200706 Research Gathering with Kate Rich and other RiRs

This Research gathering brought together FoAM’s researchers in residence from 2006 and 2007 to discuss topics as wide ranging as Fair Trade, photovoltaics, cultural scents, extreme weather fashion, strange attractors and techno-textiles. Everyone was welcome to join the discussions, talk about their current explorations, unsolvable problems, or amazing inventions. The gathering began at noon, with a “guilt-free” lunch, collected and cooked by FoAM’s dedicated shoppers and chefs.

More about the programme…

Kate Rich presented the plans for her Fair Trade Research, talking about food packaging and incomplete narratives, labour photography and the issues arising from Fair Trade presenting itself as the only alternative to Free Trade. People working in the artistic sector, Kate says, should watch their public diet. Come and hear from one of the few true grocery geeks around! http://www.feraltrade.org/

Theun Karelse is aware of our uncertain future. By using his favourite tool, humorous visualisation (i.e. comics illustration), he explored an array of semi-practical solutions to extreme weather-events. The protagonist, Martin Brolin, goes through a series of unfortunate events, such as a Tsunami, a bushfire, or a speeding SUV. However, he comes prepared - with Tsunami Pants, an inflatable Hummer and a heat-loving extremophile cloak. During the gathering, the participants had the opportunity to dress their own Martin in Extreme Weather Fashion. http://tsunamipants.blogspot.com/

Steven Pickles (Pix) talked about the beauty and strangeness of particular number spaces. In the past months, he delved into “Aesthetic Explorations in Multivariate Polynomial Maps.” Basing his primarily aesthetic research on fractal mathematics of strange attractors, Pix worked on algorithms for visualising abstract graphical spaces and developing a tool for navigating them. Glimpse into this many dimensional data-ecology, and digital physics might not seem so strange after all!

Lina Kusaite brought news from the Avantex/TechTextil Fair about the newest and greenest materials that the industry can offer. http://avantex.messefrankfurt.com/

Maki Ueda revealed the latest secrets from her Witch’s Kitchen Lab. The participants had a chance to smell Seaweed and Cherry blossom, Maki’s brand new distillates. http://witch-lab.blogspot.com/

Finally, Bart Vandeput told us about the only solar workshop in Brussels and his discoveries of eco-tech libraries in the depths of Limburg.