- Name of organization:
International Hackteria Society
- Email address (or preferred and reliable way of official contact):
Please us my forum contact, or email (i guess you have it, i dont’ want to post it here.)
- Tell us about your organization:
Global Hackteria Network and online knowledge sharing platform
Since 2009 Hackteria has established a global network of long term collaborators from Switzerland to India, Taiwan, Japan and Indonesia, aswell as various other groups & individuals across Europe. Hackteria has also actively contributed to global events such as the Biofabbing convergence and other meetings of the DIY biology communities, and has been foundational in the pre-phase and execution of the first GOSH event in Geneva 2016.
Hackteria has been starting with a focus as a web-based knowledge platform, establishing a large wiki with instructions and documentations of various DIY projects, open hardware and workshop methodologies around DIY biology, Open Source Biological Art and Generic Laboratory Instruments. The wiki meanwhile describes over hundred projects and is an extensive archive of all the events, workshops and labs Hackteria has organized or been involved. Maybe the most known project was one of our first: instructions to build a DIY microscope by hacking a cheap webcam and making a simple setup for the microscope stage for focusing and analysing various samples, and it’s use for performance, artistic projects or live VJing.
Many more information can be found on our wiki here:
https://www.hackteria.org/wiki/
Hackteria methodologies
Throughout the years the focus has shifted to more human interaction and physical formats of learning environments to share and experiment with DIY practices to allow anybody outside established research institutions to perform their own experiments in lifescience, environmental monitoring and artistic approaches involving biological mediums. We have always embraced a methodology of “radical transdisciplinarity” with the belief that the challenges of our times can only be tackled when all players of society globally are involved; crossing different cultural backgrounds, socio-economics situations and a large diversity of practices from art, hacking and engineering to cooking, anthropoloy and experimental electronic music.
See various articles that have been written about hackteria:
https://www.hackteria.org/wiki/Press_Coverage
HackteriaLabs 2010-20xx
Hackteria has established a methodology of “temporary labs for collaborative production and transdisciplinary research”, which has been done several times over the last decade. Under the name “HackteriaLab” we have done such events in Switzerland 2010, 2011 & 2017, Bangalore 2013, Okinawa 2020 and also in Yogyakarta 2014, Indonesia. Especially the latter has been extremely fruitful in establishing long term collaborations, friendships and new projects that extended years beyond the events itself.
See the trailer and documentary film here:
https://www.hackteria.org/wiki/HLab14-Documentary
UROŠ - Ubiquitous Rural Open Science Hardware
In 2021 Hackteria has initiated a project “UROŠ - Ubiquitous Rural Open Science Hardware” with support from Slovenia and the European Union, with the goal to research the more “real world” application of various open science hardware projects in a rural setting and agricultural applications. The projects involved remote researchers in Argentina and Yogyakarta, aswell as a 3 weeks temporary autonomous lab (can also be described as a group residency / hackathon) in Maribor, Slovenia. We hope to continue and culminate this event series with a larger regional gathering in Yogyakarta and the support of the GOSH funding round 1.
https://www.hackteria.org/wiki/UROS
ROŠA Gathering organizing team:
Marc Dusseiller (CH)
https://www.hackteria.org/wiki/Dusjagr
Andreas Siagian (ID)
tbc Adeline Seah (SG)
tbc at least 1 or 2 more persons
“A workshop is playground for human interaction”
Interview with Marc Dusseiller on GOSH commmunity medium:
"Lifepatch. Situated Assemblages of Un-Situated Things"
Article and Interview on Lifepatch’s activities in Yogyakarta:
International Hackteria Society (legal text)
Under the name “International Hackteria Society”, is an association according to article 60ff of the Swiss Civil Code (ZGB) with seat in Zürich. The association aims to guarantee the organizational and financial processes of the project “Hackteria | Open Source Biological Art”. It wants to further development and access to practical knowledge in artistic engagement with the lifesciences. It wants to create platforms for public discussions and invite international artists and scientists for critical and theoretical discourse. The association works as a non- profit organization to reach its aims.Commercial register ID for International Hackteria Society: CH-020.6.001.605-2Unique enterprise identification number (UID) for International Hackteria Society: CHE-192.885.318
- Does your organization have representation for a marginalized demographic due to factors such as, but not limited to, race, ability, place of birth, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class situation or other identification? If so, how?
The organisation “International Hackteria Society” is registered in Switzerland, but our aim was always to connect a global network of individuals and groups from diverse cultures, low resource environments, as they also exist in Switzerland, Europe, aswell as everywhere on the globe.
Our subtitle “Open Source Biological Art” describes the focus to empower amateurs and various professionals, such as self-employed artists, makers, free-lancing creatives or underground (h)acktivists, with knowledge and skills to do their own projects in the field of lifescience.
Within the hackteria network many projects have already been established with a focus on trans-hack feminist approaches, gender hacking, and more.
- What is the event about, and what do you want to achieve with it?
Hackteria has been focussing in the process of long term collaboration by initiating many regional activities especially Indonesia. The connection between Hackteria with Indonesia has started since 2009, from small scale activities such as workshops, talks, lectures, labs, residencies and even a festival - scale event called HackteriaLab 2014 - Yogyakarta. This strong relationship is a fruit of a consistency in reaching out, developing ideas, making things, experimenting and/or even hanging out to talk about cultural differences.
In short:
“A regional event series combining a longer on-site residency, multi-geographical work connection local outreach tour, as-well as a research & production lab and a gathering of interesting players from the region of South East Asia.”
Schedule:
1 April - Start of residency (duration 5-8 weeks)
April - ROŠA workshop and outreach tour in Java and Sulawesi (duration 3 weeks)
5 - 15. May - ROŠA temporary lab, Yogyakarta
12 - 15. May - ROŠA gathering, Yogyakarta
Residencies:
We will be happy to host and finance one person for a longer durational residency to work in the local context of Yogyakarta, aswell as exploring other regions of Indonesia together. The focus of the applicatants should cover the main topics of “rural open science hardware” in the newly eyplored regional context. The residency will be choosen through a call, by the organising team, and selected according the GOSH values and experiences to create valuable research.
(The second residency is Marc Dusseiller, mostly in the role of co-ordination and organzing the event series. His travel costs are covered privately.)
ROŠA workshop and outreach tour:
The local team and residence researchers will be invited for a tour through Java and Makkassar, Sulawesi to visit selected communities and learn and share experiences in open science hardware in the local context through workshops, expeditions and talks.
ROŠA temporary lab:
For 10 days we’ll inhabint a public venue in Yogyakarta to set up a temporary lab for developing and experimenting with our hardware projects, host local visitors and public events, promoting the collaborative and open source spirit of our activities.
A small group of participants will be invitied to the ROŠA temporary lab. we are aiming at a focused group of 10-15 active participants, if travel restrictions are allowing it, 50% from South East Asia and the others from different local communities.
More international guests are welcomed (2-3 persons), but will need to support their own travel and covid-19 related quarantine costs.
ROŠA gathering:
During a 3 days gathering we will share our practices to a wider audience of local researchers, students, activists and creatives. Various methodologies will be implemented, such as site-visits, working groups, skill-share sessions and talks.
Embedded ethnographic research:
We have collaborators locally who have an interest to study our transdisciplinary laboratory as an ethnographic - cultural anthropological field or how to establish quality observation and understanding of collective and interdisciplinary work in innovation laboratories. In short, how to observe, participate, learn and innovate collective work methods and how to use different methods of thinking (scientific, artistic, economic, everyday) and how to build (different examples from the world) bridges between science, art and industry.
Plan B for more restricted Covid-19 measures:
In case of tougher travel restrictions, we will reduce the number of participants from outside of Indonesia, to guarantee full financial coverage of extra costs of quarantine hotels and other testing and visa costs that will be needed. Additionally we will partially change to a more hybrid format collaborating with the larger group of participants through our set of open source tools for online collaboration (see below). Common materials will be sent out by mail, to mirror similar sets of hardware and prototyping materials in different environment, as we already have explored during the UROŠ Temporary Autonomous Lab in October 2021.
- Which of the three levels of funding would you like to apply for? (in round 1 only USD $9910 is avaiable for applications, in further rounds $3000, $6000, or USD $9910 will be available)
Regional Event series, Round 1: USD 9910$
- What is the funding for? Describe your budget. List what you are going to spend it on and how.
As a continuation of the project “UROŠ - Ubiquitous Rural Open Science Hardware”, we already have sourced some funding through the kons-platfrom, a grant from Slovenia and the European Union. The execution of the event series will also rely on in-kind contribution from some international participants to cover their own travel costs (approx 30% of total expenses).
For the ROŠA we have the following project phases and estimated costs:
Total Expenses: 22,700 USD
3,050 USD - General Management
5,900 USD - ROŠA residencies
9,450 USD - ROŠA Gathering
1,300 USD - Open Hardware Research Projects
700 USD - Workshops – Local Outreach
1,100 USD - Documentation & Dissemination
1,200 USD - Administration
Allocation in percentage to the following items:
43% Travel
11% Accommodation & Hospitality
14% Materials & Equipment
21% Fees
11% Communication
Total Income: 22,700 USD
1,500 USD - Hackteria in-kind
1,300 USD - Marc Dusseiller travel costs in-kind
4,000 USD - Travel costs funded by participants
6,000 USD - UROS funds via kons-platfrom, EU grant
9,900 USD - Requested from GOSH Phase 1 funding round.
A more detailed planning budget can be found here:
- How will you share the outcomes of this event. What documentation will result that will this project benefit the community as a whole? (videos? photos? a how-to? innovative hardware designs?)
We will use the Hackteria wiki to document the events and our research as text and photo.
The organisational working group will use our self-hosted nextcloud for collaboration.
For online meetings with our collaborators we will use our self-hosted BigBlue Button, and workadventure, and we’ll use advanced streaming methods with OBS (open broadcast studio).
Regular outcomes, discussions and outreach to the GOSH community will be on the GOSH forum.
Individual projects will be published on github repositories.
Interviews, research and reflection will be published as a booklet and released on archive.org
- How would your event address GOSH’s values of diversity and inclusion?
Enabling an exchange across different people in Yogyakarta and other parts of Indonesia with regional practioners from the region of South East Asia, covering all costs of travel and participation, if needed.
Including free-lancers, creatives, hackers and artists, along-side researchers from established research institutions and professional hardware/software developers.
Aim at a geneder balanced group through the selection process of the participants.
Include embedded ethnographic - cultural anthropological researchers through-out the process to reflect on our methodologies.
- Are there any conflicts of interest that you wish to declare?
None.
The following points are mentioned here:
Marc Dusseiller aka dusjagr has been a former member of the organising teams of the global GOSH 2016 and 2018.
The GOSH community manager, bri, has expressed interest to join the organising team and participate in the event in Yogyakarta, due it’s vicinity to Australia.