Moving in...

Visits to the Fields

See specific post for various visits to the fields and forests around Yogyakarta.

With Akbar, we also went to Gemolong in Surakarta, to see his recent project, a newly developed facility to make biodecomposer

Fermentation Philosophies

Talks & Presentations

see specific post

"On BioHacking and Education in the Life Sciences"
Wed 11 Jan, 13pm | Gadjah Mada University (UGM), Fakultas Bioteknologi

Discussion : Understanding Art, Science and Technology
Wed 18 Jan, 18pm, Umahseni, Jakarta
With Dr. Marc Dusseiller, Dr. Denisa Kera, HONF

MobileKitchenLab Workshop

see hackteria posts for more details...

Projects in the HONFablab

Writing some Texts
Starting soon...

Chill-out with Friends

Great X-mas party with some of my old friends from Schaffhausen, Gauckler and Haist. Cheasy tourist dinner on the peak, raggae party on the pier and final crash into Lang Kwai Fong... no comment!

Here some more impressions from HK streets...

How it all began
After working with Yashas for almost three years, we finally managed to organize an invitation of a group of Swiss artists to visit India for performances and workshops. Thanks to Shai Heredia, the organizer and curator of Experimenta, who visited us also during the HackteriaLab2011 in Zurich, we managed to get support from Pro Helvetia India. And when I asked around at the anyma Forschungswoche in Fribourg, about who wants to join... of course Michi and Maite were eager to come for the tour... and I am super happy, cos I think they are the best and really their projects fitted perfectly in completing the program of the Experimenta festival.

Experimenta 2011
A very good overview of our activities in Bangalore can be found on anyma's blog.

LoFi A/V Workshop ISRO, dusjagr & anyma
Directly after I arrived we went shopping to prepare our workshop @ Jaaga, where Michi and me introduced the participants into various simple hacks and electronics for lo-fi audio/visual experiments. And Bangalore is just the best place for shopping electronics... SG road rocks! The combination of all the little stores, selling electronics like it was vegetables and at the same times the cows hang out on the streets... So finally we got some second hand CRT monitors for the workshop, see movie below:

TV shopping with anyma in Bangalore from dusjagr on Vimeo.

And some pictures from the workshop on my fbook

Impro A/V performance
And on Saturday night, 3rd December, Yashas, Michi & Maite and me had a nice experimental audio/video jam performance at 7 HIGH STREET THINK TANK. There was even an article in TimeOut Benagaluru, talking about Yashas musical experiments in the "Center for Everything" with nematodes and our workshops and performance.

And again some pictures on my fbook.

3 Dec At 7 High Street from Michael Egger on Vimeo.

Impressions from the Streets of Bangalore

There has been a loooong phase without any post here on dusjagr labs, sorry about that. Most of the recent activities have been either posted on project pages, such as the Hackteria | Open Source Biological Art or on my facebook/dusjagr. But of course a looooot has happend.... I just briefly describe some of the highlights below, put some links together and continue the tour. Sitting in a coffee in Hong Kong at the moment, reflecting back on the last couple of months, enjoying the local climate and looking forward for another intersting year, its hard to beat 2011 though!

How it started
After having schemed and planned many activities for this year, i even got an award from Schaffhausen, my hometown, which allowed me to fund various activities last summer. So thanks to KulturRaum Schaffhausen for allowing this interesting times to really happen. Thus from May onwards, I officially started my World tour, beginning with a visit to Luzern, to do some lasering in the FabLab ... start small, when your are on a world tour! Then further to Fribourg to visit anyma's research week, see some stuff on the hackteria site. And of course various visits to festivals for workshops, hanging out, networking, scheming etc... Mal-au-pixel in Paris, Festival für Angewandte Akkustik in Köln, a short visit to Touch Me Festival in Zagreb und poolloop in Zürich, for a nice SGMK OpenLab session...

HackteriaLab 2011 | Romainmotier / Zürich
This event was definately the most important one of my activities this year. Loads of people involved, planning, organizing and enjoying it. See the hackteria website and wiki. The second international HackteriaLab took place this year at the 12th century monastery L’Arc in Romainmotier, Switzerland, from the 28th July to 4th August. Following on from the success of last year’s HackteriaLab at Dock18 in Zurich, this year we have invited around 30 artists, scientists, DIYers and hackers to spend a few days sharing skills, knowledge and expertise centered around the basic Hackteria idea. For the first time in a long time, the three Hackteria founders Marc, Andy and Yashas will be in the same place at the same time, along with some old faces and some exciting new ones.

BioCyberKidzz | Ars Electronica, Linz
This year I got a double invitation, both for hackteria and for SGMK, from Ars Electronica for workshops with children during the U19 - Create Your World Festival for the Future Generation. So we started to call for more people to help on the workshop and ended up with a super international team of educators, artists, scientists and hackers from Slovenia, India, Germany and myself, wherever I am from.
Hackteria KitchenBioLab
The Hackteria BioLab introduced the world of microorganisms to children or adults any age. At the end of the workshop they will be able to take home little amulet Petri dishes with their own “living” fingerprints, a yeast powered balloon or simple bio-accoustic ear amplifiers and many more. With this workshop we hope to emphasize that observing life is not just fun, but also takes time and patience.

Dowload, fold and view the review booklet here

DIY makeaway
And with this year's SGMK diy makeaway at Ars, we introduced two new workshops, Vive-la-Resistance developed by myself during NanoSmano, and the "Seifenschaumlicht" by Uwe Schueler and Joerdis Drawe.

KIBLIX Festival | Maribor
As an invited co-curator, together with Miha Horvath (son:da), Pei-Wen Liu and the Kibla team, we were happy to experiment with new format on how to run a festival. With the curatorial concepts of "Festival as a Laboratory" and "Festival as a Cultural Performance" we spent 2 weeks working together, making together, living together with more than 50 invited participants and many visitors from the region of Maribor - Slovenia - Balkans....

see more info on the KIBLIX 2011 wiki

It was a great experience, working with an international team, in another cultural environment, influenced by all our earlier activities and visits to festivals in various corners of the world and we are working now on a reflection on Festivalomics. Stay tuned...

... and then the World
So I finally had to repack my luggage into a mobile BioHacker's Lab-in-a-Box into flight compatible mode. Heading off directly from Maribor to continue for workshops, meetings, shopping, visits, reflections and chill-out to Bangalore, Goa, Chengdu, Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Yogyakarta. More about these trips seperately.

First of all i was invited for a talk and a hackteria workshop for HAIP festival. Great and familiar atmosphere, and first time to work on a new project for future hackteria workshop, "getting on plant's nerves"...

Then there was also KIBLIX happening at the same time in maribor, so i drove through the snow a couple of time, to see the BioModd project, visit my friends (indonesians and locals, hooray to son:DA: Grandma's rocks!!!) and plan the collaboration for Kiblix2011, where we hopefully can collaborate with SGMK.

because anyway we tried to combine the KIBLIX loves HAIP loves MFRU. and had a great jam session and food with friends at cirkulacija 2, thanks to stefan, borut and bostjan.

spending a night below the stars in Obergail, sleeping a first time in my new car and finally met with stefan doepner, f18, to work the next few weeks on nanošmano in kapelica gallery. and now i need to find venzha... hmmm

but the next thing is already coming up, one night in singapore and a nice visit to Post-Museum, in little india, where we could a hardware/bio-hacking workshop next time, when passing through singapore. now finally heading to taipei and getting prepared for Playaround 2010 - DIWO culture

The first few days were already busy, lots of interesting workshops, parties and discussions. also i met a lot of people, both new but also good old friends. I already got some first soldering action, and tried ways to make a diy version of the diy makeaway bitbadge. sadly i got the wrong site of pcb and cant use the shim for screen printing the solder paste. but with some patience we managed to get a few going...

also had some talks and workshops about new hackteria tools, such as the hacked optical mouse and the hacked PS3 eye mounted on an old microscope stage. i worked with akbar, a young microbiologist from UGM, on it and tested the DIY3 eye microscope for use with a haemocytometer to count yeast cells, which we then presented at the workshop at UGM later.

I was also happy to finally meet Georg Tremel again, from biopresence. He got some great recent work on DIY plant tissue culture and uses it with a blue flower, which is genetically modified for aesthetic reasons. He also did a workshop at UGM and hopefully the "Moondust" will grow there soon... and we got to have him collaborating for hackteria soon!

and i got a new phone number: +852-6547-4890.

After visiting the RTHK radiostation in went to videotage to hang out (beautiful space by the way) and start preparing this weekends hackteria workshop. and then....

shopping at Ap Liu Street, the electronics paradise. got lots of blinking stuff, LEDs, cameras etc.... and set up my lab in my hotelroom, experimenting around with lasers, lenses and tardigrades