amsterdam

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.

THE MAKING AND REMAKING OF SAINTS AND VENERATIVE PLACES
A Resilients' workshop on Otok Rab, Croatia
by Pollinators (Performing Pictures, nadine, FoAM AMS)

The Pollinators are a part of a growing network of cultural practitioners, with their core in the Resilients project. 'Resilients' are people of all ages preparing for uncertain futures, by experimenting with resilient forms living & working as a form of artistic practice.

Pop-up Park,

design your own park.

This festival is aimed at designing a public garden or park with local residents under guidance of 4 experts. The garden in question is located behind the Meester coupeur opleiding on one side and the Jan Evertsenstraat on the other side. (It is located at the same square as FoAM's edible garden.)

Be part of mapping the energetic value of the Dutch urban landscape; how much energy does it take for semi-skilled contemporary foragers to gather wild foods and what energetic value is contained in nearby urban environments? On May 8th the Middle Kingdom of Weeds festival features a forage psychogeographic expedition that will starts at 10.30 from Station Sloterdijk, Amsterdam. Using .walk algorithms this foraging expedition will map and explore the caloric potential of the area.

Team members include:
- a geographer, who maps the edibles on Boskoi

FoAM will be presenting the Boskoi mobile phone app for foragers during Pecha Kucha in Amsterdam.

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Cross species social networks,

The forth AE-meetup takes closer look at the question: Which social media platforms will animals and plants be using? And the possibility of using modern game interfaces like Kinect for cross species interaction or animal studies.

http://www.meetup.com/augmentedecology/events/16552509/

LAYAR ecologies:

The corporate battle over SmartCities has shifted last December to a race to dominance over monitoring our ecosytems.
This second meetup of Augmented Ecology will be focussing on these recent developments with an overview of the fast changing whirlpool of artistic, scientific and corporate projects that collect data on our environment en ecosystems. Johannes will be showing his LAYAR based air quality network called MIMAQ.

More info:
http://www.meetup.com/augmentedecology/events/16177090/

The Institute for Augmented Ecology is a temporary office within FoAM that investigates some issues that have been simmering within groWorld. Its an exploration of the field of AE before it actually gets to be defined and/or narrowed down by convention. For now it looks like a one year research-period starting Jan 2011 focussed on how the tagosphere is connecting to the biosphere.

This research looks:

* to temporarily expand the focus on HPI and move beyond flora.
* to identify or sketch new perspectives, roles, opportunities and risks of AE and trans-species networks.

FoAM promotes human-plant interaction. One such tool is Boskoi, a mobile phone application that helps you map and navigate
the edible landscape. It offers detailed information on wild food sources, their location, edible parts, medicinal
and culinary uses. It is a database of ethnoculinary and ethnobotanic knowledge. Based on Ushahidi, the app is also open to mail, sms, tweet and uploaded pictures.

First Meetup on Augmented Ecology
FoAM Amsterdam is initiating the Institute for Augmented Ecology (IforAE). This is a continuation of the work on Boskoi (an Android mobile foraging application, which is in development).

IforAE aims to function as a platform for discussion about media hooking onto the ecosphere and to find out what Augmented Ecology actually could be before it actually gets to be defined and/or narrowed down by convention.

more info at
http://www.meetup.com/augmentedecology/

In this project Wietske Maas explores the potential urban wild food sources of Amsterdam-Noord. FoAM will be participating in the foraging with Boskoi the foraging application for mobile phone. An important part of the meal will be the harvested garden snails that are on show at the Mediamatic snailfarm on Vijzelstraat.

http://www.mediamatic.net/page/162673/en

CITIES Foundation together with the Municipality of Amsterdam, is co-organizing an exhibition/workshop about Urban Agriculture. This event will take place during the Week of Sustainability, a 9 days program made by the city of Amsterdam to support and promote sustainable projects in the city.

CITIES, a platform for urban research based in Amsterdam, is currently researching and promoting alternative approaches for the development of temporary urban agriculture practice. The exhibition is part of the 'Farming the City' project.

Field-testing the Boskoi app and mapping the terrain of the demolished Calve (peanut-butter and mayonnaise) factory, during the Anarchitecture festival. http://www.levenaanhetspoor.nl/projecten-aan-het-spoor/anarchitecture

A wartime food storage prepared from local wild plants is presented by Wietske Maas at the fortress Ruigenhoek in the Netherlands. FoAM Amsterdam assisted with the map showing edible plant locations. Claud Biemans who helped with plant spotting, will give several plant excursions on the opening Sunday.