Every time before meeting kids from a new class, I get excited and a little nervous. I prepare a full programme and choose the theme. But one can never be sure in advance if the ideas and methods will be interesting or work for the children. Every group brings its own energy, creative potential and willingness to experiment. This year I chose the theme of “I See I See What …
Greetings from FoAM’s wintry studios. The weather is still chilly outside, but the atmosphere at FoAM is warming up and increasingly festive: in March FoAM will be 15 years old and there is much to celebrate. In this digest we bring news from all FoAM studios, with their recent and upcoming activities. We hope you enjoy an inkling of timelessness by sitting back in your favorite climate simulation to read …
It’s been fifteen years since FoAM began as a department in Starlab in Brussels. Since then, hundreds of amazing people, ideas and initiatives have emerged or diverged from our studios. In 2015 we have set aside the time to celebrate, commemorate and reflect on this creative period.
A short update on FoAM’s recent initiatives entangling environmental and techno-social phenomena, including a trip to the Russian Arctic with Dark Ecologies, Earth Coding at Geologic Imagination in the Netherlands, collecting data on the evolution of sociality in India, live coding with environmental drones, and re-valuing the oceans in the UK.
An update from FoAM member Bartaku, including news about the works on aroniacentrism, agave power plants and transformations of a Serbian mining truck.
Seeker is a worldwide series of co-created starship sculptures that evolve over time. It's a community art project that invites people to fundamentally rethink the future of human habitation and survival by interconnecting technology, ecology and people. Since 2012 five different versions of the project have been realized in Slovenia, the Netherlands and Belgium. New Seeker versions are currently in pre-production in both Chile and Kosovo. Each new version builds …
A short update on the things currently going on at Foam Kernow alongside the stuff I've been blogging about recently. We are near completion of a new version of the butterfly hunting game - this time being developed for the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, where it will be a citizen science exhibit to collect data on visitor's perceptions of the wing patterns. A brand new …
One of the main objectives of the weavecoding project is to provide a simulation of the warp weighted loom to use for demonstrations and exploration of ancient weaving techniques. Beyond the 4 shaft loom dyadic calculator we need to show the actual process of weaving to explain how the structures and patterns emerge. Weaving is very much a 3D process and these visualisations fail to show that well. It also …
One of the most inspiring things we heard from Leslie Downs (our Advisor on textile innovation) was about the way he manufactures high specification structures for aerospace engineering by weaving on ordinary looms, sometime even hand looms for their flexibility. It turns out that some of these techniques are also possible with tablet weaving: I came across this mysterious diagram in 'Byways in Handweaving' by Mary Meigs Atwater
Tablet weaving is an ancient form of pattern production using cards which are rotated to provide different sheds between warp threads. It's used to produce long strips of fabric, or the starting bands and borders that form part of a larger warp weighted weaving. We'll come to the second use later in the weaving codes project.
After writing the 4 shaft loom simulation the next job was to try weaving the structures with real threads. Would I be able to replicate the predicted patterns and structures? Ellen warned me that the meander weave would result in unstable fabric, but it would depend on the nature of the material used so was worth trying. Originally I planned to warp up the Harris loom but I need to …