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Entangling

There are many worlds and many realities in our universe. When one reality, or one world-view is superimposed on another, it is inevitable that social, economic and cultural problems arise. Hierarchies of worlds are constructs of a bygone era. Ecologies of worlds should guide us in considering our future. We imagine this future to be responsive, adaptive and interconnected. We abandon the static and universal designs of the industrial era and move towards a world of malleable materials, objects and spaces. Where buildings can sustain themselves and replenish their environments, technologies can function as immune systems rather than panic attacks, materials are active, pliant and compostable. A world which all of us can influence and where entanglement and diversity are seen as positive things. We can begin by designing environments that can respond to physical, environmental, or social needs. Not only the needs of human beings, but also of the organisms and elements with whom we share the Biosphere. By accepting that our actions and our futures are deeply entwined with many others, we can glimpse the larger patterns of these connections.

At FoAM, we often work on entangling physical and digital realities. Exploring the relationships between materials and media opens up a wide continuum of 'mixing realities'. In this continuum, we are looking for ways to make digital media more tangible and physical materials more responsive and adaptive. We are looking for ways of giving our environments an ability to evolve, rather than constructing them to always remain the same. Rather than attempting to segment the world in chunks of 'things that are built and static' and 'things that are grown and evolving', we explore them as active and interacting elements of a whole. By designing systems which incorporate the grown, the built and the simulated, we have quickly reached the limits of reductionism and have began dabbling in the world of complexity. We have abandoned the modernist search for simplicity and began looking for clarity. In the process, instead of purity, we found fecundity.

related activities

groworld / sym

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.

groworld /sys

'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.

trg

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.

LIREC

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.

gRig

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.

lyt_A

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.

txoom

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.

tgarden

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.

p~lot

P~lot or the Play Lab on Open Grown Territories brought together a motley crew of artists, designers, students, theorists and enthusiasts in the tiny Istrian village of Groznjan. P~lot was a workshop designed to examine the 'play' and 'games' as tools for mixing physical and digital realities.

Angelo Vermeulen: Translucent Futures

Ubiquitous technology and the attrition of civil rights and privacy

related events

Bitesize lecture with SymbioticA

2007-03-22 18:30 Europe/Brussels
2007-03-22 20:30 Europe/Brussels
Location: 
Tree & Leaf, Varkensmarkt 8, B-1000 Brussels, Belgium.

SymbioticA is an artistic laboratory dedicated to the research, learning and critique of the life sciences. Operating since 2000, SymbioticA is the first research laboratory of its kind, enabling artists to engage in wet biology practices in a biological science department. SymbioticA's artists have exhibited their pioneering works world wide, best known for their work on Stelarc's Extra Ear and the Welcome Trust awarded Pig Wings. It is FoAM's pleasure to bring these renowned artists and researchers to Brussels and Belgium for the first time.

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Bitesize lecture with Tina Gonsalves and Tom Donaldson

2004-10-01 13:00 Europe/Brussels
2004-10-01 17:00 Europe/Brussels
Location: 
FoAM Lab, Koolmijnenkaai 30-34 Quai Des Charbonnages, B-1080 Brussels, Belgium

Tina Gonsalves and Tom Donaldson, founders of Clutch have created ‘Medulla Intimata’, responsive video jewelery. While wearing the jewelery, software monitors the tone and intonation in the wearer’s voice. These measurements help the software select video sequences appropriate to the emotional state of the wearer. Once selected, the

Bitesize symposium On Borders and Edges

2004-05-29 00:00 Europe/Brussels
Location: 
Nadine, Brussels, Belgium

Panel presentations and discussion with Kristina Andersen, Vali Lalioti, Alok Nandi and Sha Xin Wei

Bitesize lecture with Catherine Watling and Angelo Vermeulen

2005-12-01 20:00 Europe/Brussels
2005-12-01 23:00 Europe/Brussels
Location: 
FoAM Lab, Koolmijnenkaai 30-34 Quai Des Charbonnages, B-1080 Brussels, Belgium

Our two guests in the last 'bite-size-lecture' for 2005 are experts in artistically grown ecologies and ecologically inspired arts. They talked to us about what happens when you depend on living (or recently living) organisms to become cooperative partners in your artistic process...

related publications

TRG

Publication Type:

Audiovisual

Authors:

FoAM; Time's Up

Source:

(2006)

ISBN:

9081073338

URL:

http://fo.am/files/trg_book.pdf

[tk's:um]

Publication Type:

Audiovisual

Authors:

FoAM et al.

Source:

(2003)

TGarden

Publication Type:

Audiovisual

Authors:

FoAM; Sponge

Source:

(2002)

related pages

The Libarynth

The ever-growing Libarynth is exactly what its name implies – a hybrid between a library and a labyrinth, a maze of pages in various stages of completion. FoAM's collaborators and friends use the Libarynth as their research diary, sketch-book, or activity log. Some pages are valuable references, on a variety of topics; from visual programming, to inflatables and even vegetarian-friendly restaurants around the world. Others are fully-fledged research reports, or concept documents.