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How to design a tangible programming language – Pattern Matrix at Algomech (part 2)

Once we acknowledge that weaving and programming are part of the same technological timeline, we can begin to look at the history of weaving as a eight thousand year long tale of human relationship with digital technologies - and use this long view to research new approaches to software engineering, a field with a much less developed history and many interesting problems to solve.

Pattern Matrix at Algomech (part 1)

I'm writing this on the train with a slightly sleep deprived brain fizzing and popping from thoughts, ideas and conversations from this year's Algomech festival in Sheffield. The Penelope project took a significant role in the festival, with the group's participation in the Unmaking Symposium, the exhibition and also testing our latest weavecoding technology at the Algorave. I'll be writing more on the algorave in a subsequent post.

Periscopedune

The islands of the Wadden are situated in an intertidal zone in the southeastern part of the North Sea called Waddensea. The island of Terschelling is the setting for IMRAMA, an investigation initiated by Jan de Graaf and Jeroen van Westen into the nature of this UNESCO world heritage site. The fieldwork of IMRAMA sets out to "look at - looking at the Waddensea". Theun of FoAM Amsterdam has been ivited to participate in the fieldwork on the island.

In anticipation of things already present

FoAM published a new article by Maja Kuzmanovic & Nik Gaffney, In anticipation of things already present. The article is now available on Medium, adapted from FoAM's closing keynote of Anticipation 2017.

Artificial Ecologies Venice

Independent curator Roland Fischer and Artistic Director Paolo Rosso of MicroClima invited Theun Karelse, Alice Smith and Ivan Henriques for a presentation of their work, to explore the possibility of collaboration and the potential of the Venetian Lagoon for Machine Wilderness field-work. MicroClima is situated in a large greenhouse near the Biennial grounds in Venice.

Spectres in change. Fieldnotes #1

Seili, a tiny island in the Archipelago Sea. The island is a geologically young and interconnected ecosystem, historically laden with accounts of illness, death and isolation. It seems serene and benign yet harbours hidden disturbances, spectral hostilities. Plagues of ticks and microplastics overlaid with psychic memories of the oppressed and abandoned. Ecological monsters and anomalies hover on the edges of human perception, cunningly invasive even to a casual visitor.

Creative Design Informatics for Horticultural Awareness at the End of the World Garden

Thanks to Paul Chaney who runs The End of the World Garden, we had an opportunity to trial a short workshop based on our Farm Crap App and prototype Allotment Lab on his two-acre forest garden site in Cornwall. This was our contribution to the Bank Holiday Weekend Haymaking Extravaganza (along with a bit of hay-making too).

Pattern Matrix V2 report

We've been busy making a new tangible interface – the Pattern Matrix is part of the ERC Penelope project, which explores mathematical proofs embedded in (weaving) pattern, and how technology defines our relationship with the world. The new interface allows the user to play with weaving pattern quickly, and crucially allows mistakes – meaning we can start to understand the mathematics embedded in the patterns. As Margaret Wertheim says in her book about crocheting the foundations of geometry - 'Here, knowing emerges from hands performing mathematics: it is a kind of embodied figuring'The pattern matrix version 2 is now complete. This post outlines what we’ve done, why and how.

FoAM has left the building...

Just shy of midday on the 1st of August 2017 we closed the door of the FoAM studio on Koolmijnenkaai in Brussels, one last time. In light of the changing nature of our activities we decided that we no longer needed such a large space, and that we would move out of the Koolmijnenkaai studio, no matter how beautiful and unique it may be. We remain grateful to have been able to inhabit the space for as long as we did, but it had become time to move on. This post looks back at the process of moving out, from 1st of June - 1st of August 2017.

Viruscraft: Genetic model connected to a tree visualisation

The genetic model we were working on previously has now been ported into a browser compatible form and connected to a new tree visualisation that displays the species that emerge as the host population adapts to a virus infection. It's still a prototype with rough edges, but have a play with it here, some example pics:

Getting a feel for tangible interfaces

We have two projects where we’re building tangible interfaces – Penelope and Viruscraft. This blog is an exploration of tangible interfaces, harvesting thoughts from the worlds of neuroscience, choreograhy, cognitive science and education to see what we can learn to guide our research and design directions.

Technology after Collapse

The philosophy underlying contemporary 'seamless' technology production seems to be one of endless energy, bountiful resources and waste being someone else's problem. Naive working assumptions of some form are a requirement when designing for the future, but do we believe in these enough now to make them useful? Flashy 'aspirational' tech videos of ever thinning devices disappearing into the 'cloud' seem to be less common than they once were, so perhaps not.

Pattern Matrix PCBs arrived & first tests

After triple checking the schematics and design files and ordering 80 PCBs (50 sensors and 30 i2c boards) there was an anxious wait for them to arrive and do some initial tests to find out if there were any mistakes. We now have enough boards to make two new pattern matrix devices, one 4X4 and one 5X5 - the plan is to evaluate the design and refine it for future builds.

Terra2

On Thursday june 29 a kick-off meeting was held at the Iona Stichting in Amsterdam to bring together Dutch initiatives that are active in restoration ecology, environmental agriculture and finance. Theun joined the meeting entitled Terra2. The discussions explored two main topics: dilemmas - what are the main obstacles you encounter in your work to restore natural processes and landscapes? opportunities - what would be needed to up-scale current practices?

Viruscraft: building a ‘reasonably accurate’ genetic game world simulation

The concept for the viruscraft game is to have a realtime genetic model or simulation of the host evolution which is adapting to the properties of a virus you are building (either on screen or via a tangible interface as part of an exhibit). This model needs to be realistic, but only up to a point - it can be more of a caricature of biology than a research model would need to be, as our intentions are educational rather than biological research.

Dust and shadow. Fieldnotes #1

We had arrived in the Sonoran desert. A place of desiccated time, layered time, geological, vegetal, human time. Time kneads the Earth's crust into deep folds, cracks and canyons. Plants lay dormant through cycles of drought or grow slowly for centuries, bursting into blossom after the first rains. Humans come and go. Blown through the ages like tumbleweeds. Things don't really decay here. They shrivel, dry up or slowly rust, yet remain present, as they gradually erode into dust. A thick, dusty atmosphere of things that were, things that are and things that might be. Densities and intensities coagulating on a larger than human scale, illuminated by stark light or lurking in the deep shadow.  

Accesslab Pilot 1 Notes

We launched the accesslab project last week with two pilot workshops. This is a write-up of how the workshops were run and why, together with some of the feedback and modifications we will make in future.

Pattern Matrix 2

A few weeks ago we kicked off the new Penelope project, one of our first jobs was to deliver the prototype pattern matrix (built with the help of Makernow) to the Museum of Casts of Classical sculpture in Munich for exhibition over the summer as part of our Penelopean lab. Our next mission in Cornwall is to design new pattern matrix hardware so we can start manufacturing a small run of alternative versions with more sensors to try new experiments with them. Some of them will be used for public exhibition, others for the researchers to use in talks and seminars, others for musical livecoding performances where we want to try tangible programming.

Viruscraft next steps

Following on from the first viruscraft workshop, we can now start planning the viruscraft game. The field of virology from genetics and interactions on the microscopic scale to the spread of disease and it's effects on the ecosystem is huge, so we used the workshop primarily to identify the core things that are the most important to convey, and promising ways we can use to explain them. Getting high quality feedback so early on has allowed us to get a good sense of what is important with a diverse mix of people - the things that they picked up on (and just as importantly the things that they didn't) saves a lot of time - and sharpens our focus right from the start.

Thoughts on mongoose data moving

Moving Mongoose data from Uganda to the UK is a problem as the current Mongoose2000 system has no automatic data transfer step. Dave and I sat down and tried to think of some stratagies.

Accesslab Ingredients Research

For the Accesslab workshops this week, Hoon has devised a menu with a mix of cultivated and foraged ingredients. The workshop is all about helping people to access peer-reviewed scientific literature to benefit their work and artistic practices. We've spent a bit of time applying the same process to the ingredients that Hoon has chosen for the food he will make for the events.

Tasting Tomorrow

Tasting Tomorrow is a series of futuring workshops about food as a manifestation of Maltese and European diversity. Together with local experts and enthusiasts we explored the question "What might a thriving food culture in Malta look like?" We searched for answers in the mapping of interesting food initiatives, through designing divergent scenarios and prototyping speculative dishes and artefacts. Since all futures are rooted in the present, we wondered what was currently emerging or changing in Maltese food culture. How could these changes propagate in a range of possible futures?

Viruscraft Workshop 1

The first workshop for Viruscraft is now complete – merging biologists with craft practitioners and researchers, we began to prototype a tangible interface game to understand why viruses infect some hosts but not others. This blog covers the event and our notes for future events.

Penelope: a new 4 year weaving project

In 2015 the "Weaving Codes:Coding Weaves" project was a chance to investigate a whole bunch of new things: building new forms of hardware, make tangible programming interfaces, taking the long view on technology and investigating other digitally based societies, such as the Inca with their Quipu knot databases.This work has fed into so many new projects that it's great to be able to announce our participation in the new Penelope Project working with Ellen Harlizius-Kluck, Flavia Carraro, Giovanni Fanfani and Alex McLean and for a much longer, in depth development of this research until 2021.

FoAM digest - Spring 02017

The budding energy of early spring enticed us to bring out some vital news from across the FoAM network. The last year has been turbulent both within the microcosms of our studios and in the macrocosms around us. This has only strengthened our determination to continue evolving our network as a distributed, anti-fragile entity. In this aperiodic digest we weave together the threads of the various activities that our nodes are currently engaged in towards that end.

Shelly's sonification residency

During my week at FoAM I worked on the project Molecular Soundscape which I am developing with chemists at Newcastle University. The aim of the project is to develop sound based work which can accompany visualisations of protein dynamics both to communicate the process of drug design to non-specialists and to aid scientists in analysing the effects of experimental drugs on specific proteins. The scientists I am working with have a long term goal to develop drugs to tackle Alzheimer's disease. The data they are working with relates to proteins present in the human brain affected by the disease.

Tanglebots for young people with autism

An overview of our Tanglebots workshop, re-developed for young people with autism and their families, together with the Cultural Minds research group fromt he University of Exeter. What we did to adjust the workshop format, what worked and didn't work, and changes we'd recommend others make if they run similar events.

Dwelling in Liminality

A reflection of the macrotransiency at FoAM Brussels. A year when the organisation lay fallow, to explore the unknown and embrace the unexpected.

The Lab Approach

Improving the health of the ocean is one of the urgent, complex problems of our time. The threats to the marine environment and by extension to human wellbeing are too entangled for simple single-issue solutions. Another approach is to observe and interact with the ocean from multiple perspectives, to imagine, experiment and learn from failure. This is the essence of the "lab approach" – enabling accelerated systemic innovation while reducing risk. While there are many different types of labs, most share a few key aspects. Labs conduct experiments. Labs foster emergence. Labs evolve through collaborative creation and peer learning. Labs cultivate unique mindsets, values and cultures. This blogpost is a summary of a longer article, recently published on Medium and the Libarynth.

Jo's Sonic Kayak residency

Today is my final day of my week-long residency with FoAM Kernow. Amber and Dave had already developed a Sonic Kayak system which allows a paddler to listen to underwater sound, and sonified temperature changes, in realtime. I did my PhD on underwater noise in Falmouth Bay assessing the impact of a wave energy converter so when I heard about the Sonic Kayak I was pretty excited! The plan for the week was to get this system recording the underwater sound data for use in scientific data analysis.