of grass and fruittrees. A 6 x 4 greenhouse is under construction offering controled space. This is an open call for anyone who seeks space to develop field experiments of any duration or size.

Need time to ferment: my transiency at FoAM

My year of macrotransiency is now over. I have been very lucky. One of the lucky few able to spend a year to experiment with - well, with just about anything. FoAM offered me a room, breakfast, lunch and dinner, a little money, and fifteen years of knowledge on change management. For the rest, I was free, as long as I documented what I did. So here it comes...

Future Fabulators at the Futures Lab of Future Fictions

A review of FoAM’s involvement in Future Fictions, the exhibition and workshop programme at Z33 in Hasselt.

Deep Sweet

On creating and hosting a sensual dinner

Experiencing the intangible

The smell of salt and the sound of the ocean’s swirling, crackling breath were my first impressions of Ponta do Sol, Madeira, where we came for a workshop on the Laurisilva (laurel forest) and its appearance in a transmedia story and a series of future scenarios. Following the workshop, we spoke at the Prototyping the Intangible symposium, also organised by the Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute, one of four partners in Future Fabulators. To honour the intangible theme of the symposium, here are a few words on my observations, moods, memories and liminal perceptions – all the things that have inevitably, in/tangibly shaped my experience.

AxS Festival

Pasadena isn't just the birthplace of James Turrell and Batman's hometown, it also features a yearly festival on artscience called the AxS Festival ('aksis'). Curated by the Los Angeles based artist Robert Crouch, Sphaerae was invited to be the main stage for this year's 3 week program.

The Selkie in me

FoAM in Brussel is een plek waar mensen in transformatie terecht kunnen. Een “transiency” noemen zij dat. Er is geen beter woord voor de transitie waar ik nu doorheen moet.

Dark Ecology

Outside of a tangible human immediacy, the inevitable geologic plays itself out.

Gefaaliciteerd!

Nietsdoen. Heerlijke paradox. Op de trein op weg naar de ‚work’’shop’ waar we ‚toekomsten van nietsdoen’ gaan exploreren, lees ik in Kairos van Joke Hermsen. Hermsen verdiept zich als filosofe al jaren in de tijd. Op de cover van haar boek staat er een afbeelding van, van die Kairos, de antieke Griekse god van ‚de juiste timing’. Hij heeft vleugels op zijn rug en aan zijn hielen. En hij heeft een heel merkwaardig kapsel: een lange lok vooraan en de rest van zijn haar afgeschoren. Je moest die kerel op het juiste ogenblik bij zijn haar weten te vatten, anders was het zijn kale achterhoofd waarover je hand weggleed. Hij verbeeldt mooi die actieve passiviteit, de toestand van alerte rust waaraan nieuwe ideeën ontspruiten.

Opening Future Fictions

Future Fiction Opens on Saturday 4th of October 2014. The exhibition explores how contemporary artists, designers and architects relate to future thinking and imaging. During the exhibition FoAM inhabits the Futures Lab, a laboratory for experimental world construction. The lab will become our temporary research archive, workshop and reading room, where we explore what it means to prototype and rehearse possible futures in the present. While we investigate the processes, tools and techniques behind future visions and speculative fictions, the lab will be a home for our growing collection of physical and digital materials and provide a salon for conversations with futurists, sceptics and enthusiasts.

Radiantly burning out and stacking stones.

From a day of reflection on the subject of performing arts in Flanders. Barbara Raes, who recently resigned as artistic director of the Vooruit Arts Centre, opened the event with this talk.

Symbai field test in India

Some photos from Shakti Lamba who is currently testing Symbai in the Chhattisgarh state in north eastern India.Symbai is part of a project to study the evolution of sociality and culture in humans. Shakti collects detailed networks of knowledge, prestige and friendship in villages with contrasting cultural structures in rural India.

A Curious Librarium with artistic tendencies

Stories from the Librarium, including thoughts on radical archiving and the different forms and functions of library spaces around the world.

Stralend opbranden en stenen stapelen

Barbara Raes op de reflectiedag voor de podiumkunsten: "Een burn-out ontstaat wanneer de kloof tussen je eigen diepe overtuigingen en de overlevingspatronen van je dagelijkse praktijk te groot geworden is. Eigenlijk daar waar drijfkracht en onmacht elkaar ontmoeten. Elk tijdperk kent zijn valstrikken, en uitgeput zijn is van alle tijden. Wat echter telt, is hoe we ermee omgaan. In die zin vertelt de ‘ziekte’ veel over het reilen en zeilen van een samenleving in overdrive en de praktijk en systemen van een sector. Een sector in overdrive."

Robot nightjar eggshibition at the Poly, Falmouth

As part of this year's Fascinate festival we took over the bar at Falmouth's Poly with visualisations of the camouflage pattern evolution process from the egglab game.

Designing Scarcity

Het Nieuwe Instituut hosted a show on scarcity as an agent for design innovation. FoAM was invited to exhibit the free and open source smartphone foraging app Boskoi.

FoAM Newsletter Summer 02014

The earth’s unstoppable orbit around the sun, combined with the obliquity of the ecliptic, are two astronomical facts that we at FoAM Brussels find impossible to ignore. It is due to their combined effects that we now experience “summer” in the northern hemisphere, and we very much hope you agree that this is an excellent excuse to bring you our latest, summer newsletter. In the following digital pages we’d like to share some updates about our intensive explorations of futures and interstitial cultures, our cultivation of the edges between food and the environment, and everything that’s been happening on the home front as we continue to develop our unique hosting culture.