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.

Sonic Kayaks

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...

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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...

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The Farm Crap App

A sustainable agriculture project designed to help farmers make the most of their manure (slurry, farmyard manure and poultry litter). It's a smartphone app which contains 3 components; the ca...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Midimutant

Made in collaboration with Aphex Twin, the midimutant learns how to program your dx7 synth so you don't have to.

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Activities

Events

Blog posts

Publications