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What is foam?

We are a cultural laboratory re-imagining possible futures at the interstices of art, science, nature and everyday life.

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Activities

Physical and Alternate Reality Narratives (PARN)

The central focus of the PARN project is dealing with the possibilities and problems of creating, presenting and representing narratives in physical space. Storytelling is a fundamental human capacity and is widespread in a variety of cultural forms as well as being one of the ways in which, according to many researchers of learning and awareness, we make sense of the world as we experience and reflect it. As the acclaimed poet Simon Ortiz puts it: “there are no truths, only stories.”

Resilients

Resilients are people of all ages preparing for uncertain futures by experimenting with resilient forms of living and working as a form of artistic practice. The Resilients project collects, creates, shares and supports these emergent practices, while grounding them in historic cultural roots.

Euroaxacan Initiative of Transformative Cultures

The Euroaxacan Initiative of Transformative Cultures (EITC) investigates how to invigorate cultural economies by combining arts, crafts and technologies from the pre- and post-industrial eras. The initiative focuses on community workshops of the township of Zegache Sta Ana in Oaxaca, Mexico – renowned for its restoration of traditional artefacts, as well as contemporary artistic interventions.

Future Fabulators

Future Fabulators encourages us to imagine, experience and investigate living in a range of possible futures, designed as artistic experiments today. It takes uncertainty as a creative challenge in creating cultural spaces in which visions of everyday life in the time ahead become tangible and discussable. FF merges the voices of futurists, scientists, artists, policy makers and economists with those of the experts of everyday life, aiming to raise awareness about the impact of future visions on contemporary culture and lifestyle.

Borrowed Scenery

Borrowed Scenery is a story about an alternate reality (past, future or parallel) where plants are a central aspect of human society. Weaving through the physical spaces of everyday life, the story can be tangibly experienced wherever plants and humans interact. Borrowed Scenery encourages us to see urban plant life with fresh eyes and re-imagine our cities as places of sinuous interaction between humans and plants: where plants don’t just provide us with food and materials but become neighbours, teachers, and gateways to the planetary ‘Other’.

Open Sauces

Open Sauces is a collection of projects, writings and events related to sharing of food, food culture and food systems. Although their format might change, these activities all combine tasting, socialising and learning. Open Sauces brings together people interested in both environmental and cultural and scientific and systemic aspects of cooking, eating and sharing food. We come together in members’ kitchens, in labs, studios and public spaces, keeping the source of our sauces and other culinary delights open for anyone interested in testing out our recipes or joining the Open Sauces Cooking Club.

Sphaerae

Sphaerae is a semitransparent portable pavilion for synaesthetic compositions, new imaginations and transdisciplinary experimentation.

Splinterfields Workshops

Splinterfields is an initiative of several Brussels-based organisations (Constant, FoAM, nadine and OKNO) active in the fields of technological and media arts to foster collaborative, agile and flexible learning. The programme of workshops, study groups and field-tests is open to artists, designers, technologists and other generalists curious to explore tools and mindware for experiments in contemporary culture and daily life.

Boskoi

FoAM seeks to promote human-plant interaction in a variety of ways. Boskoi is one such tool for this purpose: a mobile phone app that helps you map and navigate the edible landscape in your city. It offers detailed information on wild food sources – their location, edible parts, medicinal and culinary uses. It is a database of ethnoculinary and ethnobotanic knowledge. Based on Ushahidi (an open source project allowing users to crowdsource crisis information via mobile), the app can also handle mail, SMS, tweets and uploaded pictures.

Library

At FoAM’s studio in Brussels we collect books, media and materials related to our activities and interests. In our multi-sensory library visitors may read, view, listen and touch snippets of the culture that FoAM’s collaborators cherish. The most traditional part of the library is our hard-copy section which includes books, magazines, zines and pamphlets. It is an eclectic collection of scientific and philosophical texts, artistic anthologies, richly illustrated design books, software manuals and recipe collections, futuristic science fiction, and even obscure facsimiles of alchemical manuscripts and botanical guides.

Doris

DORIS is a research tool designed for sampling and mapping European lobsters (Homarus gammarus) in the marine environment. DORIS exists as an Android smartphone app, database and public website, and is currently for research use only, but feel free to browse our lobsters.

http://dorismap.exeter.ac.uk

Transgenerational learning encounters

FoAM's transgenerational activities focus on complex cultural issues, emergent technologies, and traditional crafts by co-creating learning platforms for knowledge exchange. The aim is to broaden participants' understanding of the context in which they work, live and play, as well as to provide them with useful practical skills. We investigate different educational models to find new ways of alternative learning.

Foodprints

Foodprints explores how the discipline of biomimicry can promote urban food resilience and opportunities for biodiversity to flourish in urban developments. There is an inherent relationship between the city and how food arrives on our plates. We want to investigate how to create “resilient” cities that mimic nature’s ecosystems, where all the elements are interactive, responsive, engaging, conducive to life, abundant in feedback loops, and always making best use of resources.

groWorld

The groWorld initiative brings together three “forces” capable of transforming the world on human and ecological scales: culture, gardening and technology. These three strands of inquiry inform and support each other, aiming to forge new symbiotic relationships between postindustrial human societies and the rest of the earth.

Livecoding

Livecoding is an emergent performing art in which software writing is improvised in realtime in front of an audience that can watch every keystroke unfold before them. Computer coding and algorithms are celebrated as aesthetic objects in their own right. Partly a reaction to a lack of audience engagement in traditional laptop performances, the origins of Livecoding lie in computer music, but fluxus – a rapid prototyping, playing and learning environment for 3D graphics, sound and games – has played its own part as one of a small number of tools designed for graphical live coding.

Research Gatherings

FoAM in Brussels holds regular gatherings for collaborators and researchers in residence to present and discuss their work in progress, in an informal setting. The gatherings are also open to researchers who are not involved with FoAM, but are working in similar fields.

Coaching

In order to increase personal resilience of people working in the cultural sector, FoAM has a coaching programme, in collaboration with Vali Lalioti. Coaching is a powerful process that helps people achieve their full potential. It is a safe and non-judgmental partnership that uses trust and belief in people's own abilities to empower the coachee to find their own solutions to achieving their objectives.

Apprenticeships

Apprenticeships are a combination of volunteering, learning, assisting and growing. In addition to well-established student apprenticeships (also known as internships), people of all ages and backgrounds can become apprentices at FoAM, even if they are experts in another field. Through apprenticeships, we want to encourage a spirit of volunteering, of giving a helping hand to a cause, project or person you think is worth your support.

Advice Centre

We are keen to share a very broad and diverse base of knowledge, experience, and contacts accumulated during a decade of fruitful growth and expansion. Our fields of inquiry are highly transdisciplinary, so questions about how to connect anything to anything else can probably be answered by someone in FoAM's network. Our advice centre can offer anything from a short conversation to several mentoring sessions, and if we can’t answer questions ourselves we can draw on our network of partner organisations to connect people in Europe and beyond.

Doing Nothing

Doing Nothing is een praktijkgericht onderzoek waar we niets gaan verbeteren of verwachten, maar waar we tijd en ruimte willen scheppen om te zien wat er gebeurt als we helemaal niks doen. Niks doen betekent niet dat we opeens lui willen worden of ons gaan vervelen. Integendeel, we vinden tijdelijk stoppen met doen een essentieel onderdeel van het creatief proces. De experten in het veld – van psychologen tot boeddhistische monniken – zijn overtuigd dat 'gewoon zijn' niet uit boeken geleerd kan worden. De ambacht van het 'niks doen' komt door jaren van gedisciplineerde praktijk. In Doing Nothing zijn we aan het experimenteren met verschillende vormen van 'zijn' en onderzoeken hoe ze in de werkplaats geïntegreerd kunnen worden.

Residencies

As a part of FoAM’s research programme, we offer yearly residencies to artists, designers and researchers whose interests or methods fall in the gaps between academic research programmes. The residencies are meant for artists who are able to work independently, while being open to suggestions from their peers. Our motivation for this programme came from a perceived need of artists and designers for opportunities to pursue concentrated research and experimentation without the immediate pressures of production.

Micro Residencies

Micro Residencies are short, intensive working sessions where FoAM members work together with the resident generalists tackling one specific challenge or research question. The Micro Residencies vary in duration from a few hours to a week.

Macro Transiencies

Macro Transiencies are essentially long-form residencies for generalists in trasition periods in their lives. The transiencies invite their participants to embrace lightness, mobility and change as inevitable aspects of life and work.

Family in Residence

A residency programme for families of creatives, exploring the edges between living and working environments.

AEGIS Residencies

Asia-Europe Generalists in Sojourn (AEGIS) is a trans-local residency programme that focuses on encouraging collaborations between creative practitioners and cultural organisations from Asia and Europe, who address global cultural issues (such as adapting to climate change, loss of biodiversity, energy security, etc.) from a transdisciplinary perspective. The emergence of an open and diverse trans-local culture requires meaningful contacts and collaborations between creative practitioners across the globe.

Workshops

At FoAM, we believe that learning doesn’t stop at the gates of established educational institutions. The joy of discovering new things and adopting new skills is shared by all ages, disciplines and cultures - so why should an official graduation ceremony put a stop to this? FoAM's workshops are designed to broaden participants’ understanding of the context in which they live and work, as well as provide them with useful transdisciplinary skills and knowledge.

Bitesize Lectures

Bitesize Lectures are periodic public events organised by FoAM in Brussels. The events consist of lectures and presentations by emerging and established practitioners in a variety of fields. The talks last for approximately one hour, with another two or three hours reserved for discussions moderated by one of FoAM's collaborators. The presentations are complemented by thematic foods and drinks, encouraging an informal and relaxed atmosphere. We designed this series to allow in-depth conversations with people who are great speakers and have interesting things to say, without being rushed.

Germination X

Computer games allow us to adopt new lives and see the world from different perspectives. FoAM has been working for a number of years on using games to strengthen the connection between plants and people. Our latest approach takes popular games such as FarmVille as inspiration, but explores what would happen if these games were infused with aspects of permaculture, and where “plant spirits” help or hinder you as you discover a world organised by companion planting. Germination X is a project to experiment with technology and research from the LIREC project and use it in an online multiplayer game.

HapStar

Haplotype Networks and Minimum Spanning Networks are commonly used for representing associations between sequences. HapStar is a tool for viewing both types of networks, and is designed to directly use the output data generated from Arlequin. HapStar is unique in that it automatically lays out the network for optimal visualisation, and provides the option to calculate a Minimum Spanning Network from a list of alternative connections. HapStar provides a user-friendly interface, and publication-ready figures can be exported simply.

Qfwfq

“The ubiquitous Qfwfq is emblematic of unity amidst the heteroglossic variety of possibilities offered by expanded degrees of perception made possible by scientific devices. In one story, Qfwfq is a dinosaur, but in other stories he is also a fish, a small mammal, a subatomic particle eternally plummeting through the void. Qfwfq is constantly shifting position in the universe, despite his consistent first-person narration, suggesting the extent to which his form accommodates his point of view.”

Institute for Augmented Ecology

The Institute for Augmented Ecology (IforAE) is a temporary office within FoAM that investigates some issues that have been simmering within groWorld. Its an exploration of the field of AE before it actually gets to be defined and/or narrowed down by convention. For now it looks to be a one year research period starting January 2011 and focused on how the tagosphere is connecting to the biosphere.

TGarden

TGarden is a responsive environment, inspired by calligraphy and scrying. In TGarden, players’ gestures are transformed into generative computer graphics and digital soundscapes, leaving marks and traces in much the same way as a calligrapher would with brushes and ink. When visitors approach the TGarden, they choose from a range of costumes, designed to encourage particular kinds of movement.

txOom

The word txOom is an amalgam of “texture” and “bloom.” As a part of txOom, we produced two environments which were thick, malleable and layered as a texture, elegant and responsive as a bloom. Designed as imaginary ecosystems, txOom spaces “feed” on the bodily movement of the players. The kinetic energy that players’ movement generates is “recycled” into sounds, light and visual textures, rendering effects of movement visible in the space in which the movement happens.

TRG

TRG is a responsive environment shaped by four fundamental forces made apparent on the human scale: the fictional equivalents of gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear interaction. It unfolds, expands and curls up based on the energy levels within its perimeters.

gRig

gRig (Guild for Reality Integrators and Generators) is a guild for European cultural and academic operators gathered around a mutual purpose: to mix separate realities, as well as bring whole new realities into existence. The Guild’s members are committed to research and create meaningful situations in hybrid (or mixed) reality, where digital media and physical materials, objects and spaces are increasingly intertwined. Most reality generation and integration tends to happen on the edges of knowledge-fields, where different perspectives and approaches can be synthesized into hybrid forms of creative expression.

LIREC

LIREC aims to establish a multi-faceted theory of artificial long-term companions (including memory, emotions, cognition, communication, learning, etc.), embody this theory in robust and innovative technology and experimentally verify both the theory and technology in real social environments.

.x-med-k.

.x-med-k. is a series of workshops and seminars investigating the changing faces of the fleeting field of experimental media arts. From 2004 to 2008, FoAM, nadine, OKNO – three Brussels-based organisations – joined forces to design and implement this heterogeneous series for artists, designers and technologists interested in the experimental use of digital media, new materials and technologies.

f0amfr0th

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.

Spiegelaer

Spiegelaer is a series of meetings at FoAM Lab in Amsterdam that started in October 2005. In these events the Lab is opened for an evening of visuals, sounds, tastes and discussions around a central theme. The participants are selected and invited to form a group of mixed professions and back-grounds but with a shared interest in the topic of the event. The name Spiegelaer indicates the cross-disciplinary nature of the series and comes from the old Dutch word for an alchemist.

Residency King Librero

During his two-week residency at FoAM Brussels in October 2011, King buried himself in the library, sifting through a range of books on green building and permaculture design. He had several conversations with the team and the visitors, as well as finding a quiet space to distil some of his early ideas about combining local traditions with environmental design.

Residency Maki Ueda

Maki Ueda's residency focuses on the combination of scent and food. She researches edible perfume, memories of scents from grandmother's kitchen and the incorporation of foodstuffs into scent palettes. The challenge she sets herself is to use scents and smell as an artistic medium. In the exhibition context Maki creates spatial expressions with scent. She holds workshops on extracting scents from a range of materials: from food to cloth, flowers to ink.

Residency Desire Machine Collective

Collaborating since 2004 as Desire Machine Collective, Sonal Jain and Mriganka Madhukaillya initiated Periferry1.0, an alternative artist-led space situated on the M.V. Chandardinga, a ferry docked on the Brahmaputra River in Guwahati. Periferry1.0 serves as a laboratory in flux for generating innovative practices in contemporary film and video.

Residency Sanjeev Shankar

As an artist, architect and designer who explores the edge of reality, Sanjeev Shankar uses his training in design, architecture and science to merge traditional crafts-based knowledge with contemporary cultural trends. A recipient of the British Chevening and the DAAD fellowship from Germany, his work has been featured at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London; Centre for Architecture in New York; Smart Lab in Paris; Doors of Perception in Delhi and the Craft Nouveau session in Brussels. During his residency at FoAM Brussels, Sanjeev worked on two projects: WC Cafe and RUrban Permaculture.

Family Residency Simpsons

FoAM’s family-in-residence for the Resilients is the Simpsons (Mark, Lea, Scarlet and Delilah), living at FoAM Brussels for two weeks in June and July 2011. A resilient culture of the future might come to include children in the working lives of adults. For the duration of the residency, we look at how are FoAM’s daily activities influenced by the continuous presence of two little girls in the studio in Brussels.

Residency Cocky Eek

When confronted with contemporary environmental questions, one thing became very clear: out of fear or guilt we can’t create anything. In view of this, Cocky chose the theme of “lightness” as a topic for her research residency. Italo Calvino emphasises this quality in Six Memos for the Next Millennium, where he describes a scene from Cernavantes’ novel in which Don Quixote drives his lance through the sail of a windmill and is hoisted up into the air. Cocky wondered whether we could begin to construct our worlds from this lightness.

Residency Maria Lucia Cruz Correia

Maria Lucia was in residence between January and February 2011, looking at the idea of space as a living organism. She researched sustainable strategies to build a “wounded house” – where the surrounding environment is presented as the main entrance for a “wounded social sculpture.” The idea of a wounded house was the result of two years’ research on the theme of wounded spaces. The idea is to construct an architectural body whose metabolism is internally dysfunctional. It is a body that emerges from an alienation with its own species and the environment in which it grows.

Residency Eisa Jocson

Eisa Jocson, an artist from the Philippines, explored the potential of pole dancing in questioning power relationships within the sexual, private and public realm. During her AEGIS residency at FoAM, she probed themes such as sexuality and space, sexualization of culture, sociology of the body, normalisation and surveillance. Study, research and exploration on the subject of pole dancing has been limited. It is a global phenomenon indicative of wider shifts occurring in society, and Eisa believes that the pole dance has far-reaching potential as a medium for artistic production and discourse.

Residency Kiran Ganghadaran

Kiran was in AEGIS residency between January and February 2011 with his ongoing research, Project Decode. The research looks at the existence of geometrical structures in living and non-living beings, and potentially seeks to find and explore a new generation of interactive systems within science, art and architecture that could form new relationships or interconnections between nature and human beings.

Residency Tale of Tales

In their day-to-day artistic practice at Tale of Tales, Auriea and Michael research the potential of games as a means to communicate, convey meaning, evoke emotions. They do this by creating games and releasing them to the audience. The themes they choose to work with are highly personal, although they often interpret existing stories such as fairy tales, myths, legends and religious texts. As artists, they are more interested in the diversity of meanings that players can derive from their work than in transmitting any particular message.

Residency Thomas Jellis

As a doctoral student in the School of Geography at the University of Oxford, Thomas Jellis joined FoAM in Brussels for a “geographer in residence” experiment, looking at FoAM as a “site of aesthetic activity and non scientific experimentation.” His research attends to sites of aesthetic activity and interrogates the emergence of distinctive hybrid spaces of alternative, or non-scientific, experimentation.

Residency Catherine Watling

UK artist Catherine Watling was a resident at FoAM Brussels for a few weeks at the end of 2003. Catherine prototyped an exhbition on paleobiology and explored possibilities of turning her work into a responsive environment. Catherine specializes in interdisciplinary work with a special focus on art/science-based research. Her work examines alternative and sensual uses of digital tools to create interactive and immersive experiential environments.

Family Residency Robaupair

In 2010 FoAM expanded its residency programme to include people of all ages. The first experiment was having a “Family in Residence” (FIR), welcoming Alex Davies, Alexandra Crosby and their young son Luka Davies for a three-month residency at FoAM in Brussels. The experience was extremely positive and we concluded that it is an experiment worth continuing. FoAM’s burgeoning intergenerational residency programme, combined with Alex and Ali’s experiment in parenting, has produced some interesting results.

Residencies Tension

Self-sustaining, lightweight structures for temporary, mobile and wearable architectures. Surface tension, tensegrity, bends, twists, knots, inflation, elasticity; all of these phenomena play with physical forces to create structures that are lighter, more mobile and adaptive than conventional brick-and-mortar buildings. How are these structures designed and used by artists and designers?

This activity consisted of two residencies, one with Ana Rewakowicz and another with Heath Bunting and Kayle Brandon, leading to the Tension Workshop and The Inflatable Meeting Room performance.

Residency Dave Griffiths

Dave’s residency in 2008 and 2009 focused on prototyping a groWorld game. groWorld is concerned with exploring people’s relationship with plants. Computer games are a powerful medium for suspending one’s disbelief in other, imaginary worlds. The focus of the groWorld game was to explore the use of computer games to allow players to become closer to the plant world.

Residencies Illumine

Exercises in Colloquial Luminescence was a series of residencies exploring the relationship between light, luminescence and communication. Subtle ambient changes of illumination that can extend gestures, make invisible visible and respond to weather patterns. How can we play light as a musical instrument? Can we use light to make our bodies lighter, even weightless? Can we extend our gestures and paint with light while dancing? What can we learn from bioluminescent organisms so that we can design our environments in a more lifelike way?

Residency Maggie Buxton

The core question of this research is: by what mechanisms can humanity become more conscious of and potentially change its relationship to reality? This question potentially connects numerous disciplines including neuroscience, quantum physics, art, developmental psychology, adult education theory, political science, philosophy, to name just a few.

Residency softBomb

During their residency in 2004, Lucas Chirnside and Rachael Tempest prototyped softBomb. softBomb takes the classical museological trope of the glass display cabinet and reinvents it as a plastic and dynamic virtual interface; all the edges and planes of the case become multimodal “lenses” for examining the many hidden lives of an object. The project aims to apply a “topological media” approach to virtual interfaces that privilege transformation and play.

Residency Bartaku

PhoEf is a research project exploring the essence, use and abuse of the photovoltaic effect - the conversion of light in electrical energy - in the realms of science, industry, technology and the arts. PhoEf emerged from a personal, transversal flight through the interconnected worlds behind and around photovoltaics: a technology based on A. E. Becquerel’s 1839 observation of the photovoltaic effect. PhoEf is embedded in a rich, multidisciplinary, historical context.

Residency Angelo Vermeulen

Angelo Vermeulen is a visual artist working with photography, video, new media and installations. His bio installations, experimental setups incorporating living cells, organisms and sci-fi references are his most well-known works. During his research residency in 2008 and 2009, Angelo worked on two projects: Translucent Futures and Corrupted C#n#m#. The latter is developed into a movie in 2011.

Residency Jack Anderson

During his residency in 2008, Jack focused on the market for new media arts and created a tool called the FoAM Valuator: a qualitative analysis safari into the wilds of economic value construction in the arts. Valuator is a study of the contemporary art market, focusing on marketing strategies for new media art sales. The most innovative and challenging of contemporary art practices are not transacted in the mainstream market for current art.

Residency Lina Kusaite

The aim of this research project was to create a place for a materials library, on-site and online, where interested parties could find information, observe, touch, create, discover, enjoy, and exchange materials. Lina is a textile designer and illustrator, who worked with FoAM on several responsive environments. In the process, she collected and co-created hundreds of samples of materials - ranging from metal to smart fabrics. During her residency - on and off from 2006 to 2011 – she catalogued and (semi)organised the samples into a materials archive that is housed at the FoAM lab in Brussels.

Residency Steven Pickles (Pix)

In 2001 Pix found a book by mathematician Julien C. Sprott called Strange Attractors: Creating Patterns in Chaos. The book described the mathematics behind a class of fractals called strange attractors. In the book, Sprott presents a computer program which can search for strange attractors by trying many randomly generated equations until one is discovered which meets certain criteria. The results are clouds of points which form interesting organic shapes. each set of equations created a unique set of points.

Residency Theun Karelse

How do you relate to global crises in a way that is not demotivating? The discussion about our future is dominated by appeals for austerity and reduction. This is not a very inspiring message as it focuses on negative aspects of society. It is hard to see a positive revolution on a global scale based on negative arguments. Instead we should focus on positive changes that inspire everyone. Theun Karelse took on this challenge through storytelling. He created a character, Martin Brolin, who – among other things - invented Tsunami Pants, a piece of inflatable clothing to be used in times of disaster.

groWorld Bazaar at Pixelache 2011

FoAM presented a groWorld Bazaar at the Pixelache festival, using the Aronia Melanocarpa (Chokeberry) as a common connection to bring together game designers, gardeners, electronics experimenters and urban foragers with a set of hands-on-workshops, discussions and experiments.

Mission to the Moon

A re-enactment of the Apollo 11 mission of 1969. Foamlab not only recycles this icon of technological confidence, but also the materials used to build it. At the exhibition Kunstvlaai/Art Pie International, two brave astronauts, Elias Tieleman and Johannes Sterk, can be seen jogging around in preparation for their mission. They exit the Lander accompanied by the original sound recordings from the Moon landing in ’69, for general exploration of the lunar-surface, the setting up of lunar cameras, collecting stone samples and planting the flag.

Sprinckelink

Sprinckelink is a collection of shows held in the front space of FoAM Lab in Amsterdam. In this former shoe shop a series of exhibitions will take place starting from May 2005. A diverse program is offered to passers-by on the street. Sprinckelinxkes is the old Dutch term for sparks that fly off. The lab-window serves as a portal for sparks to jump out among our neighbourhood inhabitants.

Luminous Green

Reflecting on the role of the arts, design and technology in an environment of turbulence, Luminous Green is a series of gatherings about a human world that is enlightened, imaginative, electrified and most importantly – living in a fertile symbiosis with the rest of the planet. The series was initiated in 2006 by FoAM in Brussels, with a call to the creative sector to enrich the public debate around environmental sustainability, ethical living and eco-design.

lyt_A

Lyt_A is an installation, an instrument and a translation medium in one. It is a mechatronic, semi-flexible structure that can transmit haptic information on a distance: when the structure is touched on one site, the touch will be visible and touchable on the other. Touch, the most intimate of our five senses, is often used as a reality-check; what I can touch is real. Touch is an ultimately interactive communication medium: the one who touches is being touched as well…

t* series

The environments of the t*series are immersive hybrid realities, or responsive “play spaces.” They are designed for full-body interaction of human participants with “irreal” responsive worlds. TGarden, txOom and TRG - the three distinct groups of environments within the series - are technologically enhanced spaces that encourage playful explorations of physical and digital surroundings, as well as fluid dialogues between people, materials and media.

Translucent Futures

Translucent Futures is an artistic/activist platform initiated by Angelo Vermeulen that deals with the increasing abrasion of civil liberties through ubiquitous, networked, miniaturized technology. Far-reaching use of techniques such as data mining, audiovisual surveillance, automated behavioural analysis, see-through body scanning, DNA profiling etc. is being legislated at a disturbing rate.

Residency Simone Poutnik and Hendrik Tiesinga

Simone Poutnik and Hendrik Tiesinga are long-term collaborators and members of FoAM Brussels. In October 2011 they weighed anchor to become journeyers – nomads traversing the cultural landscape to learn and develop themselves as resilient creative practitioners and researchers, and share their skills and interests for the benefit of the local communities through which they pass.

Residency Kate Rich

Kate Rich's research takes place at the intersection of several networks: art, information and food. Its express intention is to use artistic tools to investigate how our daily grocery products are articulated, packaged, distributed and delivered. The first aim is to investigate a sample grocery item more deeply to better understand its provenance. To explore the opposition of Commons to Commodity: that the commodity is the opposite of the commons as it conceals human relations except for the money relation, while the product of the commons is filled with human relations – including possibly unpleasant ones.