An article in today's issue of NZZ (4. April 2012 Neue Zürcher Zeitung) gives a nice overview of the amateur biologist scene in LA. The journalist Lena Stallmach visited the people from LA biohackers in their own space/lab (which is currently in boxes, prepared for the move to a bigger space) and describes their working environment, dreams of inventions, ongoing projects and workshops in collaboration with the FBI.

In the interview dusjagr gives some info about the local movement in switzerland and the hackteria network, some critical reflections on the promises the DIYbio movement paralleling the agro/chem industries, the potential of garage biotech for developing countries and generally the role of DIY science in educating and empowering a democratic society.

download the full print article here:
NZZ_diybio_and_interview_april2012

Naiiice... 6 weeks in Yogya!

First impressions on dusjagr's fbook

And a nice nuYear party...

Here already some links about what I saw:
Dynamic Livings
The exhibition "Dynamic Livings" by Dimension+ in K11 ArtMall, nice visit together with Keith (and we even had to fix some stuff, hehe)

OneWorld Expo
Loads of stuff at the OneWorld Expo curated by Videotage.

More stuff in Osage Gallery
Especially the exhibition in Osage Kwun Tong

And the "Butterfly Generator" by Tintin Wuala, see a preview docu

Input/Output
Sachiko Kodama's Ferrofluid structures at Input/output

One World Expo @ Osage Kwun Tong, HK
Teddy Lo et al

Culture @ 22 15 N, 114 10 E from dusjagr on Vimeo.

Shenzhen

SEG electronic market / Shenzhen, China from dusjagr on Vimeo.

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...

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.

allready met my friend dorottya, who i met in ljubljana during NanoSmano, and she organised another workshop at H.A.C.K. where i will introduce the optical mouse hack.

wonder where i will go next...

see the presentation and panel discussion online

You can download the minutes of the presentation from the following link:
dusjagr_sdn_transdisciplinary_education_final.pdf

because the movies wont show up, you can see them here:

The movie shows 20 hours of culture of HeLa cells on a designed patterned surface showing the FHNW logo.

After intensive discussion, I came again to the conclusion, that allthough all Swiss Institutions offically accepted the Berlin Declaration, most individuals, outside the politically engaged groups, have no clue what it is all about and continue publishing in closed traditional journals and hide their educational lectures and content inside the cyber-walls of the universities. But there are changes visible, slowly, but there is hope...

First of all, during my trips to asia I found a lot of great electronic gadgets, cheap supplier store and most useful I bought a couple of small gas-powered soldering irons. With the hope of reducing the weight of my travelling lab luggage i finally got together a complete hackteria mobile mini lab that should fit into the 20k limit. The only thing i am missing is the golden breadboard...

Hopefully we will be able to get some awesome Hong Kong or Taiwan mailorders soon, and we can finally reduce our newly introduced pricing list in the open MechArtLab.

After Hong Kong I surprised a lot of my friends with my 18 hours stay in zürich, cos i spent the whole day in the casablanca drinking coffee and beer and meeting them. Everybody thought I was somewhere between Kirgistan and Feuerland, but in fact I had a short stop-over in Zürich before leaving to Bergen, Norway. for the piksel09 festival. See the link on our hackteria site for more information. And by the way, it is a true fact that Bergen is the most rainy place in europe.... check my "map".

After another trip around the world to Taiwan for the PlayAround09 - TechNomads workshop I finally got back to Hagen. But instead of chilling and mentally finally processing my experiences... we made a great new years party, with Phillip H and some folks from berlin together with my friends. And then... after lasershows, mystical walks through the forest wearing aluminium hats, prosecco and wine, those who stayed another night were rewarded by the most beautiful beginning of a new year one can imagine.