Symposium

Structured Growth and Grown Structures
Maja Kuzmanovic and Nik Gaffney
FoAM
http://fo.am

Summary
Anything growing or living experiences constant transformative pressure; from spore, to fruit, to soil, to compost... In contrast to living systems, our technological growth rarely involves cyclical processes, new technologies don't often feed on the detritus of the obsolete. As people embedded in highly technological societies, it becomes our responsibility to maintain a balance between the needs of the living environments and the requirements of their 'cultured' inhabitants.

Our attempt to come closer to this balance is to propagate grown structures and encourage structured growth, blending the biological with the artificial and simulated. As part of our exploration of these processes, we construct situations, often categorized as 'responsive environments'. Whether natural or simulated, responsive systems grow and change over time, influenced by their internal processes and interactions with their inhabitants. Designing for such systems or environments is closely linked with issues of influence and control, intentionality and co-creation.

As case studies guiding our research, FoAM has conducted several public experiments. We will present two parallel, yet interconnected initiatives: the t* series and groWorld. The t* series involved creating and publicly experimenting with three distinct groups of responsive environments: TGarden, txOom and trg. These environments were immersive hybrid realities presented as fictional play-spaces. GroWorld is similarly motivated by a tension between the constructed and the evolved, but is more intimately engaged with biological growth. More specifically, with its three strands, 'Sym', 'Bio' and 'Sys', groWorld attempts to introduce its seeds into media arts and technologies, tackling environmental issues from biological, cultural and technological angles.

As the results of artistic endeavors move away from immutable art-works to becoming dynamic, fluid art-worlds, experiencing them necessarily moves from observation to participation. With participation comes responsibility, communication and understanding of people's mutual influence on each other and their surrounding environments.

Biograph

FoAM is a laboratory for the propagation of lived and living experience. We are looking for processes, moments and situations in which experience can be freed from cultural, economic or historical biases, allowing participants to absorb fresh stimuli. FoAM's collaborators spend most of their time in the murky spaces between the physical and digital, scientific and artistic, natural and technological worlds. We inhabit these spaces to research and develop responsive environments, active materials, generative media, culinary performances and other entangled forms of contemporary creative expression. Guided by our motto "grow your own worlds", we work in colourful teams, scavenging far and wide for relevant scientific, technological and social innovations, fusing them into seeds for imaginary, yet tangible worlds and planting them in the cracks of everyday life.

Nik Gaffney is a systems and media researcher and a founding member of FoAM. His research focuses on biological and physical models for computation, generative systems and media rich responsive environments. He is a member and prominent contributor of 'farmersmanual', a pan-european, net-based, multidisciplinary collective, in which he is working on network sonification, development of generative media and instruments for distributed performances. His studies covered the fields of computer science, cognitive science and organic chemistry at the University of Adelaide, Australia.

Maja Kuzmanovic is a generalist interested in inciting small miracles in everyday life. She received her BA in Design Forecasting (HKU) in 1996 and MA in Interactive Multimedia (University of Portsmouth) in 1997. Throughout the 1990s, she collaborated on a range of projects in research institutes around Europe (such as CWI, Frauenhoffer and Starlab), as well as an independent artist-researcher. For her works, Maja was elected one of the Top 100 Young Innovators by MIT ’s Technology Review in 1999. She founded FoAM in 2000 and has since functioned as FoAM's PI, media artist and head chef. Her leadership skills have been recognised by the World Economic Forum, awarding Maja with the title 'Young Global Leader' in 2006.