blog

Invisible Worlds resident 2019 - Austin Houldsworth

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.

Communicating through Silence

On the medium of silence and photography.

Woven robot swarm weaves at Algomech (with a little help from their friends)

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.

White Mountain Future Search

Mount Kilimanjaro is the green centre of an increasingly desertifying savannah landscape. The Maasai are its traditional inhabitants and have gathered to form a united vision of a future for their landscape.

RADMIN Reflections

Reflections on RADMIN, Britain's first festival of administration, Feb 14-16th 2019 in Bristol.

Deep Steward

When landscape appeared in European art it emerged first as a landscape of symbols. The Gothic depiction of Earth was populated with features that were primarily there as convenient symbols for a narrative. Now that landscape emerges in artificial neural networks, they seem to emerge as a landscape of commodity. DeepSteward looks for ways to let machines develop their own taxonomies: a deep bestiary..

Innovation: Taking Risks or Making Risks?

We were recently invited by Michka Mélo to talk about complexity, uncertainty and possible futures in the context of innovation at EPFL - École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne. We had the pleasure of meeting the students, engineers and entrepreneurs to share our thoughts and experiences of in the form of a lecture performance and a "playshop". The text from the lecture has been published on medium and on our website.

Witnessing care

A short reflection on working within palliative daycare centre Topaz Brussels in collaboration with body voice practice Oracle as part of In/Finity project.

FoAM Citizen Science installations at the Eden Project

Evaluating our permanent citizen science exhibitions at the Eden Project.

Our approach to working with the UK science 'impact' agenda

We were recently asked by one of the UK research councils to write about how we collaborate with university academics to build ‘impact’ into research projects, partly to provide inspiration for the researchers but also to address some common misconceptions.

Animal Property Rights, Totems and Zoöps

In “Animal Property Rights, a theory of habitat rights for wild animals” John Hadley explores if animal territories could form the basis of an alternative approach to conservation.

Karin Johansson's Sonic Kayak MSc placement

This post is a summary of Karin Johansson's MSc placement at FoAM Kernow on the Sonic Kayak project. The Sonic Kayaks are currently being modified for use for people with visual impairments. Karin helped develop and test an evaluation approach that can be used in future to look at whether the Sonic Kayaks offer wellbeing benefits to the paddlers.

Dust and shadow. Fieldnotes #3

Notes from FoAM Earth's field trip to the Desertscapes of Arizona and Utah, marked by stark contrasts between heat and chill, adoration and dread, escape and extraction.

AccessLab futures workshop

The AccessLab project has been a series of five workshops, aimed at decentralising research skills, encouraging open access, and building local communities. As the funding draws to a close, we ended by bringing participants back together for a scoping workshop to decide on possible future paths for the project. This is a brief write-up of the main outputs from the scoping workshop.

How to submit a UK VAT return if you are a strange organisation

As part of our continuing mission to promote and celebrate all forms of administration, we are publishing our UK VAT accounting procedure. This is important if you are running an arts organisation, non-profit or independent research organisation (or all three in one glorious muddle, like we are) as this means your income is likely to be a mix of commercial and grant funding, making you partially exempt for VAT and a cause of a particular kind of fascinated horror by all tax and accounting professionals you run into at parties.

Invisible Worlds Residencies

Invisible Worlds Residencies were developed in 2018 as a collaboration between FoAM and the Eden Project, to explore phenomena beyond our senses: too vast, too small, too fast, too slow or too far away in space or time.

Another reply from a now resigned Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation

Our second reply in the series from Sam Gyimah MP arrived shortly before he announced his resignation from government. We've written a reply to be sent via our local MP anyway, although I doubt he will see it.This letter I think perhaps gets us closer to the assumptions at the heart of a lot of UK policy, a surprisingly simplistic view that research is entirely something done by universities, and businesses (which only have a single shape or purpose) are there to 'exploit' this research which is handed down to them to boost the economy.

Midimutant update

How to run an AccessLab

A comprehensive description of the AccessLab format - a workshop to decentralise research skills and encourage open access publication of scientific research.

As the crows fly...

As part of our ongoing exploration of animist-inspired practices in the shadow of climate chaos, we'll spend a month in Japan to explore our strong resonances with its landscapes and (sub)cultures.

FoAM digest - Autumn 02018

Harden up, valuable advice from our arboreal neighbours for an autumn of increasing environmental and political turbulence. In this semi-seasonal digest, we take stock of the different ways we at FoAM respond to such turbulences, including economic experiments, citizen science games, artistic explorations and speculative forays into animist territories. If you're interested, there are various opportunities to get involved, from playing with the mechanisms of viral infection, to celebrating radical administration, or contributing to one of our upcoming publications.

Open call: Dust & Shadow Reader #2. On Attunement

If you are interested in contributing to the Dust & Shadow reader on attunement, please send your propositions, questions or suggestions to us by the end of 2018. Contributions can include short texts (max 500 words), drawings, monochrome photographs, quotes or relevant references.

Open call: /nightly build - the passage/ zine #12

nightly build is a tiny A7 sized photocopied zine that fits in the palm of your hand. This is an open call for contributions to the next issue themed the passage.

Open Studio at FoAM Kernow

FoAM's first network-wide Open Studio happened during our international meeting in September 2018, this year hosted by FoAM Kernow in Falmouth, Flushing and Penryn. It brought together people from the network and facilitated connections between the FoAM members, local organisations, professionals and friends.

Making circuit boards with a CNC machine

One of the strategies we've been exploring at FoAM Kernow is using our hardware projects to research different ways of building things. For example our approach of design assuming collapse (& brexit) has resulted in much higher awareness of our supply chains, and through this - potential dependance on manufacturing in places with less environmental and health regulation.

Visible and invisible autism

Autism is on the inside. It can be invisible. It can be present in another person without you noticing it. Nevertheless it is there, manifesting itself as a different understanding of one’s surroundings and perception of the world.

Penelopean robotics part 3 - radio transmissions

On the Penelope project, our plan was to develop technologies that could be useful in constructing a swarm of robots which could be livecoded by using the pattern matrix - a general purpose tangible programming system based on the Raspberry Pi. In order to make communication possible remotely, radio is the most obvious approach to get up and running quickly (other options that are intriguing are infra-red and audible sound).

Penelopean robotics part 2 - building a robot by weaving

Penelopean robotics are about rebuilding technology in the woven cosmos. You can read more about the theory in part 1, but roughly our aims are to:Embody Penelopean technological practice - they should be easily undone (taken apart) so they can be understandable, self documenting and repairable.They are not automated looms, but must eventually be capable of weaving in some form, maybe by interacting with ancient Greek weaving technology.Capable of embodying elements of ancient Greek poetry and dance, perhaps via livecoding.Be constructed in the spirit of Simone Giertz rather than Boston dynamics.

Environmental machine learning as artistic research practice.

Environmental machine learning as artistic research practice: how does such a mix of ecology, technology and art make sense in today’s world?an article by Michelle Geraerts, who took part in the Random Forests programme as part of her graduation in anthropology at University of Utrecht.

Reply to FoAM Kernow from Sam Gyimah MP, Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation.

Our letter to Sarah Newton MP for Truro and Falmouth was forwarded to Sam Gyimah MP, the Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation.