How did pre-literate cultures store the vast amounts of information their cultures needed to thrive; the knowledge about their environment, the beings that surround them and how to live there as a people? I'm trying out some hands-on experiments with encoding knowledge in the environment and objects.
Hello Earthlings, and welcome to another of FoAM's semi-seasonal digests, composed with beings, places and things we care about. We write as humans (mostly) in a beyond-human world, continuing to seek alternatives to the tenacious (yet crumbling) status quo, engaging with people, cultures and technologies across the fickle currents of time.
Reflections on landing and leaving as artistic practices, based on our fieldnotes from the island of Seili in the Archipelago sea. How to land in a place is a perpetual question for those of us who live and work nomadically or trans-locally. Landing could be seen as a ritual beginning with a place and those who call it home.
I have become fascinated with birdsong as a way to learn music and train my ears. Though very complex and nuanced, birdsong remains accessible and inclusive, whereas contemporary music can be much less so. In this blog post I look back at my recent compositions where I attempt to combine the two...
This is an open call for 13th edition of the smart-zine nightly build — the current
Austin Houldsworth's words, images and video from his 2019 Eden Project/FoAM Invisible Worlds residency - the Intergalactic Space Agency.
Artist Catherine Harris has called for ‘unconditional hospitality’ towards the natural world. I think what I experience in the rainforest in Kerala, the wetlands in Coorg and among the clouds in the Nilgiris is that, for some of us, this unconditional hospitality may take some getting used to.
Following our workshop with visually impaired people at Trevassack we were left with mixed feelings, on the one hand the participants were very happy and seemed inspired by the day - but on the other hand we experienced plenty of technical difficulties with the new GPS system, and we didn't have enough time to really get into sonic mapping.
The important thing was that the participants gave us so much feedback ...
As part of our Sonic Kayak project, we have been looking at adding new sensors to the system. These are our notes from our research and prototyping.
Notes from a sound mapping workshop for the Sonic Kayaks, with participants with visual impairments.
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 ...
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.
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
"Novelty is a huge problem for all animals, all autistic people, all children — and just about all normal grown ups too, though normal adults can handle novelty better than animals, autistic people, or kids. Fear of unknown is universal." From Animals in translation by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson
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.
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.
"...is Media. And media is how people express and communicate. Your voice is a medium, writing is a medium, art and video and... Yes, even poking someone repeatedly or jumping up and down or twitching your eyes in a pattern can be using a medium - your body - to communicate." from Plural of Medium by Savannah Logsdon-Breakstone
This post is about medium of silence and photography.
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.