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| five_things [2022-02-18 16:40] – nik | five_things [2022-03-01 11:24] (current) – 2a02:578:8594:1300:19f9:33d:38c5:25b0 |
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| ==== 5 THINGS TO THINK ABOUT ==== | ==== 5 THINGS TO THINK ABOUT ==== |
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| https://commonplace.knowledgefutures.org/5t3a | https://commonplace.knowledgefutures.org/5t3a |
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| (by JP, NG & MK?) | (Nik Gaffney, Maja Kuzmanovic, Justin Pickard & FoAM) |
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| [[https://fo.am/|FoAM]] is a distributed network working across art, science, nature and everyday life. Guided by the imperative grow your own worlds, we encourage things to grow — creating immersive situations, participatory workshops, experimental publications, site-specific experiences and experiential scenarios. Since FoAM's inception we have been 'growing worlds' in the interstices of different fields of knowledge, geography and worldviews. In a time of hardened borders and travel restrictions, we temporarily turned inwards; [[https://fo.am/anarchive/|reaching back into FoAM's archives]] with an eye to what might be of use to us and others, while seeking new resonances and connections with things happening elsewhere. | [[https://fo.am/|FoAM]] is a distributed network working across art, science, nature and everyday life. Since FoAM's inception we have been 'growing worlds' in the interstices of different fields of knowledge, geography and worldviews, creating immersive situations, participatory workshops, experimental publications, site-specific experiences and experiential scenarios. In a time of hardened borders and travel restrictions, we temporarily turned inwards; [[https://fo.am/anarchive/|reaching back into FoAM's archives]] with an eye to what might be of use to us and others, while seeking new resonances and connections with things happening elsewhere. |
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| Delving through 20 years of texts, images and other media, scattered across backups, bookshelves, websites, servers and a sprawling wiki, we've uncovered, rediscovered and discarded many things along the way. Theories, practices, ideas and techniques to proactively engage with a changing world. So here are five 'things' we have been thinking about, in some form or another, recently; five glimpses of our current preoccupations. The 'things' include fragments from our archives, along with resonant examples of current work by others, gathered around five areas of concern — hospitality, uncertainty, technology, ecology and transience. | Delving through 20 years of texts, images and other media, scattered across backups, bookshelves, websites, servers and a sprawling wiki, we've uncovered, rediscovered and discarded many things along the way. Theories, practices, ideas and techniques to proactively engage with a changing world. So here are five 'things' we have been thinking about, in some form or another, recently; five glimpses into our current preoccupations. The 'things' include fragments from our archives, along with resonant examples of current work by others, gathered around five areas of concern — hospitality, uncertainty, technology, ecology and transience. |
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| =====Hosting and hospitality==== | =====Hosting and hospitality==== |
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| ===Technological imaginaries=== | ====Technological imaginaries==== |
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| ((https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/NAMA_Machine_d%27Anticyth%C3%A8re_4.jpg}} | {{https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/NAMA_Machine_d%27Anticyth%C3%A8re_4.jpg}} |
| Fragment A (rear) of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism|Antikythera mechanism]]; photo: Wikimedia Commons. | Fragment A (rear) of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism|Antikythera mechanism]]; photo: Wikimedia Commons. |
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| Those answers can come from unlikely places. [[https://charlesreid1.com/wiki/Lono_Computing|LONO systems]] (low or no power), Ethereum’s [[https://ethereum.org/en/what-is-ethereum/|World Computer]], and the ’communal computer’ of [[https://dynamicland.org/|Dynamicland]] raise as many questions as answers. The ambitions of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu|Xanadu]] or [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn|Cybersyn]] hum in the background. Simulations with CESM ([[ https://www.cesm.ucar.edu/|Community Earth System Model]]) continue on a planetary scale, while researchers in “Unconventional Computing” find ways to compute with liquids, chemical reactions, slime moulds, and algae balls. | Those answers can come from unlikely places. [[https://charlesreid1.com/wiki/Lono_Computing|LONO systems]] (low or no power), Ethereum’s [[https://ethereum.org/en/what-is-ethereum/|World Computer]], and the ’communal computer’ of [[https://dynamicland.org/|Dynamicland]] raise as many questions as answers. The ambitions of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu|Xanadu]] or [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn|Cybersyn]] hum in the background. Simulations with CESM ([[ https://www.cesm.ucar.edu/|Community Earth System Model]]) continue on a planetary scale, while researchers in “Unconventional Computing” find ways to compute with liquids, chemical reactions, slime moulds, and algae balls. |
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| ===Multispecies metaphors=== | ====Multispecies metaphors==== |
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| What if we were to broaden the spectrum of metaphors we use for human behaviour? We share common ancestors with cephalopods, fungi and micro-organisms. We could develop non-verbal communication inspired by octopuses, who change the colour, shape and texture of their skin. Their distributed nervous system could become a metaphor for the human exo-nervous system, as it extends through networks of connected devices. We could broaden gender discussions with the 36,000 sexes of fungi, or hermaphroditic snails, or fish that can change sex. Think of the Endoliths — organisms that live inside rocks, crevices of animal shells, or the pores between grains of minerals, filling ever more extreme niches. They can live many kilometres beneath the Earth’s surface, surviving without water, feeding on iron, sulphur and other inorganic material. Could the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans|Deinococcus radiodurans]] become an archetypal hero of our times? “The world’s toughest bacterium”, able to survive radiation, cold, dehydration, vacuum and acid. [[https://fo.am/publications/terrafictions/|Imagine our bodies with such bacteria living on our skin]]. | What if we were to broaden the spectrum of metaphors we use for human behaviour? We share common ancestors with cephalopods, fungi and micro-organisms. We could develop non-verbal communication inspired by octopuses, who change the colour, shape and texture of their skin. Their distributed nervous system could become a metaphor for the human exo-nervous system, as it extends through networks of connected devices. We could broaden gender discussions with the 36,000 sexes of fungi, or hermaphroditic snails, or fish that can change sex. Think of the Endoliths — organisms that live inside rocks, crevices of animal shells, or the pores between grains of minerals, filling ever more extreme niches. They can live many kilometres beneath the Earth’s surface, surviving without water, feeding on iron, sulphur and other inorganic material. Could the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans|Deinococcus radiodurans]] become an archetypal hero of our times? “The world’s toughest bacterium”, able to survive radiation, cold, dehydration, vacuum and acid. [[https://fo.am/publications/terrafictions/|Imagine our bodies with such bacteria living on our skin]]. |
| Spectres in Change; photo: FoAM | Spectres in Change; photo: FoAM |
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| These stories and metaphors might be felt rather than told. In sound, scent, touch and light, experienced at the limits of the visible spectrum, pulsing at ultraviolet or infrared frequencies. They might inhabit the radio spectrum or create divergencies across the spectrum of acceptable behaviours. Spectral stories, stories of cosmic spectra and planetary spectres. [[https://foam-earth.bandcamp.com/track/how-the-terms-mind-and-matter-are-abstractions-which-in-their-concreteness-are-identicalThe folk tales of unquiet matter]]. | These stories and metaphors might be felt rather than told. In sound, scent, touch and light, experienced at the limits of the visible spectrum, pulsing at ultraviolet or infrared frequencies. They might inhabit the radio spectrum or create divergencies across the spectrum of acceptable behaviours. Spectral stories, stories of cosmic spectra and planetary spectres. [[https://foam-earth.bandcamp.com/track/how-the-terms-mind-and-matter-are-abstractions-which-in-their-concreteness-are-identical|The folk tales of unquiet matter]]. |
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| <html><iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=549459653/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://foam-earth.bandcamp.com/track/how-the-terms-mind-and-matter-are-abstractions-which-in-their-concreteness-are-identical">"how the terms 'mind' and 'matter' are abstractions which in their concreteness are identical" by FoAM</a></iframe></html> | |
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| Listen, for example, to "[[ | Listen, for example, to "[[ |
| As [[https://www.janawinderen.com/releases/the-noisiest-guys-on-the-planet|she says]]: "Underwater there is very little known about the soundscapes created by living creatures, and few understand the details of variations between the various grunts, knocking sounds and rumbling sounds that cod, haddock, pollock, other fish and crustaceas produce, and how they experience and orientate themselves through the use of sound." | As [[https://www.janawinderen.com/releases/the-noisiest-guys-on-the-planet|she says]]: "Underwater there is very little known about the soundscapes created by living creatures, and few understand the details of variations between the various grunts, knocking sounds and rumbling sounds that cod, haddock, pollock, other fish and crustaceas produce, and how they experience and orientate themselves through the use of sound." |
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| ===Tending to the transient and the overlooked=== | ====Tending to the transient and the overlooked==== |
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| {{:6a5fe560-a49c-4de5-ac29-92edd23309cd.jpg}} | {{:6a5fe560-a49c-4de5-ac29-92edd23309cd.jpg}} |
nik