Luminous Green
'Luminous Green' is a series of gatherings about the world. About the world that supports life today and about the possible worlds that can support more luminous life in the future. With these events, the interdisciplinary laboratory FoAM calls upon the creative sector to enrich the public debate around environmental sustainability, ethical living and eco-technology.
A collaborative site for discussions and engagement of the Luminous Green community is currently under development. We have collected the participants' feedback from the events of the first Luminous Greeen series and collated it with transcripts of the talks, summaries of discussions, notes from the workshop sessions and other material created during the first Luminous Green series. Feel free to edit, append and comment on the existing pages, or add new and related content.
We are aiming to use this site as a workspace and knowledge base for developing the next series of events, as well as furthering those new projects and initiatives which sprouted from the encounters in 2007, 2008 and 2009.
The new series of Luminous Green gatherings is in the making. FoAM is designing an afternoon of discussions and a workshop in Singapore, at the end of July 2008. Both events are coproduced with ISEA 2008.
If you are interested in participating in either of these events, please send a message to info.at.fo.am, before 1st of July 2008.
Luminous Green will continue with a workshop in Singapore as part of ISEA2008, extending the series of gatherings, initiated by FoAM in Belgium, calling on the creative sector to enrich the public debate around environmental sustainability, ethical living, eco-technology and design.
The workshop encourages transdisciplinary discussions and collaborations between people from all walks of life. Artists, designers, academics, activists, social entrepreneurs economists and policy-makers whose practice incorporates ecological thinking as a core value, or as a major concern.
The objective of the Luminous Green Workshop at ISEA is to attempt to encourage transdisciplinary discussions, intitiate collaborations, raise questions, spawning inspiring contacts and propositions, holistic methods and interventions, looking beyond conservation and sustainability. Using participatory facilitation techniques based on OST (Open Space Technology) and ARG (Alternate Reality Gaming), the workshop is designed to encourage interaction and commitment between everyone involved.
The workshop will be facilitated by Maggie Buxton, Nik Gaffney and Maja Kuzmanovic
More information can be found here
The Luminous Green panel is an open discussion forum, in which we will examine the five themes of ISEA2008 under the lens of environmental and social turbulence. Which elements of contemporary electronic arts can assist human cultures to adapt to turbulent and uncertain conditions? If we look at the problems of distribution of goods, people and information - can we learn from the robustness of distributed collaboration, so well represented in 'wiki' culture and locative media. Awareness of resource consumption or could greatly enhanced by multi-sensory mixed reality technologies. Gaming culture has a plethora of tools and techniques to engage players in demanding pursuits; some of these techniques can be further developed, to raise awareness and knowledge and action - a playful, imaginative manner.
Climate Chaos is a global problem, which does not recognise national or economic borders. However, our 'global society' is still riddled with border disputes, exclusions and conflicts; perhaps some of the 'open re:source' models from software and electronic arts could offer interesting models for more inclusive trans-local societies, more apt for livining in an environment of turbulence. During the discussion these topics will be examined from multiple points-of-view in order to examine the role we play in the feisty planetary eco-systems.
Invited participants: Alok Nandi, Andrea Polli, Angelo Vermeulen, Brian Degger, Drew Hemment, Liesbeth Huybrechts, Maggie Buxton, Maja Kuzmanovic, Marko Peljhan, Matthew Biederman, Melentie Pandilovski, Nik Gaffney, Nina Czegledi, Raewyn Turner, Tapio Makela, Thomas Laureyssens, Vladimir Todorovic and others.
The Luminous Green Panel will be conducted in collaboration with the Urban Climate Camp led by Drew Hemment.
The first Luminous Green series took place in and around Brussels during the spring of 2007. Consisting of a symposium, an expert gathering, a hands-on workshop and an open lab, all the events promised new and intriguing directions for many participants, as well as for FoAM. We are happy to report that many 'unholy alliances' have been formed and many animated discussions about integrated approaches to issues of ethics, creativity and sustainability are underway.
Several luminous photographers captured many of the fleeting moments during the events in 2007. You can find FoAM's collection here and a pool of images from several participants here (if you have any photos from the events, please feel free to add them to the growing collection).
If you'd like to be kept up to date about the upcoming Luminous Green activities, please send a message to info.at.fo.am
A problem cannot be solved by people who are concerned with only one
or another of its parts. To the extent that the consciousness of
everyone is not fundamentally transformed, pollution will not cease.
-- Masanobu Fukuoka
More information: info.at.fo.am