Publications

This conference paper describes the development, testing and deployment of a free-to-use, open-source, android-based smartphone application for capturing geo-tagged aerial photographs for grass-roots remote sensing (RS) and mapping applications.

Transcription of FoAM's talk at Design March 2013 in Iceland

Transcription of FoAM's talk at Improving Reality 2013 conference

As a botanical parallel to the oft misunderstood field of HCI – Human Computer Interaction, HPI – Human Plant Interaction, explores the nature of surfaces and processes required to facilitate mutually beneficial interaction between humans and plants.

Grid independence, silent electrical energy generation without emissions, harmless low-DC power, mobility and new materials with new aesthetics are key characteristics of photovoltaic technologies. Together with new scientific tropes that are emerging in this highly vibrant multidisciplinary field, they have attracted a first generation of “early adapters” in the arts.

With the understanding that we are a part of an interconnected and interdependent planetary eco-system, contemporary human culture moves slowly from a culture of consumption and segregation to a culture of participation, integration and generation.

Anything living or growing – from spore, to fruit, to soil, to compost – experiences constant pressure to transform. Similarly, the will to improve our living conditions, extend our lives, or even create a piece of music, involves coercing certain changes in the environment. Technology currently meets this pressure through a pattern of obsolescence and incremental upgrades, guided by a logic of novelty and reinvention. In contrast to living systems, our technological growth rarely involves cyclical processes; new technologies don’t often feed on the detritus of the obsolete.

The process of globalization is causing a rapid decrease of diversity in the social, biological and cultural habitats, due to the dominant economic powers, such as proprietary communication technologies and transnational “life industries.” Physical public spaces, as arenas for a wide range of interaction and social change are losing their importance, as the global marketplace has shifted its locus from the accessible public markets to the dispersed and abstract global networks.