Playing

Drama Princess
On autonomous characters in virtual environments

Drama Princess is a research project by Tale of Tales (Auriea Harvey & Michael Samyn). The 'Drama Princess' herself should become a software module for autonomous characters, reusable in different realtime 3D environments and situations. The characters should have a strong dramatic impact and a range of emotional effects, rather than be correct recreations of human lifeforms.

FoAM and the Guild for Reality Integrators and Generators organised a talk by Adrian Hon, on Alternate Reality Games (ARG), collaborative fiction, puppetmasters, backstories and other tools for playful reality generation.

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.

"There is no night in my land.... it is forever summer's twilight" -- Lady Titania

At the height of the summer solstice*, we have a couple of exciting things to celebrate at FoAM in Brussels. A few months ago, we moved into a wonderful new space & we'd like to open its doors to our friends on midsummer night. We have also been busily redesigning our website and will launch it sometime during the solstice celebrations at http://fo.am.

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.

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.

A massive spheroid room slowly billows in one of the halls of the Westergas terrain in Amsterdam. Foamlab has joined the Kunstvlaai, a show for artist-initiatives and collectives organized by the Sandberg Institute. Within the bowels of this solitary pneumatic structure a headset is hidden. A recorded statement that is played through the headphones divides people into two groups: prickly people and gooey people. The Kunstvlaai extends over several of the Westergas buildings and into the park around them. A host of organisations show a rich variety of experiments and works there.

In the historical basements of the city of Arnhem Foamlab joins the ‘Made under Arnhem’ festival. In the deep vaults a Japanese dancer and choreographer, Kenzo Kusuda emerges from a wanton heap of fabric, the remnants of the Notsnic satellite. This space capsule plummeted back to Earth after it mysteriously liquefied into a silvery molten drop. Guided only by Notsnic sounds recovered by Theun Karelse, the performer and public discover an ever growing shape as the material is inflated.

A large orange dome is a theater for flying performances guided by a team of stewardesses. This giant jellyfish is a construction made by the inflatable master Theo Botschuiver. A crowd is managed within the complex. Seated on the second floor of the building, unsuspecting visitors are introduced to the physical reality of flying around the circular room. The stewardesses dressed in uniforms designed by Cocky Eek, only take over in case of an emergency.

A large sheet of paper blocks the view through the window of Foamlab for passers by. Only a funny looking hole provides a glimpse of the world inside. This world sprung forth from the hands of Eva Klee, who returns for a few weeks to Foamlab. She used to have her studio there, but now she is building a town. Her residency is accompanied by a festive meal in the middle of her city, and several occasions for discussions and reflections on the work in progress.

Sawdust on the floor, in the food and up your clothes in this show at Foamlab Amsterdam. The circus has come to Foamlab inspired by the tiny handcrafted circus by the artist Calder. Today we concentrate on the importance of play in creative practices. Designers, architects, artists and performers come together for a session of make-up and glitter.

The world of theoretical Physics was brightened-up by the charming genius of safecracker, drummer, womaniser and Nobel-prise winner Richard Feynman. In an interview with BBC Horizon Feynman explains eloquently how scientific knowledge enriches his perception of beauty and convincingly dismantles the notion of ‘Entzauberung’ as caused by science. This meeting at Foamlab concentrates on the intricacies of creative processes.

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.