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

Lecture series: Hackteria, BioHacking and FoodHacking
Fri 27 Jan, 14h, UKDW, Yogyakarta
With Dr. Marc Dusseiller, Dr. Denisa Kera, Tommy / HONF

Thu 26 Jan 10h, Universitas Sanata Dharma Yogyakarta, Kampus Iii
With Dr. Marc Dusseiller, Dr. Denisa Kera, Ira / HONF

Prelude to the "Mobile KitchenLab Workshop - Hacking Angkringan"

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

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

Download the .pdf slides here: dusjagr_UGM_bioteknologi_lowres

During the two hours I wanted to show some examples, on how such interdisciplinary activies in the sphere of biohackers, artists and geeks has a great and inspiring influence on developing new ways to teach and communicate science. During the 5 years of working in the framework of SGMK and the hackteria project, also in different cultural background from Europe through India, Taiwan and Indonesia, i could learn from all the collaborations. Being always open to learn new things is key of being a good teacher! Examples have been shown on how the HackteriaLab2011 has influenced the workshop for children at Ars Electronica "BioCyberKidzz" and generally the DIY and hacker's approach on my teaching to the students in life science technology at FHNW, in the "wetPONG" lab courses.

Naiiice... 6 weeks in Yogya!

First impressions on dusjagr's fbook

And a nice nuYear party...

Soldering Beach in Goa
During my stay in Bangalore, we also finally found time to discuss, meet people and do various activities around for Hackteria project. So 2.5 years after my first visit to Bangalore to start a website together with Yashas, the project has grown a lot worldwide, and we took the opportunity to reflect and dream about the future of Open Source Biological Art and discussed a lot about what is "True Art/Science".
A great place for reflection of course is Goa, where we did a "Soldering Beach Field Research Trip", hacking some mantra chanting boxes, working on a Coconut Wave2Midi converter, measuring temperature profiles of a laguna and explored the environment. Coconuts seemed to inspire us a lot and we are still thinking of starting a "Center for Alternative Coconut Research", coconuts being to most versatile and traditionally successful old-school bioTech, which can be used to make boats, hats, rope, bikinis, soft-drinks or fermented and distilled into femi.

For more impressions see my album on fbook.

Visit to Goa-Cap
We also took the opportunity to visit various other initiatives, universities and open spaces. In Goa we visited the Goa Center for Alternative Photography (Goa-CAP), showing them some of our projects DIY microscopy and the hacked optical mouse, 16x16 pixel camera. A great place for exploring new ways of creating images, they have a nice little chemistry lab in their space, doing experiments with high-voltages, pin-hole cameras, magic laterns and work very closely with local communities and children.

Visit, discussions and talk at NCBS
During the two visits to NCBS, the National Center for Biological Science, we met a lot of very interesting scientists, working on mothe flight bioelectronics and ecology and of course Yashas' long term partner, Prof. Mukund Thatai, collaborator for the Synthetic Biology for Artists project at IGEM. And we are looking forward for more intense collaborations in the future. To my experience, I rarely found such highly open-minded and intellectual scientist, critical to their work, open to transdisciplinary projects and nice to talk to.
I was also able to give a presentation on my "Experiences in Outreach and Education at the NanoBioInterface", during the iBio talk series.

Download the slides here.

Visits to Srishti
Of course we also visited Srishti, School for Art, Design and Technology, giving a short workshop on alternative approaches to film and video (ok... i missed the workshop due to my running belly, another classic indian experience), discussed different approaches on children education in creativity, biology and technology with various faculty members and visited the final year graduation exhibition "Beyond 2011".

Hackteria Distillery
Together with Yashas Shetty (IN) and Sachiko Hirosue (CH/JP), who came all the way from Lausanne, we invited some local enthusiasts to join the Hackteria Distillery at Jaaga on 20th and 21st, December 2011. The Distillery was a series of hands on workshops, conversations on Do-it-yourself biology, BioHacker’s Lab-in-a-Box, “bioart”, coconuts, fermentation and building your own Jugaad BioKitchen Lab. And of course we built a successful jugaad style distillery using the local cuttlery we could buy on Russell market. It tasted great!

Generated by Facebook Photo Fetcher

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.

Video produced by Migros Kulturprozent and Christoph Merian Verlag for the DVD publication "Digital Culture and Media Art from Switzerland - Edition 2010". You can find the full publication on digital brainstorming.

Link to Video

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.