The Guild for Reality Integrators and Generators (gRig)

gRig is a guild for European cultural and academic operators gathered around a mutual purpose; to mix separate realities, as well as bring whole new realities into existence.

Reflecting on the role of the arts, design and technology in an environment of turbulence

[re:gather] are monthly research gatherings at FoAM in Brussels.

Both FoAM Labs in Brussels and Amsterdam have periodic public events, designed as event series.

FoAM and its collaborators see public events as ways to disseminate our work, meet new people, as well as provide exposure to people and ideas we respect.

We present our work to international conferences, exhibitions and festivals. These activities are scalable interventions - from a lecture given by one of FoAM's collaborators, to a full-grown responsive environment, tended to by a whole team. We prefer to tailor our public events on an individual basis, allowing us to work in a site- and context specific manner.

LIREC aims to establish a multi-faceted theory of artificial long-term companions (including memory, emotions, cognition, communication, learning, etc.), embody this theory in robust and innovative technology and experimentally verify both the theory and technology in real social environments.

The botanical gardens are not usually associated with the living dead, but tonight they are. This is the Vampire Ball. From the high ceiling large shapes are hanging that somewhat resemble bloody lungs. Their appearance there is no mystery, FoAM is responsible for these atrocious organs. And just in time, because from the gutters and graveyards of Brussels a blood-thirsty mob has found it's way to the Botanique, and they are ready to party. The weird and deformed, the partially living and the partially complete dance to horrible tunes until deep into the morning.

http://www.bifff.org/en/

trg is a responsive environment shaped by four fundamental forces, made apparent on the human scale; the fictional equivalent of gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear interaction. It unfolds, expands and curls based on the energy levels within its perimeters.

'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

groWorld's 'sym' trajectory is looking at plants as organisational principles for the culture of the 21st century. It is about transforming cultural experiences, informed and inspired by biological and ecological systems.

sym projects: groworld game, germination x

The 'bio' strand of groworld is about gardening. About revegetation of urban environments, growing your own food, reconnecting rural and urban situations in ways that replenish, rather than deplete their environments.

bio projects: seedballing workshops, urban permaculture, the institute for augmented ecology

[foam]'s network is composed of individuals, collectives, organisations and institutions, who we collaborate with on various aspects of our activities. The network gains its stability from long-term relationships, while the new, or temporary nodes provide the flexibility and dynamics. The resilience of the network lies in its diversity - its nodes vary in size, geographic position, expertise and resources.

Friends and collaborators. past, present and future

.x-med-k. is a series of workshops and seminars investigating the changing faces of the fleeting field of 'experimental media arts'. From 2004 to 2008, three Brussels based organisations (FoAM, nadine, OKNO) joined forces to design and implement this heterogeneous series, for artists, designers and technologists interested in the experimental use of digital media, new materials and technologies.

FoAM vzw
Koolmijnenkaai 30-34
1080 Brussels
Belgium
email: bxl (at) fo (dot) am

phone: +32 2 513 5928

core team:
nik gaffney: nik (at) fo (dot) am | http://twitter.com/zzkt
dave griffiths: dave (at) fo (dot) am | http://www.pawfal.org/dave/blog/
maja kuzmanovic: maja (at) fo (dot) am | http://be.linkedin.com/in/majakuzmanovic
christina stadlbauer: christina (at) fo (dot) am
rasa alksnyte: rasa (at) fo (dot) am
bartaku: bvandeput (at) fo (dot) am

google earth