FoAM - luminous green

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.

Luminous Green Retreat 2010

maja — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 16:10:59 +0000

Start: 2010-07-26 17:00 Europe/Brussels

End: 2010-07-28 17:00 Europe/Brussels

Luminous Green 2010 is a retreat about resilience; about a human world, that is enlightened, imaginative, electrified and most importantly – living in a fertile symbiosis with the planet. The retreat offers an exceptional occasion, a place where to learn about and from each other. In the process, the participants will attempt to jointly explore questions related to the theme of the retreat: resilience. What would a resilient human world be like? How do you experience resilience in your life? How do you encourage it in yourself and others? What can we do (or not do) as individuals, communities and organisations to increase the resilience of our environments and cultures?

The retreat aims to stimulate transdisciplinary discussions and collaborations between people from all walks of life - artists, scientists, designers, academics, gardeners, activists, social entrepreneurs, cooks and policy-makers. The invited participants include renowned experts alongside curious enthusiasts, interested in making their work, life or society an example of resilience, innovation and inspiration.

Luminous Green is designed to encourage the interaction and commitment of everyone involved. Inspired by the Art of Hosting, we use a range of participatory facilitation techniques (including Open Space, Appreciative Inquiry and collaborative prototyping) to spawn conversations, contacts and propositions, for looking beyond (and beneath) conservation and sustainability.

Further reading:
http://luminousgreen.org
http://lib.fo.am/luminous/

Tipping Point

nik — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 17:55:39 +0000

Start: 2010-01-25 09:00 Europe/Brussels

End: 2010-01-26 20:00 Europe/Brussels

FoAM will take part in the TippingPoint event held at the EESC.

"TippingPoint aims to ‘harness the power of the imagination to help stabilise the climate’. We offer a range of activities centred on exposing creative artists to the enormous challenges of climate change; at the heart of this lies a series of meetings involving very high quality, intense dialogue between artists, scientists and others close to the heart of the issue. These encounters provide a chance to explore the broader cultural challenges precipitated by climate change."

http://www.tippingpoint.org.uk/

Metabolicity workshop

maja — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 17:24:50 +0000

Start: 2009-02-26 00:00 Europe/Brussels

End: 2009-02-28 00:00 Europe/Brussels

Rachel Wingfield and Mathias Gmachl of Loop.ph conduct an exploratory workshop on lightweight structures and hydroponic techniques for vertical gardening.

http://www.loop.ph/bin/view/Loop/MetaboliCity

Launch of Culture|Futures

nik — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:28:28 +0000

Start: 2009-12-07 13:00 Europe/Copenhagen

End: 2009-12-07 19:30 Europe/Copenhagen

"Culture|Futures creates an enabling environment for those cultural actors who are moved to express their perspectives about creating an Ecological Age, by recognising, encouraging and supporting them.

The Culture|Futures expanding spiral of engagement begins its journey at the launch symposium on 7th December. Participants are invited to explore the Culture|Futures proposition and to grow the spiral of engagement supporting the COP climate change negotiations.

At the working seminar on the following two days, 8th/9th December, cultural actors from many backgrounds and from around the world, will address the strategic role of culture in delivering an Ecological Age. Participants will collaborate to develop and crystallise the cultural messages about how the spiral of engagement will expand and involve ever more people."

http://www.culturefutures.org/

EcoArt, at Waag

theun — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:47:38 +0000

Start: 2009-05-26 20:00 GMT+2

EcoArt, lecture in cooperation with artist and scientist Boo Chapple, environmental artist / ecological researcher Brandon Ballengée and artist, bioartist Andy Gracie from England and FoAM member Theun Karelse.

Tuesday 26 May, at 8 pm in the Theatrum Anatomicum of the Waag. Entrance is free.

Luminous Green Desert

maja — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 10:55:16 +0000

Start: 2009-02-13 14:00 US/Pacific

End: 2009-02-20 23:59 US/Pacific

These workshops are organised by Marko Peljhan. FoAM is doing two remote presentations at the two workshops (on Saturday the 14th of February and Tuesday 17th of February).

The UCIRA LUMINOUS GREEN DESERT RESEARCH OPEN SPACE gathering will start on February 13 2009 at the UC Riverside Palm Desert Research Centre and will be concentrated on the issues surrounding the Desert Sustainable Gardens Initiative. The gathering in the Boyd Deep Canyon Desert research center will take place over two days and will be designed as an Open Space workshop, using Open Space Technology, a pro-active facilitation technique, the gathering aims to encourage reciprocal exchange of information, knowledge and experience in a non-hierarchical manner. Participants will live in the Boyd Deep Canyon Desert research center and camp and will share the responsibilities of organization, cooking and discussion.

On February 19 and 20 2009 the LUMINOUS GREEN OPEN SPACE WORKSHOP will take place at UCSB. The UCSB workshop will be devoted to a trandisciplinary discussion on the potential of art/science alliances for world changing activities and will involve a plethora of artists, academics, humanists, social and natural scientists and engineers in discussions devoted to strategizing future world systems that will go beyond the current status quo. Is there anything that we can learn from existing social experiments, or the fringes of arts, design and technology to help us make our economic and political systems less fragile and unstable? What can artists, designers and engineers learn from the way policy and business approach the global environmental turbulences? Are individual ethical horizons and participation the basis of any world changing activities? The second day will be devoted to an Open Space Session connected to the UCSB West Campus spaces and the experimental Media Arts and Technology Program and SciARC student STEM initiative.

Luminous Green at Pecha Kucha Night

maja — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 10:12:54 +0000

Start: 2009-01-16 20:20 Europe/Brussels

End: 2009-01-16 23:20 Europe/Brussels

Maja Kuzmanovic will present Luminous Green and related ideas at the Pecha Kucha Night:

http://www.flandersdc.be/view/nl/31170688-Pecha+Kucha+Brussels+Vol.+06.h...

LG - Time's Up

maja — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:32:01 +0000

Start: 2008-10-23 09:00 GMT+2

End: 2008-10-25 23:00 GMT+2

A Luminous Green satellite event, organised by Time's Up and the Guild for Reality Integrators and Generators:

Dates: 23rd | 24th | 25th October 2008

Luminous Green is an attempt to become more aware of our own ecological and human responsibilities. A moment’s pause, deceleration and self-reflection are a common core.

Within the workshop in Linz Time's Up would like to establish a widely self- sufficient environment and talk about aspects concerning new social- political models. Activists, manufacturers and researchers will work on small communal structures, outline their ideas with regard to environmentally friendly usage of future worlds and encourage boundary transcending confrontations and debates.

More information: http://timesup.org/laboratory/LuminousGreen/LG_details.html

Lectures:
* Foam: Grow your own worlds - http://fo.am
* Andreas Strauss: Build your own jacuzzi - http://andreasstrauss.com
* Folke Köbberling: City as resource - http://www.folkekoebberling.de
* Christian Siefkes: Peer economy - http://www.siefkes.net
* Paul Schausberger: Filtering water - http://economyaustria.at/Text/?id=2889840

Tinkering on:
* a water pump
* different types of ovens & jacuzzis
* water filters
* open resource walk and creation of an environment based on it
* ...

* For registration and any inquiries please contact workshop [at] timesup [dot] org

* There is no participation fee in order to encourage independent researchers and practitioners to attend.

* Time's Up will provide subsistence for people that register until Wednesday 22nd October.

Hands-on Change

maja — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 14:23:38 +0000

Start: 2007-07-08 20:00 Europe/Amsterdam

End: 2007-07-08 23:00 Europe/Amsterdam

Hands-on Change. An evening of discussions and presentations by Suprabha Seshan, Maja Kuzmanovic, Maria Blaisse and Cocky Eek. Hosted by Shibumi Friends International.

Deep in the forest beside a muddy little path stands a colorful sign which says 'Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary'.

This is the home of our first speaker Suprabha Seshan. Today in Amsterdam Suprabha with her pictures and Cocky with her video, showed us how a family tries to garden back the biosphere, simply because it needs to be done to improve life. Environmental awareness is often associated with restrictions; there are all kinds of things we will no longer be allowed to do. Suprabha looks at it in a much more positive way: improving the quality of life.

This is central also to the work of Maja Kuzmanovic. With her organization [FoAM] she tries to improve the relationships between
people and nature and technology. She showed children covered in mud to make seedballs that can bring flowers to hidden city-corners. And Open Sauces a dinner where the food serves as a powerpoint presentation. And she spoke about a project with the World Toilet Organisation and a visit to the Barefoot College in India.

In a similar way Maria tries to improve the relationship between people and materials, in design. There is hardly any waste if you work along with the natural properties of materials, instead of just pushing them into a machine to press it into shape. Maria showed us crisp ice crystals and the bubbling waters of cymatics: wave-phenomenons in liquids and emulsions. She suspects a direct connection between consciousness and matter.

In all these presentations we could see just how fruitful a good balance between ourselves and the material world (including our bodies) can be.

More info:
http://www.shibumifriends.org
http://www.gbsanctuary.org
http://fo.am
http://luminousgreen.org
http://www.mariablaisse.com

Eco Design Salon

maja — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 13:47:02 +0000

Start: 2007-10-11 14:00 Europe/London

End: 2007-10-11 19:00 Europe/London

What future for eco-textile design?

FoAM (Maja Kuzmanovic) participated in the "International conversations" together with Carole Collet, talking about ethics and aesthetics and eco-design, about permaculture and Luminous Green.

http://mag.tfrg.org.uk/node/43

Vlaamse Overheid

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

Culture 2000

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

Luminous Green Workshop 2007

maja — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:23:51 +0000

Start: 2007-05-01 14:00 Europe/Brussels

End: 2007-05-05 17:00 Europe/Brussels

In a time when energy use and electronic waste production should be rapidly decreasing, can media artists comfortably use arsenals of computers and their peripherals in the name of art?

Several artists and designers came together for four days to explore the opportunities and challenges of working to minimise our ecological foot-prints, while maximising our cultural hand-prints. Should we gather together to design and deploy new strategies for functioning independently of power-grids, proprietary networks and established waste disposal networks? How will our artworks change when we can only count on low-power computing for processing and presentation? What kind of displays can we use for audiovisual works, without relying on power-sucking projectors and amplifiers? And - what is the low-power, renewable aesthetics of ecologically sustainable media arts?

Using a collaborative methodology, we learned about designing miniature solar power plants and discussed a waste processing using microwave ovens. We built solar-powered singing robots and looked at designing artworks from a whole-systems perspective. Each day started with a theoretical presentation or a technical tutorial, while the afternoons were reserved for hands-on experiments in small teams. The evenings were filled with screenings, discussions and salon-type presentations, where the participants had a chance to get to know each other, spawn new collaborations, or just chill-out in good company.

Workshop participants: Angelo Vermeulen, Olu Vandenbussche, Patrick De Koning, Robert Brecevic, Geska Anderson, Vahida Ramujkic, Annemie Maes, Steven Pickles, Bart Vandeput, Rachel Wingfield, Matthias, Gmachl, Carole Collet, Cristina della Giustina, Toby Borland, Marko Peljhan, Goran Kuzmanovic, S. Srinivasan Rajan, Tapio Makela, Andrew Morrison, Idunn Sem, Herve Gouget, Nik Gaffney, Lina Kusaite, Rasa Alksnyte, Pieter de Wel and Maja Kuzmanovic.

PhoEf – Photons and the electric kiss

maja — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:11:18 +0000

Start: 2008-05-30 13:30 Canada/Central

End: 2008-05-30 17:30 Canada/Central

PhoEf is a research project led by Bart Vandeput, exploring the essence, use and abuse of the photovoltaic effect - the conversion of light into electrical energy - within the realms of science, industry, technology and the arts.

As photovoltaics illustrate the interwovenness of matter and mankind, with the elements and the cosmos, it promises to trigger a deeper understanding of the qualities, origins and movements of light. Of the Sun. PhoEf provides both sky and earthbound information, sometimes structured alongside linear vertical paths, only to make an abrupt stop. Finding junctions between intuitive text and the flowing of new (inter)connections in an attempt to reach, inspire and connect researchers, developers and artists.

As light is the primary source of energy in photovoltaics, these technologies are subject to the schizophrenia of the photon’s behavior as both a wave and particle, their multiplicities; healthy to dangerous, subtle to aggressive, absent to abundant and from invisible to tangible. Might it lead to just enough energy for an electric kiss, or to the rise of one of the Buddhas, perhaps even to the deepening of our understanding of electricity?

http://www.subtletechnologies.com/2008/?page_id=208