FoAM - Kernow
Based in Falmouth, Cornwall at the southwest tip of the UK, FoAM Kernow is a non-profit organisation inhabiting the spaces between society, research, education and policy.
We enable people to develop creative and confident relationships with science and technology, merging our experience in science, programming, arts and design in a broad range of transdisciplinary research and education projects.
Our projects range from researching new forms of technology to explore ancient weaving knowledge and how virus structures affect disease, to reinventing the intersection of scientific culture with a 'post-truth' society, extending your senses under water to experience the effects of climate change and researching new artificial evolution technology for Aphex Twin.
A sonic kayak being set up for the British Science Festival
FoAM Kernow's work has been featured on BBC Radio 6 Music, Official Raspberry Pi Magazine, The Economist, The Guardian and The Wire and has won the Soil Association's innovation award 2014 and the 2011 VIDA award. We publish our work in peer reviewed academic journals and have written for The Guardian and The Conversation on the rapid changes happening in research and education. We are committed to fostering a culture of free software, creative commons and open access through our work.
FoAM Kernow is registered in the UK as a non-profit organisation (Company No. 09073427). You can find our articles of association, and our environmental, equality and data statements on github.
Our 2019 activity report is available here and we have a mailing list for news on events and workshops. Current projects from our studio are highlighted below, and all archived projects, blog posts, events and publications are listed underneath:
Invisible Worlds Residency 2019
The 2019 Invisible Worlds Residency was open to all artists, scientists, creators and makers, to explore phenomena beyond our senses: too vast, too small, too fast, too slow or too far away in spac...
The #wasplove game
Together with Seirian Sumner at University College London, we made an open source game to allow people to build their own wasp society. Players can toy with the limits of biology and test the resil...
The Farm Crap App
A sustainable agriculture project designed to help farmers make the most of their manure.
Penelope
How can we make tools that help understand the ancient weaver's mind? How she calculated and solved the first recorded mathematical proofs, embedding them in pattern. How do certain forms of t...
Sonic Kayaks
The Sonic Kayak is a musical instrument with which to investigate nature. Kayaks rigged with underwater environmental sensors generate live music from the marine world, providing the paddler with a...
AccessLab
Recent world events and concern over ‘fake news’ and ‘post-factualism’ have highlighted the difficulties encountered when trying to find trustworthy sources of information. The ability to judge the...
Viruscraft
In this project we ask - what determines the ability of a virus to infect some hosts but not others? Working with evolutionary biologist Ben Longdon, we're developing a citizen science project...
Midimutant
Made in collaboration with Aphex Twin, the midimutant learns how to program your dx7 synth so you don't have to.
Activities
- AccessLab
- Al Jazari
- Allotment Lab
- Android App Privacy Policy
- Betablocker
- Biohacking
- Butterfly Mimicry Game
- Carnivore Mapper
- Clearwing Butterfly Citizen Science Game
- Code Club
- Crab Camouflage
- Cricket Tales
- Dazzle Bug
- Doris
- Egglab
- Flotsam
- Future Thinking for Social Living
- Germination X
- Greenspace Voxels
- groWorld
- HapStar
- Human in Residence
- Human in Residence: Jo Garrett
- human in Residence: Jo McCallum
- human in Residence: Matt Creasey
- Human in Residence: Shelly Knotts
- Humans in Residence: Holger Ballweg and Shelly Knotts
- Invisible Worlds Residencies 2018
- Invisible Worlds Residency 2019
- Livecoding
- Malaria Minigames
- Midimutant
- Mongoose 2000
- Multi-Species Sward App
- Naked on Pluto
- Pattern Matrix
- Penelope
- Play
- Project Nightjar
- Red King
- Residencies
- Scheme bricks
- Sonic Kayaks
- Spork Factory
- Symbai
- Tanglebots
- Teaching with Minecraft
- The Bicrophonic Research Institute
- The Farm Crap App
- The #wasplove game
- Tidalcycles
- Viruscraft
- Weaving Codes
- What Remains
- Workshops
Events
- AccessLab - Climate, Environment and Health (January)
- AccessLab - Climate, Environment and Health (June)
- AccessLab - Climate, Environment and Health (November)
- Accesslab Exeter - Journalists/Bloggers/Writers
- Accesslab Penzance - Fishing/Marine
- Accesslab Plymouth - Parliamentary, Council and Policy
- AccessLab Workshop
- Accesslab Workshop - Krowji 2017
- AccessLab XR
- A Day without Devon
- AlgoMech
- Algomech
- Algorave Brighton
- Beyond the Fields – A transdisciplinary plein air convergence
- Creative Design Informatics for Horticultural Awareness
- Crypto-tea-party
- Dazzlebug in Alaska
- Farm Crap App at Jump Start Agritech
- Feral Business Research Network
- FoAM at the Bloomsbury Festival
- Greenspace Voxels at the Newlyn Art Gallery
- Greenspace Voxels Talk
- International FoAM Open Studio
- Invisible Worlds residency 2019 - Austin Houldsworth
- Invisible Worlds Residency - ... and then we see if we will be friends
- Invisible Worlds Residency - Disintegrated Rock
- Invisible Worlds Residency - Ferment!
- Involving People Better in Research
- Machine Wilderness Workshop
- Open studio
- Playing with voxels: A 3D journey through urban green space forms
- Sonic Kayaks @ British Science Festival
- Sonic Kayaks Open Hacklab
- Sonic Kayaks Open Hacklab
- Sonic Kayaks - sound mapping workshop
- Tanglebots Workshop
- Tanglebots Workshop
- Viruscraft game testing
- Viruscraft open play testing
- Viruscraft Workshop
- Weavingcodes Kernow
- Woven weaving robots at Algomech 2019
Blog posts
- 3D warp weighted loom simulation
- A 6502 lisp compiler, sprite animation and the NES/Famicom
- AccessLab 2018: The launch of a new workshop series
- AccessLab for Extinction Rebellion
- AccessLab futures workshop
- Accesslab Ingredients Research
- AccessLab Penzance - notes from the event
- Accesslab Pilot 1 Notes
- Accesslab Pilot 2 Notes
- Allotment Crap App
- An open letter to Sarah Newton MP
- Artificially evolved camouflage
- A tanglebots workshop report
- Biohacking and yeastograms
- Building Viruscraft planets
- Bumper Crop
- Change of location, brain scans, Mineways, OBJs, smiles
- Coding structure with threads
- Coding with threads: Frame loom
- Coding with threads: Tablet loom
- Creative Design Informatics for Horticultural Awareness at the End of the World Garden
- Cricket Tales released
- Cultivating FoAM Kernow
- Data sonification for citizen science
- Dazzlebug in Alaska
- Exporting OBJs from Minecraft for 3D printing (spoiler, not so fabulous)
- Farm Crap App Pro Edition
- Fluxus and Voxels and long rendering times
- FoAM Citizen Science installations at the Eden Project
- Foam Kernow mini update
- Further attempts at untangling tablet weave
- Futurecrafting in Cornwall with FoAM Earth
- Getting a feel for tangible interfaces
- Greenspace voxel models
- How to design a tangible programming language – Pattern Matrix at Algomech (part 2)
- How to make an organisation like foam
- How to run an AccessLab
- How to submit a UK VAT return if you are a strange organisation
- How to warp a tablet loom (/neolithic digital computing device)
- Invisible Worlds Residencies
- Invisible Worlds residency 2019 - The Intergalactic Estate Agency
- Invisible Worlds resident 2019 - Austin Houldsworth
- Jo's Sonic Kayak residency
- Karin Johansson's Sonic Kayak MSc placement
- Machine Wilderness Workshop
- Making circuit boards with a CNC machine
- Making science accessible – moving beyond open-access
- Memoirs from James Duffy's Sonic Kayak Secondment
- Midimutant in MagPi Magazine
- NES/Famicom game programming discoveries
- NightScience 2015
- Notes on potential new sensors for Sonic Kayaks - turbidity and air quality
- Open Studio at FoAM Kernow
- Our approach to working with the UK science 'impact' agenda
- Pattern Matrix 2
- Pattern Matrix at Algomech (part 1)
- Pattern Matrix PCBs arrived & first tests
- Pattern Matrix V2 report
- Penelope: a new 4 year weaving project
- Penelopean robotics part 2 - building a robot by weaving
- Penelopean robotics part 3 - radio transmissions
- Red King and crowd computing
- Red King: Host/Parasite co-evolution citizen science
- Reply to FoAM Kernow from Sam Gyimah MP, Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation.
- Report: Rethinking Diversity in a Rural Region Conference
- Robot nightjar eggshibition at the Poly, Falmouth
- Shelly's sonification residency
- slub Penryn->NYC live stream 25-03-02016
- Sonic Bikes to Sonic Kayaks - using puredata
- Sonic Kayak open hacklab 1
- Sonic Kayaks at the British Science Festival
- Sonic Kayaks: how to build musical instruments for marine exploration
- Sonic Kayaks open hacklab 2
- Sonic Kayak sound mapping workshop
- Stackable hexagon prototype boards
- Symbai field test in India
- Tanglebots for young people with autism
- Tanglebots workshop preparation
- Technology after Collapse
- The General Opinion at SWARM
- Thoughts on mongoose data moving
- Viruscraft: building a ‘reasonably accurate’ genetic game world simulation
- Viruscraft hardware prototyping: etching PCBs
- Viruscraft next steps
- Viruscraft: Notes from workshop 2
- Viruscraft: tangible interface electronics
- Viruscraft Workshop 1
- Voxel Debut
- Voxels: Minecraft & surprising lack of immediate obstacles
- Wild Food Foraging Thursday
- Woven robot swarm weaves at Algomech (with a little help from their friends)
Publications
- AccessLab: Workshops to broaden access to scientific research
- A grassroots remote sensing toolkit using live coding, smartphones, kites and lightweight drones
- An ecological role for assortative mating under infection?
- An emerging viral pathogen truncates population age structure in a European amphibian and may reduce population viability
- A new android smartphone app for geospatial mapping from drones and kites
- A novel approach to wildlife transcriptomics provides evidence of disease‐mediated differential expression and changes to the microbiome of amphibian populations
- Coding with Knots
- Data collection and storage in long-term ecological and evolutionary studies: The Mongoose 2000 system
- Exploring and Designing our Future Robot Companions
- Growing self representational life forms & some dusty software archaeology
- Hapstar: automated haplotype network layout and visualization
- Population genetic structure in European lobsters: implications for connectivity, diversity and hatchery stocking
- Population genetic structure in European lobsters: implications for connectivity, diversity and hatchery stocking
- Relative advantages of dichromatic and trichromatic color vision in camouflage breaking
- Smartphones in ecology and evolution: a guide for the app-rehensive
- Sonic Kayaks: Environmental monitoring and experimental music by citizens
- Tanglebots
- Textility of Code: A Catalogue of Errors
- Visualising the urban green volume: Exploring LiDAR voxels with tangible technologies and virtual models