blog

Viruscraft at Science in the Square 2019

After two workshops and the testing day at the Eden Project we took the final version of Viruscraft out to Science in the Square: a big event run by Exeter university with around 3,000 visitors. It was a fantastically rainy day, which meant lots of budding virus builders of all ages took shelter in the big tent in the middle of Falmouth during peak holiday season. The installation turned out to be very popular, at one point 8 small children were simultaneously mutating the wooden virus under instructions from a couple of older kids.

AccessLab for Extinction Rebellion

Last week we ran an AccessLab for anyone interested in climate change or involved with Extinction Rebellion. This is to document how it went and what our next steps could be.

Teaching technology in 2019

For the last couple of years I've been doing sporadic teaching of electronics and programming for undergraduates and masters students across a couple of courses in my local university. This has taken the form of one on one teaching a day a week in the spring term, in a basement cupboard sized room with a soldering iron and piles of components. Students book up half an hour blocks of time to get help with their projects, find new directions or assistance developing new ideas they continually come up with.

Coded Matter(s): Terra Fiction

A short video from our lecture/performance at Terra Fiction

When the cloud doesn't work - privacy & agricultural information in the Farm Crap App

The latest version of the Farm Crap App is currently undergoing final testing by agronomists and farmers before a new release in the autumn (let us know if you would like to take part in the beta testing). This version sees a gigantic increase in the amount of different crops and manures it contains, and the vast majority of the RB209 guide is now represented, so it is very satisfying to see this project become an officially recognised and government approved tool from its humble beginnings.

FoAM Kernow accounting update 2019, the "Making Tax Digital" edition.

One of our biggest (and unfortunately entirely unpaid) research projects is administration. Accounting in particular is interesting from a range of angles, as a kind of cultural probe into the current state of what society considers important - but also as seemingly the single thing that very powerful white men loose lots of sleep over.Recently the UK Government decided to require all companies to issue their VAT tax returns, and eventually all similar reporting via an API, rather by filling in a simple online form.

Down the rabbit hole

A short reflection from a retreat for people with ASD.

Silent tea at Beyond care retreat

FoAM artist Rasa Alksnyte was invited to guide a performative non-sensorial session for the retreat “Beyond care” for artists and workers in the care sector in the framework of the festival Amen&Beyond organised by art center Vooruit, Belgium.

Invisible Worlds resident 2019 - Austin Houldsworth

We are delighted to announce the joint FoAM/Eden Project Invisible Worlds resident for 2019 - Austin Houldsworth. No buyer for your property? Has climate change ruined the housing market in your area? ‘The Intergalactic Estate Agency’ is here to help.

Communicating through Silence

On the medium of silence and photography.

Woven robot swarm weaves at Algomech (with a little help from their friends)

A few pictures from last weekends debut of the Penelopean weaving robots at Algomech festival in Sheffield. After a frantic couple of weeks in mass production, a swarm of 8 robots and a may pole invaded the winter gardens: wove and un-wove braids to the sounds of livecoded beats and ancient Greek poetry.

White Mountain Future Search

Mount Kilimanjaro is the green centre of an increasingly desertifying savannah landscape. The Maasai are its traditional inhabitants and have gathered to form a united vision of a future for their landscape.

RADMIN Reflections

Reflections on RADMIN, Britain's first festival of administration, Feb 14-16th 2019 in Bristol.

Deep Steward

When landscape appeared in European art it emerged first as a landscape of symbols. The Gothic depiction of Earth was populated with features that were primarily there as convenient symbols for a narrative. Now that landscape emerges in artificial neural networks, they seem to emerge as a landscape of commodity. DeepSteward looks for ways to let machines develop their own taxonomies: a deep bestiary..

Innovation: Taking Risks or Making Risks?

We were recently invited by Michka Mélo to talk about complexity, uncertainty and possible futures in the context of innovation at EPFL - École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne. We had the pleasure of meeting the students, engineers and entrepreneurs to share our thoughts and experiences of in the form of a lecture performance and a "playshop". The text from the lecture has been published on medium and on our website.

Witnessing care

A short reflection on working within palliative daycare centre Topaz Brussels in collaboration with body voice practice Oracle as part of In/Finity project.

FoAM Citizen Science installations at the Eden Project

Evaluating our permanent citizen science exhibitions at the Eden Project.

Our approach to working with the UK science 'impact' agenda

We were recently asked by one of the UK research councils to write about how we collaborate with university academics to build ‘impact’ into research projects, partly to provide inspiration for the researchers but also to address some common misconceptions.

Animal Property Rights, Totems and Zoöps

In “Animal Property Rights, a theory of habitat rights for wild animals” John Hadley explores if animal territories could form the basis of an alternative approach to conservation.

Karin Johansson's Sonic Kayak MSc placement

This post is a summary of Karin Johansson's MSc placement at FoAM Kernow on the Sonic Kayak project. The Sonic Kayaks are currently being modified for use for people with visual impairments. Karin helped develop and test an evaluation approach that can be used in future to look at whether the Sonic Kayaks offer wellbeing benefits to the paddlers.

Dust and shadow. Fieldnotes #3

Notes from FoAM Earth's field trip to the Desertscapes of Arizona and Utah, marked by stark contrasts between heat and chill, adoration and dread, escape and extraction.

AccessLab futures workshop

The AccessLab project has been a series of five workshops, aimed at decentralising research skills, encouraging open access, and building local communities. As the funding draws to a close, we ended by bringing participants back together for a scoping workshop to decide on possible future paths for the project. This is a brief write-up of the main outputs from the scoping workshop.

How to submit a UK VAT return if you are a strange organisation

As part of our continuing mission to promote and celebrate all forms of administration, we are publishing our UK VAT accounting procedure. This is important if you are running an arts organisation, non-profit or independent research organisation (or all three in one glorious muddle, like we are) as this means your income is likely to be a mix of commercial and grant funding, making you partially exempt for VAT and a cause of a particular kind of fascinated horror by all tax and accounting professionals you run into at parties.

Invisible Worlds Residencies

Invisible Worlds Residencies were developed in 2018 as a collaboration between FoAM and the Eden Project, to explore phenomena beyond our senses: too vast, too small, too fast, too slow or too far away in space or time.

Another reply from a now resigned Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation

Our second reply in the series from Sam Gyimah MP arrived shortly before he announced his resignation from government. We've written a reply to be sent via our local MP anyway, although I doubt he will see it.This letter I think perhaps gets us closer to the assumptions at the heart of a lot of UK policy, a surprisingly simplistic view that research is entirely something done by universities, and businesses (which only have a single shape or purpose) are there to 'exploit' this research which is handed down to them to boost the economy.

Midimutant update

How to run an AccessLab

A comprehensive description of the AccessLab format - a workshop to decentralise research skills and encourage open access publication of scientific research.

As the crows fly...

As part of our ongoing exploration of animist-inspired practices in the shadow of climate chaos, we'll spend a month in Japan to explore our strong resonances with its landscapes and (sub)cultures.

FoAM digest - Autumn 02018

Harden up, valuable advice from our arboreal neighbours for an autumn of increasing environmental and political turbulence. In this semi-seasonal digest, we take stock of the different ways we at FoAM respond to such turbulences, including economic experiments, citizen science games, artistic explorations and speculative forays into animist territories. If you're interested, there are various opportunities to get involved, from playing with the mechanisms of viral infection, to celebrating radical administration, or contributing to one of our upcoming publications.

Open call: Dust & Shadow Reader #2. On Attunement

If you are interested in contributing to the Dust & Shadow reader on attunement, please send your propositions, questions or suggestions to us by the end of 2018. Contributions can include short texts (max 500 words), drawings, monochrome photographs, quotes or relevant references.