FoAM - production

Physical and Alternate Reality Narratives (PARN)

maja — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 14:48:17 +0000

The central focus of the PARN project is dealing with the possibilities and problems of creating, presenting and representing narratives in physical space. Storytelling is a fundamental human capacity and is widespread in a variety of cultural forms as well as being one of the ways in which, according to many researchers of learning and awareness, we make sense of the world as we experience and reflect it. As the acclaimed poet Simon Ortiz puts it: „there are no truths, only stories.“

FoAM's role in PARN is research & design of an alternate reality narrative, an emerging story-scape inspired by Masanobu Fukuoka's creed "the ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings":

With the advent of massive urbanisation, labour specialisation and new forms of entertainment, our relationship with nature has become frayed. This relationship can be re-invigorated by straddling the places where nature and culture are most distanced - urban and online environments. With alternate reality narratives (ARN), we look at engaging people in a new kind of immersive story, where nature and culture interact. The story embraces the innovative and participatory capabilities of new technologies, adapted to today's turbulent eco-systems and grounded in the cultural traditions of the past. The ARNs combine a range of contemporary storytelling media with diverse European urban contexts, cultures and people, through a rich story and speculative history.

PARN is coordinated by Time's Up (AT), in collaboration with FoAM (BE), Lighthouse (UK) and Blast Theory (UK). FoAM's additional allies, partners & advisors in PARN are Six to Start (UK), Foamlab (NL), Synfonie (UK) and Tale of Tales (BE).

With the support of the Culture Programme (2007 - 2013) of the European Union and the Flemish Authorities.

Groworld Games

dave — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 15:33:59 +0000

During 2008 and 2009 a small group of groworlders including members of FoAM and invited participants Tale of Tales and Six to Start worked on designs and prototypes for games that would strengthen the connection between plants and people.

Research Reports

Reports of research done and the work process:

Tales of Tales' research report

Dave's research report

Try the games

FoAM's games prototypes are available to download here:

Mac Version

Linux Version

Windows Version (copy the Fluxus directory to "C:\Program Files")

The code is included in these packages which you can play with (have a hunt around). The development repository is here here. These games are built using fluxus.

Screenshots of Tale of Tales's prototypes are here

Ongoing work

This project has fed into further work with Germination X. See also more work in progress.

Germination X

dave — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 11:36:29 +0000

Computer games allow us to take on other lives, and see the world from new perspectives. FoAM has been working for a number of years on using games to strengthen the connection between plants and people. Our latest approach takes popular games such as FarmVille as inspiration, but explores what would happen if they were infused with aspects of permaculture, and where characters called “Plant Spirits” help or hinder you as you discover a world organised by companion planting.

Germination X is a project to experiment with technology and research from the lirec project and use it in an online multiplayer game.

The game
Source code
Concept art
Development blog

Boskoi

theun — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 13:22:03 +0000

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.

In the Netherlands the countryside is dominated by industrial agriculture this means the level of biodiversity in a city like Amsterdam is significantly higher than it is in rural areas. In public perception however it is still the countryside that is associated with an experience of nature. Boskoi also visualizes the richness of urban wildlife and vital green arteries in the city.

Database: http://boskoi.org
Blog: http://boskoi.posterous.com/

Boskoi intro movie on Prezi

t* series

nik — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:40:37 +0000

The environments of the t*series are immersive hybrid realities, or responsive 'play spaces'. They are designed for full-body interaction of human participants with ‘irreal’ responsive worlds.

TGarden, txOom and trg - the three distinct groups of environments within the series - are technologically enhanced spaces, that encourage playful explorations of physical and digital surroundings, as well as fluid dialogues between people, materials and media. These environments change over time, influenced by their internal processes and interactions with their temporary inhabitants. The environments respond to activities occurring within them, through digital media (e.g. sound modulation, ambient lighting and computer graphics) and physical structures (active materials, soft walls and pliant costumes). Discrete gestures, for instance, cause local 'disturbances'; the accumulated actions of larger groups over time cause slow changes in the atmosphere. As in a natural eco-system, localised events have an effect on larger patterns. The changes in social atmosphere during an experience implicitly change the environment, often in unexpected ways – an individual explorer playing the space as an instrument; or a small group of friends rushing through the space, flooding it with speckled light; or children digging through patterns of sound, telling unexpected stories. By combining explicit and hinted transformations, responsive environments can begin to feel 'life-like'; adaptive, autonomous and evolving.

tgarden

nik — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 13:30:53 +0000

TGarden is a responsive environment, inspired by calligraphy and scrying. In TGarden, the players' gestures are being transformed into generative computer graphics and digital soundscapes, leaving marks and traces in much the same way as a calligrapher would with brushes and ink.

When visitors approach the TGarden, they choose from a range of costumes, designed to encourage particular kinds of movement. Light and voluminous for space-filling, fast movements; tight and restrictive for small, fine gestures; heavy and transparent for slow, meditative actions. In intimate dressing chambres, in addition to the costumes, the players are equipped with accelerometers, sensors able to detect changes in speed and tilt of the movement, an optical device for tracking the players' position and direction in the space, as well as a small wearable transmitter, that will communicate with the software systems 'back-stage'. Once the players enter the space, they are left alone to explore the connections between their bodies and the environment. A swiping motion could send an organic-looking, digital shadow smearing across the floor; walking across the room could sound like swimming with a swarm of invisible, but musical creatures. The sonic and the visual media are layered in textures and meanings, allowing for various styles and interpretations. Even though simple interactions are easily learned, it takes time to get acquainted with the environment's own nature. As an apprentice calligrapher must learn to find a balance between the flow of ink, the pressure of the brush and the speed of his gesture, a player in TGarden slowly learns to write, scratch and dig through the media space, to be able to play it as an instrument...

Together with Sponge, we designed and developed several installments over a two-year period between 2000 and 2001, testing them with audiences across Europe and North America.

txoom

nik — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 13:25:16 +0000

The word txOom is an amalgam of ‘texture’ and ‘bloom’. As a part of txOom, we produced two environments which were thick, malleable and layered as a texture, elegant and responsive as a bloom.

Designed as imaginary eco-systems, txOom spaces 'feed' on by the bodily movement of the players. The kinetic energy that the movement generates is 'recycled' into sounds, light and visual textures, rendering effects of movement visible in the space in which the movement happens. The turbulent gush of air generated by a vigorous jump, or small swirls of wind sent across from one person to another in an animated conversation; these otherwise imperceptible airflows are amplified until they become visible and audible. Movement is not just a propelling force, but a generative force - it gives form and behaviour to the simulated life-forms in txOom's irreal eco-system. Using active materials and digital media, we are able to magnify, camouflage and influence the players' gestures. These gestures are captured, analysed and interpreted by tiny sensing, computing and communication devices embedded in the players' costumes. The movement is translated into digital signals able to influence the generation of rich streams of audiovisual media. The media are projected in the play-space and experienced in real-time. txOom environments evolve through perpetual cycles of influence – garments influence movement, which generates media, that define the space, inspiring movement, which ruffles the garments, that stretch the space... To design this imaginary eco-system, we were inspired by biological systems, as well as cultural phenomena. As with the growth of biological organisms, shaped by the internal needs and external pressures, so is the the form and experience of txOom guided by its inhabitants, as well as the contexts in which they are placed - be it a circus, a gallery, or a horse stable.

txOom was a collaboration with four European organisations (Time's Up, Kibla, Interactive Institute and Future Physical) and several independent artists, between 2002 and 2003.

lyt_A

lina — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 16:42:14 +0000

Lyt_A is an installation, an instrument and a translation medium in one. It is a mechatronic, semi-flexible structure that can transmit haptic information on a distance: when the structure is touched on one site, the touch will be visible and touchable on another.

Touch, the most intimate of our five senses is often used as a reality-check; what I can touch is real. Touch is an ultimately interactive communication medium: the one who touches is being touched as well... The installation has two identical, but mirrored parts that are placed far away from each other. Placing the two structures in distant locations encourages the visitors to play with each other by manipulating the structures with their hands and bodies, learning about each-other's shapes through touch. The visitors' touches remain as shape-traces in the memory of the installation. In the moments of low activity, the installation brings the traces back to the surface of the structures.

Lyt_A was developed for Phaeno, the Science Centre in Wolfsburg, Germany.

23-15-43

lina — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 16:38:26 +0000

Productions

_pix — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 12:49:24 +0000

At FoAM, we produce interactive, engaging social experiences. A production involves an iterative process of design, development and facilitation of these experiences. They are produced in transdisciplinary teams, where every member of the team is considered creative person, whether they are software developers, physicists, gardeners, psychologists, or artists. Productions are acts of collaborative creation. Taking this a step further, our productions are designed to involve their visitors, users and players as pro-active participants able to shape their own experience.

The vision behind this approach to creative production is driven by our belief that the society of the 21st century should reduce the amount of consumers, while increasing the amount of producers. FoAM as a cultural organisation can contribute to this shift by creating evolving experiences, rather than static artefacts; responsive situations, rather than mute objects. The outcomes of our productions have manifold forms – from virtual and physical gardens to immersive installations and performative dinners. What all of these results share is their focus on participation and collaboration – between the members of the production team, as well as the members of the public. They are about creating a context in which relationships between people, things and environments surroundings can be cultivated. They are making us aware of the continuous, reciprocal influence that everything has on everything else.

trg

pix — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 23:16:09 +0000

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.

The experience begins in a cafe, with specially designed snacks and cocktails, flooded with sonic echoes from the depths of the transient reality and illuminated by a window into the visual melange of the trg atmosphere. We invite several players at a time to join us behind a stretched fabric wall. Sometimes we blindfold them. They are guided to a seat, to submerge their feet in warm water, bubbled up by foot-jacuzzies. After having their legs dried and massaged, stories are woven from the lines on their feet, socks stretched over their tingling toes. We equip them with a new 'head', through which the physical environment becomes invisible, making space for the visual immersion in the simulated one. We lead the players during their first steps in trg and then leave them to explore... Once in the space, people dance, sleep, jumpe, crawl, get lost, listen, watch, play, touch and laugh (a lot), while being sensed by the computational system guiding the dynamics of the space. Their actions are translated into perturbations of the sonic and visual fields that surround them. The fabric architecture is similarly elastic and compliant to every movement. Moving around, they begin exploring the space by connecting their disparate sensory experiences. They learn where the material is rough, where it stretches into a thick tube higher than themselves, or where it becomes too unstable to walk. They find their way through different visual pools, playing with the abstract shapes generated by their movement. They tug on the fibres of the space and hear it scream. Together they modulate a deep hum that vibrated through the hollows of the space, as well as of their organs.

groworld / sym

_pix — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:48:40 +0000

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

sym looks at emergence, diversity, resilience and other properties of Earth-bound systems, to develop a deeper connection between human societies and the rest of the planet. To begin with, sym aims to encourage a stronger connection between contemporary cultural experiences and plant life; in physical, hybrid and cybernetic realities. Within sym, creative practitioners from all walks of life work together to imagine and bring about a greener contemporary culture. We collect and collate knowledge that can enable us to develop the vegetal side of our minds. We weave stories and draw possible futures. Then we rehearse them through play and games, hands-on experiments, generative media and responsive environments. We bring food and food-related systems back into the focus of cultural experiences. We craft biomimetic and biomorphic structures with biodegradable, found and living materials. We make, but also unmake. We design experiences that can be consumed, subsumed and absorbed, in all stages of their lifecycles. Inspired by the necessary process of hibernation, sym sometimes involves doing absolutely nothing.

groworld

_pix — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:45:34 +0000

The groWorld initiative brings together three ‘forces’ capable of transforming the world on human and ecological scales: culture, gardening and technology. These three strands of inquiry inform and support each other, aiming to forge new symbiotic relationships between the post-industrial human societies and the rest of the Earth.

In its current installment, groWorld explores interactions between plants and humans from multiple perspectives. We work on minimising borders and maximising edges between man-made and vegetal, by entangling culture & cultivation {sym}, building & growing {bio} and nature & technology {sys}

productions // sitemap

nik — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 09:57:30 +0000