Publications

The swamp doesn’t allow for a cartesian way of mapping, it doesn't allow to figurate it and give it a fixed identity. Connected bodies of water push their way into ever new sinks and streams. New spots of land are revealed, through drought or human intervention, while other parts flood and hide the pathways and places that were there before. Where the swamp starts and where it ends is processual. It doesn’t have clear borders but rather transient zones. As such, it is a liminal being, always becoming, always in-between.

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.