Invisible Worlds Residency 2019

The 2019 Invisible Worlds Residency was open to all artists, scientists, creators and makers, to explore phenomena beyond our senses: too vast, too small, too fast, too slow or too far away in space or time.

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.

Library Salons

Library Salons are informal occasions hosted at FoAM Brussels to celebrate the pleasure of the written and spoken word, where we gather to read short passages from texts found in FoAM's library.

Liminal futures

FoAM Filfla has embarked on a programme of self-study to better understand the tools and techniques for creative exploration of futures. In response to the liminality brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, we collect, document and experiment with future-probing methods for teens, young adults and culture makers in Malta and beyond.

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.

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.

Luminous Green

Luminous Green is a series of gatherings about a human world that is enlightened, imaginative, electrified and living in a fertile symbiosis with the rest of the planet.

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…

Machine Wilderness

Machine Wilderness is a project prototyping artificial organisms as functional agents within biomes and landscapes, actively contributing to biodiversity.

Macrotransiencies

Macrotransiencies are long-form residencies for generalists in trasition periods in their work or life.

Macrotransiency Barbara Raes

Barbara Raes started her macrotransiency at FoAM in Brussels on the autumn equinox of 2014. Her main interests for this residency are transition, resilience, rites of passages, arts and celebrancy, soul midwifery, storytelling and lots of magic.

Macrotransiency FoAM bxl

The core team of FoAM bxl (and the organisation as a whole) are FoAM's transients during 2016.

Macrotransiency Luea Ritter

From the beginning of this journey, I have been asking myself: What are the principle stages of collective transition, and what shapes and movements does it take for the individual? What kind of space, attention, intention, understanding and facilitation does it require in order to give birth to new futures? I am interested in sensing the connections between the creative processes of transition and (re)developing the awareness and skills for these to be encourage in times of local, national and global change that we all face on many different levels today.

Macrotransiency Michka Mélo

During a one-year trial in a mainstream engineering career, Michka experienced firsthand the imbalance of a full-time job where mind becomes completely disconnected from body. He found that the side effects of such imbalance included low efficiency in professional activities themselves, an alarming atomisation of body and mind, and the sensation of rarely being in the right place at the right time. To address these unpleasant syndromes, he decided to embark on a macrotransiency at FoAM, where he is exploring several diverse practices that include mindfulness meditation, crochet, dismantling wood palettes to create furniture, aikido, and the art of fermentation. Through this approach of hands-on personal experimentation, he aims to design a balanced polyculture of interconnected activities that mutually enhance one another, thus ensuring better enjoyment of life as a whole. For other people interested in this approach, he is documenting the processes and practices he explores, as well as his design framework for a balanced polyculture of activities.

Macrotransiency Stevie Wishart

Stevie Wishart is a composer in transience. Her transiency involves living and working between two countries, Belgium and the UK, travelling with sound and music through diverse contexts, from academia to private salons, from churches to concert halls. She made FoAM her hub for a year, from where she journeys to compose and perform her unique mix of contemporary and mediaeval sounds. While in macrotransiency, she experiments with FoAM as a contemporary convent - a place to retreat, contemplate, learn, create and share.

Malaria Minigames

Together with Prof Matthew Higgins (university of Oxford), we've been developing two minigames about malaria mitigation for installations at the Royal Society Summer Exhibition 2018.

Marine CoLABoration

‘Valuing the Ocean’ aims to increase the capacity of the environmental sector to communicate the role of the ocean in human wellbeing.

Microresidencies

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

Microresidency Alex Davies

Media artist, academic and physical narrative illusionist Alex Davies is in residence at FoAM for a week to explore possible connections between physical / transmedia stories and pre-enactments. During his residency he is a participant in the Extrapolation Factory workshop at Future Fictions.

Microresidency Auriea Harvey

"How can I approach drawn depiction of dance with a similar connection to my body as the dancer has to their own? Rather than treating drawing as a sort of dance in which I make marks, I wish to collaborate with dancers on a series of drawings. This microresidency meeting will be a few hours exchange of vocabulary and transfer of disciplines between participants, to help me better understand the material and conceptual possibilities of this notion. Through Drawing and Dancing with a group I hope to learn more about what it means to draw the body in motion."

Microresidency Lisa Ma

Microresidency with speculative designer Lisa Ma.

Microresidency Obstinate Lump

During their Microresidency, Bridget Currie and Chloe Langford exploit the alien qualities of bread dough to produce sculptural objects, and experiment with the structural and load-bearing capacities of bread dough. In seven days they will attempt to answer the question which recipes and baking processes yield the most expressive and compelling lumps?

Microresidency Pippa Buchanan

Pippa Buchanan had a short microresidency at FoAM in Brussels to learn about facilitating a futures workshop.

Microresidency Scott Smith

While discussing various plans to continue FoAM's experiments with prehearsals and ARNs, we were introduced to Scott Smith's work in "critical futures" by Honor Harger and an erratic exchange ensued. There were some obvious common threads and just as many distinct differences in approach to encourage further conversation. Since we've been experimenting with residency formats recently, it was a perfect opportunity to spend a day together as one of our first 'microresidencies'

Microresidency Stuart Candy

A short stopover residency by the futurist Stuart Candy at FoAM Brussels.

Midimutant

Made in collaboration with Aphex Twin, the midimutant learns how to program your dx7 synth so you don't have to.

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.

Mongoose 2000

A behavioural research tool for use in remote areas lacking reliable internet connectivity or power. Developed for the Banded Mongoose Research Project at Exeter University for use in their field site in Uganda, Mongoose 2000 uses a Raspberry Pi to synchronise behavioral observation data across multiple Android tablets used for daily recording of mongoose behaviour.

Multi-Species Sward App

A system to make it easier for farmers to grow and monitor multi-species swards for more sustainable farming, increasing pollinator diversity, improving soil, and resulting in healthier livestock and less veterinary medication.

Naked on Pluto

An online videogame that reflects on the invasive means used in the development of “social software"