FoAM - sys

Radio Mycelium

maja — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 13:59:24 +0000

Start: 2011-12-08 10:00 Europe/Brussels

End: 2011-12-09 17:00 Europe/Brussels

Radio Mycelium tutorial includes the construction of a series of experimental situations examining a new networked imaginary, the single organism of the fungal mycelium, in relation to pathogenic, electromagnetic communications.

"A mycelial network has no organs to move the world, no hands; but higher animals with manipulative abilities can become partners with the star knowledge within me and if they act in good faith, return both themselves and their humble mushroom teacher to the million worlds all citizens of our starswarm are heir to." -Terence McKenna. The Mushroom Speaks

The mycelium, a fungal network of thread-like cells, represents a truly underground communications network, spreading out over vast areas of earth substrate, acting with ecosystem intelligence as an interface across across symbiotic networks such as plant and tree roots.

PARN's Radio Mycelium tutorial aims to actively examine the cross-spore-germination between two parallel wide area networks; between radio-based communication technologies and the single organism network of the mycelium. Fungal transceivers sprouting mycelial antennas form an imaginary underground network. Diversity of human networks is mapped across fungal diversity in the urban environment. The influence of electromagnetic carrier wave on the mycelial network is to be examined.

The well-documented transformative potential of the mycelium (for example, decomposing pollutants) is invoked to remediate an increasingly pathogenic electromagnetic networked culture.

A series of experimental situations will be established and studied by participants, who will also learn how to construct simple measurement devices, and culture shiitake, pink oyster and Enokitake mushrooms, amongst other mycelium (simple moulds). A short field trip will find and map winter mushroomings of electromagnetic fungi in Brussels.

The workshop is facilitated by Martin Howse: http://www.1010.co.uk/org/

This tutorial is a part of PARN: http://x4.fo.am/parn

Supported by the Flemish Authorities and Culture 2007 - 2013 Programme of the European Commission.

Rainforest Etiquette

theun — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 20:45:25 +0000

Start: 2011-10-16 00:00 GMT+2

FoAM is organising and hosting a lecture by Suprabha Seshan. She is the spokesperson of the Gurukula Botanic Sanctuary in Kerala India. At the rainforest sanctuary local tribal women are trained to become parataxonomists and ecosystem gardeners. Through their work over 20 years Suprabha and the team have seen human pressure, demands and damage on the rainforest increase. She will speak on several topics including the failure of environmental education. The forest needs a particular type of support if it is to survive at all. This lecture series is an attempt to bring this type of support to a general and expert audience. The lecture in Amsterdam is followed by a workshop that translates Suprabha’s knowledge to a European context; can we start ecosystem gardening in the city?

more details: http://shibumifriends.nl
for the 16 oct workshop please register: shibumifriends@gmail.com

Dates for the full series:

01 oct 2011 Brockwood Park Educational Centre, UK
03 oct 2011 Department of Philosophy, University of East Anglia
04 oct 2011 CEEC Seminars, Dept of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia
05 oct 2011 Forderkreis, Zurich
12 oct 2011 Public Lecture, University of Lugano
16 oct 2011 Studio Maria Blaisse, Amsterdam including FoAM workshop
17 oct 2011 Gaia 1 Wageningen University
18 oct 2011 Hogeschool van Hall Larenstein, Velp
27 oct 2011 University of Kansas, Lawrence, Public Lecture Centre for Global Studies
28 oct 2011 Resilience Lecture, organized by The Land Institute, Salina Kansas
07 nov 2011 Oakgrove School, Ojai California
17 nov 2011 Public (invited) lecture, Yewfield, The Lake District, UK
20 nov 2011 Musical Event with KT Tunstall
22 nov 2011 London School of Economics

London dates are approximate. There may be one of two additional talks.

Immanentia02

lina — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 15:27:47 +0000

Start: 2011-04-27 19:30 GMT+2

End: 2011-05-29 00:00 GMT+2

On the 27th of April, Palm Top Theatre exhibition travelled to the new location of EMAF festival. Together with other two artworks, 'Immanentia', was selected to be part of European Media Art Festival in Osnabrueck, Germany
The EMAF is one of the most important forums of international Media Art, and is an open laboratory for creative and artistic experiments that help shape media and the aesthetics of their content.

Immanentia – a palm top theatre piece

The dream life has always been there. Mere shapes ever so clear and distinct. It is as if her little mind invented these shapes, labyrinths of the mind and for the mind - to drift away and try to lose oneself in - even though the mind cannot entirely trick itself. She always finds her way back. Abandonment. Mirroring. Pealing the thin layers of an onion, which in turn ends up as the perfect metaphor for the cluster of will, attention and dreams that we call consciousness. Sliding and hopping between different layers, she will perform together with you; a choreography, a game with no end and a music piece assembled into a sublime instrument to be played out by the sensitive user.
The Patabotany drawings of phantasmagoric trees and plants which intertangle and interdepend on each other, becomes a daydream world for a little girl who was found at the doorstep of a children's house in Rose Cottage Home in Dickleburgh around 1890. She carried all of her worldly possessions with her– clutching only 'a chestnut and a penny'. Picture courtesy of The Children's Society, UK.

The artworks was created for a special interface called i3DG, that turns 2D into 3D on iPhones, iPods and iPads - in the palm of your hand.

Concept and production by Performing Pictures and FoAM

Images:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/sets/72157625770900809/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxEtMqMABPQ

More information:
http://www.v2.nl/files/2011/archive/works/palm-top-theater-artworks/imma...
http://www.emaf.de/index.php?id=70&L=2
http://www.v2.nl/events/palm-top-theater
http://www.performingpictures.se/

Immanentia01

lina — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 17:41:53 +0000

Start: 2011-01-21 00:00 GMT+1

End: 2011-02-13 00:00 GMT+1

Immanentia – a palm top theatre piece

Performing Pictures and FoAM – have been invited by curator Maki Ueda and V2 to create a piece for the Palm Top Theater exhibition at the upcoming Rotterdam International Film Festival. The piece, Immanentia, is based on Lina's organic and flowing illustrations from the Groworld project, brought to life by Robert Brecevic.

The Patabotany drawings of phantasmagoric trees and plants which intertangle and interdepend on each other, becomes a daydream world for a little girl who was found at the doorstep of a children's house in Rose Cottage Home in Dickleburgh around 1890. She carried all of her worldly possessions with her– clutching only 'a chestnut and a penny'. Picture courtesy of The Children's Society, UK.

The film festival has brought cinema to the large screen. The intimacy of small mobile screens are giving new impulses to the cinematic experience. V2_ will present a series of films and animations small enough to watch in the palm of your hand. The artworks will be created for a special interface called i3DG, that turns 2D into 3D on iPhones, iPods and iPads - in the palm of your hand. Visitors will experience film and animation in a way that is strikingly similar to pre-cinema, when watching a moving image was an intimate and individual experience. At the same time, the Palm Top Theater will offer a glimpse of a cinema of the future in which the developments in mobile communication technology and the changing roles of users and producers will have a profound effect on the future of cinema.

Images:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/sets/72157625770900809/

More information:
http://www.v2.nl/events/palm-top-theater
http://www.performingpictures.se/
http://x4.fo.am/

groworld workshop at sommercamp+workstation

nik — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:26:24 +0000

Start: 2009-08-10 05:06 Europe/Berlin

End: 2009-08-16 05:06 Europe/Berlin

The simulation-led workshop cluster presents constructive approaches to measurement, description and modelling of real world systems ranging across urban and ecological interventions. The world can be described by way of maps, diagrams, fiction, circuits and software. Desciptions, or representations, take on their own life as autopoetic systems, creating complex ecologies; describing becomes constructing (growing your own world). Workshops will range across the examination of spectral, electromagnetic ecologies (in city and forest), embedding of chaotic systems within analogue electronics, and novel approaches to constructive plant biology.

more details, and online registration can be found at http://www.sommercampworkstation.de/?page_id=10

Fluxus xxxxx_micro_research workshop

nik — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:18:24 +0000

Start: 2009-07-04 10:00 Europe/Berlin

End: 2009-07-04 22:00 Europe/Berlin

Fluxus - Scheme livecoding, animation, games and plants

In this workshop you will find out about the emerging art form of livecoding and learn how to write simple scripts to create animations in 3D space. After an introduction to the scheme programming language and how to use it to build shapes and animate them, you will be let loose on prototype game code for groworld - a game still in production which takes elements from guerilla gardening, permaculture and plant growth.

Further details can be found at http://www.1010.co.uk/org/workshop.html

Mutamorphosis

maja — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 13:21:17 +0000

Start: 2007-11-08 12:00 Europe/Prague

End: 2007-11-10 20:00 Europe/Prague

On the Mutamorphosis conference, FoAM presented the paper "groWorld HPI" and participated in the debates on "Synaesthesia", "Smart Materials" and "Art and Science in Media Education".

http://www.mutamorphosis.org/

Vlaamse Overheid

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

Culture 2000

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

groworld /sys

_pix — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:49:33 +0000

'sys' stands for systems in groworld. In this strand, we focus on the role of that technology can play in developing the greener side of our cultures. sys aims to move away from making complicated machines towards growing complex systems.

sys projects: metabolicity

The foundation of sys is our interest in learning from plants, to help us move from a society of consumers to a society of producers. Biomimicry is one of the important inroads to reach this goal. As is working with nanotechnology on a scale where machines can be grown rather than constructed. The most direct way is to try to communicate with plants. Extrapolating from the field of human-computer-interaction, we are interested in developing interfaces for human-plant-interaction (HPI). With some assistance from ethnobotany and patabotany, among other things 'sys' researches electrochemical interfaces that can enable communication with the 'planetary other'. Within 'sys', the speculative field of HPI explores the nature of surfaces and processes required to facilitate mutually beneficial interaction between humans and plants.