FoAM - irreal

Research Gathering 2007 06 15: Kate Rich and other RiRs

maja — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 14:36:42 +0000

Start: 2007-06-15 12:00 Europe/Brussels

End: 2007-06-15 20:00 Europe/Brussels

This Research gathering, brought together FoAM's researchers in residence from 2006 and 2007, to discuss topics as wide ranging as Fair Trade, photovoltaics, cultural scents, extreme weather fashion, strange attractors and techno-textiles.

Everyone was welcome to join the discussions, talk about their current explorations, unsolvable problems, or amazing inventions. The gathering began at noon, with a 'guilt-free' lunch, collected and cooked by FoAM's dedicated shoppers and chefs.

More about the programme...

Kate Rich presented the plans for her Fair Trade Research, talking about food packaging and incomplete narratives, labour photography and the issues arising from Fair Trade presenting itself as the only alternative to Free Trade. People working in the artistic sector, Kate says, should watch their public diet. Come and hear from one of the few true grocery geeks around!
http://www.feraltrade.org/

Theun Karelse is aware of our uncertain future. By using his favorite tool, humorous visualisation (i.e. comics illustration), he explored an array of semi-practical solutions to extreme weather-events. The protagonist, Martin Brolin goes through a series of unfortunate events, such as a Tsunami, a bush-fire, or a speeding SUV. However, he comes prepared - with Tsunami Pants, an inflatable Hummer and a heat-loving extremophile cloak. During the gathering, the participants had the opportunity to dress their own Martin in Extreme Weather Fashion.
http://tsunamipants.blogspot.com/

Steven Pickles (Pix) talked about the beauty and strangeness of particular number spaces. In the past months, he delved into 'Aesthetic Explorations in Multivariate Polynomial Maps'. Basing his primarily aesthetic research on fractal mathematics of strange attractors, Pix worked on algorithms for visualising abstract graphical spaces and developing a tool for navigating them. Glimpse into this many dimensional data-ecology, and digital physics might not seem so strange after all!

Lina Kusaite brought news from the Avantex/TechTextil Fair about the newest and greenest materials that the industry can offer.
http://avantex.messefrankfurt.com/

Maki Ueda revealed the latest secrets from her Witch's Kitchen Lab. The participants had a chance to smell Seaweed and Cherry blossom, Maki's brand new distillates.
http://witch-lab.blogspot.com/

Finally, Bart Vandeput told us about the only solar workshop in Brussels and his discoveries of eco-tech libraries in the depths of Limburg.

Data Ecologies

maja — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 14:04:01 +0000

Start: 2007-07-20 11:00 GMT+2

End: 2007-07-21 23:00 GMT+2

Two FoAM & gRig presentations at the Data Ecologies workshop "On growing of worlds: whole systems in turbulent environments" by Maja Kuzmanovic and "What am I doing rendering fractals?" by Steven Pickles.

http://www.timesup.org/laboratory/DataEcologies/

Vlaamse Overheid

maja — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 12:24:36 +0000

Culture 2000

maja — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 12:19:08 +0000

Maki Ueda: Scentology

maja — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:49:50 +0000

I research scents and the sense of smell. My challenge is to use them as a medium in art. In the exhibition context I create a spatial expressions with the scents, I give workshops pm extracting the scents (I extract the scents literary from anything: from food to the cloth, flowers to the ink), and I develop unique 'perfumes' with my extracts, not for to be worn, but to be smelled. I use basic chemistry and cooking techniques in my mini-laboratory for extracting the scents.

More information: http://scent-lab.blogspot.com/

Maggie Buxton: Hybrid Story-Ing, Un-Genreable Engagements and Transformative Learning

maja — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:32:43 +0000

The core question of this research is: by what mechanisms can humanity become more conscious of and potentially change, it’s relationship to reality? This question potentially connects numerous disciplines including neuro-science, quantum physics, art, developmental psychology, adult education theory, political science, philosophy, to name just a few. Some of these areas will be touched on to provide further theoretical context to the research and recent discourse on Orders of Consciousness and Transformative Learning will be explored in more depth. I particularly focus on Un-Genreable Engagement and Hybrid Story-ing, aiming show how the various activities that fall under these headings (which I have coined in this research) have the potential to subvert consensus reality and illustrate the fragility of the dominant epistemology.

In progress: http://libarynth.org/research_report_maggie_buxton

Steven Pickles (Pix): An Aesthetic Exploration of Multivariate Polynomial Maps

maja — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:15:44 +0000

In 2001 I found a book by mathematician Julien C. Sprott called “Strange attractors: creating patterns in chaos”. The book described the mathematics behind a class of fractals called strange attractors. In the book, Sprott presents a computer program which can search for strange attractors by trying many randomly generated equations until one was discovered which met certain criteria. The results were clouds of points which formed interesting organic shapes. each set of equations created a unique set of points. When I read this I was curious to see what would be the outcome of making small changes to the equations. I made a simple program which did this, and the result was clouds of points which would morph between many different shapes. The program would move through the parameter space randomly and automatically, and so it only showed that there was some kind of continuity to the parameter space which the strange attractors occupied, but it did not provide any useful way of visualising this space. In this research I explore this space, and map it to some degree.

In progress: http://libarynth.org/pix_research_report

Theun Karelse: Tsunamipants

maja — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:10:42 +0000

How do you relate to global crises in a way that is not demotivating? The discussion about our future is dominated by appeals for austerity and reduction. This is not a very inspiring message as it focuses on negative aspects of society. It is hard to see a positive revolution on a global scale, based on negative arguments. Instead we should focus on positive changes that inspire everyone. This debate should be dominated by the possibility of increasing the quality of life.

The Tsunamipants project shows the traps that are hidden in responding to problems by coming up with solutions that are built within the limits of the problem. This invariably creates new versions of the same problem, it doesn't solve them. That is the tragedy in which the inventor Martin Brolin is caught in Tsunamipants. Martin engages the extreme weather conditions that are associated with future climate changes and tries to engineer his way out-off danger. In his work Mr. Brolin suffers from lack of expertise, lack of budged, oversized ambition and being over-all mediocre. These are common human traits that run beneath the surface of positive social change. To be able to construct anything realistically and therefor longlasting, I suggest we start by acknowledging that there is nothing inherently wrong with being mediocre. I realise that this goes against giant forces in popular culture, but Martin is deliberately portrayed as a mediocre inventor, although I only later became fully conscious of why I was doing this.

In progress: http://libarynth.org/research_report_theun_karelse

Sensual communication in hybrid reality

maja — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:19:17 +0000

Irreal

nik — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:21:50 +0000

Reality != Truth
How do we distinguish between imagination and reality, fiction and non-fiction? Our histories are brimming with accounts of parallel, superimposed, amplified realities. Today we are able to experiment with world building tools, DIY toolkits for constructing evolving realities. We are beginning to make our imaginary worlds tangible and shared? What can we learn from theatre, shamanism and ethnobotany to help us imagine and actualise possible futures? What cognitive and physiological processes are needed for something to be perceived as 'real'?