
Nik Gaffney
Nik Gaffney is a founding member of FoAM. He currently operates as a tangential generalist, sound artist, designer, programmer and sous-chef with a focus on long-term thinking, experiential futures and stochastic tinkering. His work has been presented at venues worldwide, including the Centre Pompidou, ICA, COP15, Ars Electronica, NTT-ICC, Iceland Design Center, Vooruit and Z33. Nik studied computer science, cognitive science and organic chemistry at the University of Adelaide. He prefers breadth-first-searches and bottom-up design; randomness as a strategy, and depth where required; dynamic to static; Lisp to C; realtime rather than recorded; and complexity over the complicated. He explores processes and artefacts emerging out of glitches, feedback and interconnectedness as part of farmersmanual, a multi-sensory disturbance conglomerate, working with network sonification, development of media generating neural networks and tools for distributed performances and remote collaboration. In 2014 he was awarded an honorary membership of the Cloud Appreciation Society for his photographs of Undulatus Asperatus.
Authored
Blog posts
- Dust & Shadow in The Future of Print
- "Fungi make worlds..."
- A checklist (moving house during a pandemic)
- To care, to cure, to comfort (pandemic remix)
- Spectres in Change. Fieldnotes #2
- Innovation: Taking Risks or Making Risks?
- Dust and shadow. Fieldnotes #3
- As the crows fly...
- Open call: Dust & Shadow Reader #2. On Attunement
- An Ephemeral Garden
- Dust and shadow. Fieldnotes #2
- Spectres in change. Fieldnotes #1
- Dust and shadow. Fieldnotes #1
- Tasting Tomorrow
- FoAM digest - Spring 02017
- Thriving in Uncertainty / Floreren in Onzekerheid
- FoAM digest - Winter 02015
- Dark Ecology
- Library Salons
- Interstitial Cultures
- DesignMarch 2013: "Magick, Mistakes and the Multitude of the Matter"
- Improving Reality 2013 - Maja Kuzmanovic
- FoAM Newsletter Winter 02013
- Smoke & Vapour Menu
- Biochymickal Arts (notes and references)
- Sphaerae, Total Recall, Future Fabulators, Improving Reality
- A changeist in microresidency
- FoAM Newsletter Spring 02013
- Stadsfestivals: kunst of kermis?
- Act Otherwise
- I+C+i // Debat "Reptes i necessitats de l'educació actual"
- The Guild and the Garret
- FoAM in Kwintessens "Food Design"
- FoAM interview in MCD #65
- Cycland video
Publications
- “From that historically brief quite opaque moment, came the chaos of our material history, an anarchy of chronology, of mismatched remnants…”
- “how the terms ‘mind’ and ‘matter’ are abstractions which in their concreteness are identical”
- The Art of Futuring
- Dust & Shadow | Redux
- Dust & Shadow Reader #2
- Dust & Shadow Fieldnotes
- Design and Futures
- Innovation: Taking Risks or Making Risks?
- Ars Vitae Volume 08
- dust & shadow 12"
- Making Things Physical
- Dark arts, grey areas and other contingencies
- Dust & Shadow Reader #1
- Dust & Shadow Soundwalk
- In anticipation of things already present.
- Ephemeral Garden
- Terrafictions
- A Lab Approach for Marine CoLABoration
- Enacting Futures in Postnormal Times
- stillness
- GroWorld: Experiments in vegetal culture
- stillness (series)
- Thriving in Uncertainty
- Futurish
- Borrowed Scenery: Cultivating an Alternate Reality
- Approaching the Inexplicable
- Magic, Mistakes and the multitude of the matter
- Prehearsal Pocket Guide
- Prehearsing the Future
- PARN: Physical and Alternate Reality Narratives
- Luminous Green
- Resilients – We Can Change the Weather
- groWorld HPI
- Glitch: Designing Imperfection
- Cursory Speculations on HPI
- Transient Patchiness: The Slippery Territories of groWorld
- Open-Ended Processes, Open Space Technologies and Open Laboratories
- Structured Growth and Grown Structures
- Human-Scale Systems in Responsive Environments
- Introduction to Advanced Error Engineering
- starter organism
- Multiplex translations | Entangled aphasia
- Digital Art and the Glitch
Related
Activities
- Superject
- Certainty Ltd.
- Resonances
- Institute for Experiments with Business
- Dust & Shadow soundwalk
- Spectres in change
- Dust & Shadow
- Tasting tomorrow
- Macrotransiency FoAM bxl
- Open Sauces Notebook
- Marine CoLABoration
- Bibliotecha
- Arboreal Identity
- Microresidencies
- Future Fabulators
- Doing Nothing
- Borrowed Scenery
- Boskoi
- Germination X
- Livecoding
- Open Sauces
- lyt_A
- f0amfr0th
- .x-med-k.
- LIREC
- Workshops
- Residencies
- gRig
- TRG
- groWorld
- txOom
- TGarden
- Resilients
- Bitesize Lectures
- Physical and Alternate Reality Narratives (PARN)
- Luminous Green
- Splinterfields Workshops
- t* series
- Library
- Research Gatherings
Events
- Climate and Sustainability Action Week
- The Thorny Question of Art and Economy: A Conversation Piece
- FoAM at UCSB
- Re-enchanting the present
- Creating interdisciplinary collaboration
- Acoustic Ecology Salon
- Vernissage: Dust & shadow acoustic ecology salon
- Attunement to the desert
- The overlooked and the unheard
- Spectres in change Salon
- Innovation: Taking risks or making risks?
- Dark arts, grey areas and other contingencies
- RADMIN
- Alchorisma
- Terra Fiction
- International FoAM Open Studio
- Feral Business Research Network
- Cloud Pergola: Ephemeral Garden
- Research Gathering Spring 2018
- Dust & Shadow walk
- Anticipation Conference
- Archived Futures Harvest
- Tasting Tomorrow: Futurecrafting
- Tasting Tomorrow: Fieldwork
- The Ocean Connects Us
- Laying Fallow
- stillness
- Marine CoLAB #7
- Marine CoLAB #6
- Marine CoLAB #5
- Promiscuous Pipe(line)s
- Marine CoLAB #4
- Marine CoLAB #3
- FO[am]tones (aka FOtones special edition)
- Future Agenda workshop
- Marine CoLAB #2
- Earth Coding at Geologic Imagination
- FoAM at the Beurssc5ouwburg
- Marine CoLAB #1
- Extrapolation Factory Workshop
- Prototyping the Intangible
- Laurisilva Futures
- Library Salon #4
- Dark Ecology
- Future Fictions
- Futures Lab Events Programme
- Lucid Peninsula
- Visualizing the Invisible: Experiential Futures workshop
- Prehearsal at xCoAx
- Adhocracy
- Data ecologies: Experience
- PULSE Visiedag I
- ICT-ART-Connect
- Late Lab Open Sauces
- Research Gathering with Lisa Ma
- MITI Scenario Workshops
- Smoke & Vapour
- Human Invasive Interaction
- The Summit of Practical Utopias
- Splinterfields: Biochymickal Arts
- Vooruit possible futures
- Design, Aesthetics and Creativity
- YGL Alumni Summit 2013
- Notational Resume
- Hotel Resilients
- Design March Iceland
- Research Gathering with Cat Jones
- Resilients: The Flotilla
- PARN Narrative Strategies
- Inner Garden
- Silent Dialogues expedition
- Vegetal Apéro
- Identity Bureau: Legal Identity for Trees
- Rocket Boat Day #2
- Opening Electrified III
- Electrified: Borrowed Scenery
- Electrified (an exploration)
- Resilients Salon at Burning Ice
- Open House
- I+C+i #2 ¿Una revolución educativa?
- Radio Mycelium Tutorial
- Long Now Brussels Meetup - October 02011
- ArtBots 2011
- YGL Summit and AMNC
- Splinterfields: Mathematickal Arts
- Rocket Boat Day #1
- Designing Robotic Artefacts
- SEAFair
- FoAM @ E-Culture Fair 2010
- YGL Summit and World Economic Forum on Africa
- Flemish Primitives
- Bend, Sew, Touch, Feel, Read
- Real Code at Piksel 08 festival
- Edible Perfume
- Open Kitchen
- On Scent, Taste and Other Senses at FoAM
- Luminous Green Panel at ISEA
- ISEA 2008
- Mutamorphosis
- YGL Summit
- 200706 Research Gathering with Kate Rich and other RiRs
- In Human Format
- Luminous Green Workshop 2007
- Luminous Green Retreat 2007
- None of the Above
- 200609 Research Gathering with Maja Kuzmanovic and Nik Gaffney
- 200608 Research Gathering with zzx and Pix
- 200604 Research Gathering with Foam Lab Holland
- Hyperbolic
- Software: Realtime Animation
- Art in the Biotech Era
- P~lot
- Introduction to Advanced Error Engineering