[This research is still in progress]

Foam is an organisation invites us to grow our own worlds. It compels us to participate in shaping our reality, rather than to be passive recipients.Foam forms part of the Guild of Reality Integrators and Generators (gRig), a group of European artistic and cultural operators who research and create meaningful situations in hybrid (or mixed) reality, where digital media and physical materials, objects and spaces are increasingly intertwined. (http://www.tii.se/projects/grig).

Foam finds ways to bring together artisans, scientists, philosophers and other archetypal characters in order for them to collaborate, transmutate and generate across traditional boundaries. The results are often un-genreable events and artefacts, which, by their very nature, undermine the post enlightenment, modernist mindset of classifications, boxes, and right/wrong, true/false stories.

This mindset is built on fundamental dualities between cause and effect, thinking and doing, and observer and observed. Reality is seen as something external to our consciousness – something real, objective and separate from ourselves. It is also something to be discovered, accurately perceived and measured, definitely not something we generate ourselves.

The inevitable next step of looking at life through this lens is problems are not here but over there , therefore climate change, resource wars and species genocide are issues that other people caused, and therefore are for other people to solve.

Environmental and social activists have for years attempted to re-educate humanity to be more responsible for their environment, and more kind to their fellow inhabitants on the planet. The problem with this work is that much of it is aimed at shifting behaviour level, it is not aimed at shifting mindset, epistemology or consciousness. And, the challenge at this point in time, is that most of humanity do not even know they have a mindset, let alone have the cognitive capacity to make their epistemology a source of study.

So Foam, and gRig could be seen as subversive tricksters, formed to confound, confuse and ultimately destabilise consensus reality. The nature of their work is to connect the marginal and foster the surreal. To take it further, Foam’s notion that we can grow our own world(s) if fully grasped, has the potential to emancipate individuals and groups from a paradigm of apathy, fatalism and co-enabled victimhood.

This research project is focussed around discovering the most effective mechanisms we can use to become more conscious of, and change, our relationship to reality

It will connect a number of related disciplines. Transdisciplinary engagement and Hybrid Story-ing are the subject of particular investigation and experimental activity.

The overall aims for this process are:

1. To provide user friendly material that is informative and inspirational to Foam, and to a wider audience that has not encountered these concepts before.
2. To encourage people to grow their own worlds by: writing my blog, facilitating workshops, creating mixed media installations, and discovering and disseminating stories and best practice.
3. To facilitate integration of worlds through connecting people and organisations across boundaries in whatever forms feel appropriate to the context.
4. To support and promote the work of Foam and gRig by increasing knowledge, fostering networks and inspiring their membership

The the underlying epistemology is constructivist with an inductive research approach.

Practically, this means that the questions set out earlier will be the connecting point for ideas, musings, and meetings that eventually will be made sense of retrospectively, with a deep sense of reflexivity.

Material has been gathered through

• Interviews and Connections
• Literature reviews and Peripheral Scanning
• Experiments and Physical Manifestations
• Ethnographic encounters and Anthropological Immersion
• Reflective blogging and Existential Story-ing

Over the past year a large volume of material has been collected through excursions, reading, interviews, observations, experiments,listening, perusing, participating, scanning and engaging.

This has been recorded in a blog http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/ and also used to feed this wiki.

The focus of my experiments and blog based research has been methods and tools that facilitate shifts in reality, particularly those that disturb and confuse underlying perceptions of reality and/or that expand the confines or existing perceptions of reality.

The methods I found fall into a wide range of artefacts and experience that are interrelated and deeply connected with the spirit of the Trickster which will be discussed in more depth later…

• hybrids that evade categorisation by existing mental models
• activities that blur the dichotomies of right and wrong, true and false, real and unreal
• processes that reveal hidden or obvious truths
• mediums that stimulate multiple senses simultaneously or by- pass well used senses and engage different parts of the brain that are not normally in play
• experiences that push the boundaries of consensus reality by inviting us to question whether something is real, exists, is happening
• experiences that allow us to grow our own reality
• collaborations that create portals between different rhealms ( spiritual, physical, digital, imaginal, magical) and cultures.

Practices that fall into one or many of these areas included:

• sensorial labyrinths

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2007/09/at-entrance-of-sensory-labyrinths.html

• ARG’s

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2007/09/bees-beasts-and-batman-welcome-to-your.html

• geo-caching

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2007/12/international-treasure-hunting.html

• street games

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2008/09/this-is-what-i-am-talking-about.html

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2008/11/gameland.html (participated in Blast Theories latest game in Belo Horizonte, Brazil)

• hybrids

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2008/11/hybrids-and-connections.html (a number of links to hybrid work and engagement)

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2008/09/growing-buildings.html (hybrid architecture)

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2008/11/tourist-in-my-own-land.html (Krystle Tuvai's urban hybrid story-ing plus others)

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2008/10/expo-of-un-popular-culture.html (item on Greg Broadmore and Weta Studios)

* transdisciplinary facilitation

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2008/06/luminous-green-singapore.html

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2008/08/post-luminous-green.html

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2008/10/return.html

I also engaged in a number of other explorations,expeditions and musings that are tangentially related to this report

• exhibitions and expeditions

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2008/05/design-for-other-90.html

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2007/11/long-time-no-speak.html

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2007/12/out-and-about-in-auckland.html

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2008/04/educating-for-future.html

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2008/10/expo-of-un-popular-culture.html

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2008/11/tourist-in-my-own-land.html

* publications, talks and movies

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2008/09/not-sustainable.html

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2007/12/view-from-centre-of-universe.html

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2008/01/shift-movie.html

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2008/04/2008-shift-report.html

* meandering musings

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2007/12/hong-kong-athiests-and-subconscious.html

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2007/09/strange-case-of-mccanns-and.html

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2008/02/fever.html

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2008/02/portals-in-fog.html

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2008/02/hubs-and-suds.html

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2008/12/now-i-understand-why-postman-wears.html

* reality challenging psychological sydromes

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2008/11/greatest-reality-show-on-earth.html

The Blog has drawn favourable, offline, responses, subscriptions and a small and loyal readership. There have been numerous requests for further information about the content, including requests for details about Foam and its other activities. People connect and contact each other through the site.Therefore it has already contributed to Foam’s aim of encouraging participation, and collaboration.

In addition to this research I engaged in an number of field tests to try out ideas in practice and make some attempt to transform the reality of a particular system and set of individuals . Results were recorded in both the blog and the pages of this wiki.

one off experiments

Subverting xmas and creating hybrid decorations in a deprived neighbourhood

http://www.un-fiction.blogspot.com/2008/12/great-bates-street-light-up.html

Reactivating marginalised spaces using geo-cache and treasure hunt mechanisms

http://lib.fo.am/sub_pap_zones

large scale hybrid story-ing ARG-like programmes

Awhiworld was an experiment that took place within a primary school involving 150 children aged 5 to 12 years old,11 teaching staff and a six month time frame:

http://lib.fo.am/awhi_world

Material was also collected through through reviewing literature from the transformational learning field, from management deveopment, from anthropological books and from fictional novels. These are listed in the references section.

To be discussed

• Darwin, J., Johnson,P. and McAuley, J (2002). Developing strategies for Change. Prentice Hall
• Cooperrider, D. L., Barrett, F. and Srivastva, S. (1995). Social Construction and Appreciative Inquiry: A Journey in Organizational Theory. Management and Organization: Relational Alternatives to Individualism, Ashgate
• Kegan, R. (1982) The Evolving Self, Harvard University Press.
• Kegan, R. (1994) In Over Our Heads – The Mental Demands of Modern Life, Harvard University Press.
• Hyde, L. (1998) Trickster Makes This World - Mischief, Myth and Art, North Point Press
• Schlitz, M.M., Vieten,C. and Amorok, T (2007) Living Deeply The Art and Science of Transformation in Everyday Life, New Harbinger Publications and Noetic Books
• Cranton, P. (2006) Understanding and Promoting Transformative Learning - A Guide for Educators and Adults, John Wiley and Sons Inc, 2nd Edition
• Mezirow, J. (2000) Learning as Transformation - Critical Perspectives on a Theory in Progress, Jossey-Bass