Klöntal Biohack Retreat - Switzerland 2017

Klöntal Biohack Retreat - 5 days of Biohacking and Art im Klöntal


The artist Maya Minder, in collaboration with Hackteria.org, invites people from the international Biohackerszene to stay in the Klöntal. Natural scientists, hackers and artists meet for the development of ideas and open exchange.

The Biohack Retreat is part of the Klöntal Triennale 2017

Discussion on the Forum

When
20 - 24. September 2017'''

Hosting & Accommodation
'''The super duper info-sheet. thx Salome!''' File:BHR17_GUIDING-INFOs_&links_.pdf

We can host up to 50 people in the "Ferienhaus"! For the 1-2 day visitors/observers please [mailto:biohackretreat@gmail.com inform us] if you are planning to stay overnight and want to participate at our group-dinner and evening discussions. We will be able to take care of you!

There are beds and pillos for everybody.

Please bring your own sleeping bag and a bedsheet. (we will provide a few extra stuff, for those in need)

''' Absolute Hausschuhpflicht! :-) '''

Where
The Ferienheim Niederurnen is a camp house / artist colony able to host up to 54 people and has vast recreation space, industrial size kitchen and a big garden for making fires and collect herbs. The house is situated a few steps away from a natural waterfall and the lake Klöntal.

See location on googlemap

How to get there
We advise to use public transport. Check SBB to see your schedule -> Destination: Klöntal, Vorauen.

Last connection from Zurich HB (Mainstation) leaves at 16:43, S25 direction Linthal. Change in Glarus Bahnhof, to Bus 504.

Please note that the last BUS 504 from Glarus to Klöntal, Vorauen leaves at 17:48.



In emergency cases, if you arrive later, you can take a train to Glarus, Bahnhof and we will try to coordinate car transport with other arriving guests. please go to the forum to call for help!

How to get down... you'll figure that out.

Collaborate and discuss virtually on our Forum


We are inviting all participants and virtual collaborators to join the discussion on the Forum.

Please introduce yourselves there, add topics of your own interests, research, workshops etc, and can stay connected longer term through this.

Retreat Schedule
While the Retreat is open to everybody to join at anytime, we have structured the 5 days in times of 'Exploring', 'Performing' and 'Sharing'. We start with exploring the field and doing research on different topics. The OpenLab is welcoming you to join and experiment. Towards the weekend we are starting on Friday evening with music & performances. A dedicated program of workshops on the weekend for all curious minds to visit us and see/taste/listen to what we have been working on (Public Program Friday-Saturday, 22-23. September).



Performances
Blockchain Dance Party Nicola Kazimir & Walid El Barbir

Let's shake our senses Schedule: [Soundcloud]
 * Thursday evening

Eco Soundscape & Fieldrecordings Listening to the sounds of Klöntal

Let's shake our senses The Sound of Hinderligge DJ Stahl

Echo of the Lake // PTzN
Soundscape and listening Workshop with Pei-Wen Liu and friends

Despite all the visible influences on the ecosystem of the region, once again we will take a walk around the lake to investigate how sound echos towards the surrounding and how other sounds come through the lake from different aspects of human activities. During the field research, we would record synchronised tracks of four, of each a different angel. Listening Workshop will be divid into two parts : 1. Approx. 45 mins) What is an echo in the nature environment? We will listen to various of soundscape examples of field recording and its manipulation. 2. Approx. 45 mins) Field Research of “Echo of the Lake” Klöntal.

Schedule:
 * 1st Part - 23. Sep Sat. 10h
 * 2nd Part - 23 Sep Sat. 22h

DIWO-DIWU | Dream It With Us
BrainHacking and Reflection Workshop with I-Chern Lai and Mirko Kunze

Make your own Dreammachine!

Join the discussion on the Forum

Schedule:
 * Satuday Afternoon 16h

Paradise Garden - The Return
Reflection Workshop with I-Chern Lai

The Paradise Garden Workshop envisages as a way to discuss people’s notions towards environment, and the idea of perfect nature. In this workshop, the participants defined the qualities of their ideal environment -- the ‘paradise’ -- and using plants, stones, soil and materials found in surroundings to present/ built those qualities in their miniature gardens. Through the process of creating an artificial- natural environment, we looked back at the history of eastern (Chinese and Japanese) and western landscape/ garden making, shared our idea about nature and landscape making/ designing and reflected on today's approaches in environmental design.

http://www.laiichern.com/2016/09/paradise-garden.html

Schedule:
 * Friday Afternoon 15h

How To Eat (Almost) Anything - HTEAA global/local
Since November 2016 during a session in Seoul, S. Korea, Take, dusjagr and friends, have initiated a series of fab-and-food related experiments under the name HTEAA "How To Eat (Almost) Anything", which has than been continued in Tokyo, Taipei, Xi'an, Boston, Santiago de Chile and other parts of the world. How To Eat (Almost) Anything was initiated as a response to various discussions in Fablab netoworks on how to integrate more biology into digital fabrication laboratories, how such courses and workshops can be developed to be open, shared and inspiring, educational methods and kinda a critique to the HTGAA (How To Grow Almost Anything) Academy offered by MIT et al.

We will both experiment with weird local and important foods, and use this setting as a means to reflect on the meaning of life itself, the role of technical developements and how to share, shape and give access to the future we are building. And YES we will eat some INSECTS!

Schedule:
 * Saturday noon, 12h

EcoSonifiers United!
Servando Barreiro, Vannessa Lorenzo, Jukka Hautamäki

Schedule:
 * Saturday whole day: workshop/lab and
 * Saturday night: collaborative performance

Minimal Perception
In a world of sensory overload we want to explore the most weak signals. According to a [Nature paper] the human eye can see a single photon, a single light quantum. During the last month Urs Gaudenz has started exploring this exciting world and will share his findings about glowing crystals, chemiluminescence and the secret of the moonmilk. The workshop will take place in the complete dark and participants can reference their low light seeing level with a single photon detector and the newly developed photon gauge.

Schedule:
 * Thursday 21. September 2017

[DIY Open Source Single Photon Generator and Detector] [quantum-weirdness] [Born as a cat?]

OpenLab Klöntal
Inspect your micro-organisms. Ongoing science lab with DIY micrcoscopes and 3D printer.

24-27. September - Docu-Sprint @ Electronnes, Zurich
We got invited to Electronnes, a temporary festival on Women, Art & Technology, to use their space in Dynamo as a lab for post-retreat reflection, editing, documentation sprint, swimming or just enjoy the view of the Limmat river in Zurich.

26. September, 20h - Post-Retreat Presentations @ Dock18, Zurich
Hurray! We just confirmed support for an additional event in Dock18, Zurich, to be able to share our experiences and experiments with a wider audience in the city, who didnt manage to come up to visit us.



It's a great pleasure for us, as we have initiated these kinda temporary labs already in collaboration with Dock18, back in 2010, the "first" HackteriaLab 2010 - Dock18/Zürich! and now we are coming back

29-30. September - siNbiozė, Vilnius, Lithuania
The newly shaping DIYBio network is emerging in Nordic and Baltic region which connects the researchers, makers, artists, scientists via their shared interest in DIYBio and their desire to shape own future by the process of making. It brings together biolabs, individuals and organisations from Nordic, Baltic and other European countries and represents the critical mass currently working in DIYBio field, coming from grassroots initiatives.

I-Chern Lai (TW)
I-Chen Lai is an artist and a gardener. She works at Taipei Botanical Garden and she makes interventions in different kinds of “public space” from beach, park to public library and fine art museum. I-Chen has long been interested in man-made nature environment and recently more focus on gardens and botany, taking them as the reflection of human-nature relationships. I-Chen completed her undergraduate study in landscape architecture at Taiwan University and  received her MFA degree from Edinburgh University's “Art, Space and Nature” programme, focused on site-specific art and art-science cross-disciplinary practice. Her projects have taken place in many cities in Asia and Europe, including Taipei, Nagoya, The Hague, Rotterdam, Aberdeen and Edinburgh. In 2016, her project Transaction / Translation was included in the 2016 Taipei Biennial “Gestures and archives of the present, genealogies of the future: A new lexicon for the biennial”, where she sat next to the installation in order to allow conversation with visitors.

http://www.laiichern.com/

Urs Gaudenz (CH)
Urs Gaudenz is an engineer and interdisciplinary scholar working in Lucerne, Switzerland. He was born 1971 in Seattle USA. He got his master in science of Microtechnologoy from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne. Subsequent to that he attended Post-Graduate programs in international business and innovation-management. In 2016 completed the course of study in the Principles and Applications of Synthetic Biology as directed by Georg Curch, Professor of Genetics at Harward Medical School. He is founder of GaudiLabs, a third space for third culture. He is a founding member and member of the board of Hackteria International Society. He is currently on the faculty of the Lucerne School for Applied Science and Arts. In his professional practice, Urs Gaudenz makes use of various forms of work and expression such as prototype development, open scientific research and collaborative workshops. He is combining his different backgrounds to explore new technological and cultural fields and his works often emerges out of the void in this intersection. Remarkable in his work is the wide span from speculative and futuristic to very functional and applied. He worked with and was inspired by Dr. Marc Dusseiller - dusjagr labs, the Swiss Mechatronic Art Society, the GynePunk, BioDesign for the Real World, Sci | Art NanoLab Summer Institute at UCLA, LifePatch. He was invited to give workshops or exhibit projects at renown institutions and festivals such as Ars Electronica - Projekt Genesis, ISEA - International Symposium on Electronic Art, DOCK18, space for media cultures of the world, Kapelica Gallery / BioTehna, Schloss Werdenberg, N/O/D/E festival, Medialab-Prado Madrid, CYNETART-Festival - Trans-Media-Akademie.

http://www.gaudi.ch/GaudiLabs/

PTzN (Pei-Wen Liu, Tobias Hoffmann, Zhi-Yu Niels Hoffmann) (TW/CH/DE)


Pei uses field recording and audio software as conceptual tools to create listening works and installations. Because of her reluctances to become a lonely digital artist who works only with her computer, she began to curate and host experimental sound and art events. Additionally, she is particularly interested in the crossrelations of art and science, interdisciplinary approaches of workshop and festival. She creates soundings as cultural practices.

Tobias, moved from Hannover Germany to Zurich Switzerland with a background of physics, special education and media art. Since 36 years old, he has never again pick up a painting brush and making his own canvas. However, he continues to explore a wilder world with guitar, radio waves, signals in the internet and codes. He often mentions the culture of technology shall always have an initial departure from people and benevolence.

zhi-yu Niels, an unstopable yet fresh explorer

Wawies Wisnu Wisdantio (ID)
Wisnu ‘Bob Wewet’ Wisdantio is an architect focusing in urban planning and building design after finishing his studies and take part as planning consultant in 2007. Apart from his daily routines, Wisnu has a big interest in nature adventure and landscape photography. This interest became his main activity in working and collaborating with many communities and organizations. Several of them are his role as a chief editor and travel writer in Landscape Indonesia (http://landscapeindonesia.com) since 2010; a platform for outdoor travel sharing experience and visual documentation on natural landscapes in Indonesia, and as a member of Lifepatch, a community base organization working in creative and appropriate application in the field of art, science and technology.

http://lifepatch.org

http://landscapeindonesia.com

Lucy Patterson (UK/DE)
Hi! I’m a freelance science hacker and community organiser living and working in Berlin. I’m a biologist at heart and by training, fascinated by the very weird and extremely small molecular world. I work at the interface between science and society, creating projects and events that bring different communities together to engage with scientific ideas and explore the implications of contemporary research. I specialise in events that foster exchange and collaboration (hacks and hackathons, social or community events, world cafes, informal discussion events), experiences that encourage learning and discovery (workshops, hands-on activities, experiments), and immerse or entertain (immersive experiences, live performances).

https://lucypatterson.de

http://berlin.sciencehackday.org/

Julian Chollet (DE)
Julian Chollet is a (no)mad scientist, curious student and informal teacher with a background in molecular biology. He is working on the endless and underexplored biodiverity of microbes, fungi and phages - with the aim to liberate the world from microphobia through workshopology, fermentation and microscopy. His current main project focuses on creative learning environments and public participation in science with emphasis on the invisible world.

https://mikrobiomik.org/en

Bengt Sjölén (SE/DE)
Bengt Sjölén is an independent software and hardware designer/hacker/artist based in Stockholm and Berlin with roots in the home computer demo scene. He is not part of one single group but rather collaborates with several networks. He mainly works in the areas of media art, science, sound, visuals, architecture and technology.

http://automata.se

Vanessa Lorenzo (ES/CH)
Professionnal mossphonist and bio designer cooking bacterias, fungi, and moss to retune into nature through physical interfaces

http://www.hybridoa.org

Jukka Hautamäki (FI)
Artist Jukka Hautamäki works with found materials, electronics, light, sound and video. His works, which are often presented in the form of an installation, are supported by sound and visual imagery. Hautamäki places everyday objects and materials into new contexts and forms. The emphasis is often on the reciprocal dynamic between the individual works and the overall mood of the exhibition. Hautamäkis sound performances are microscopic studies into electronic sound. Live setup consists of DIY sound devices, which he manipulates in real time by changing components and reconnecting circuits. Recent setup has included under-hood work lights, solar cells, electronicmagnetic sources, coil mics, diy amps and potatoes. Relationship between performativity and sound plays a significant role in the live performances. Music style could be described as abstract ambient noise with a twist.

http://jukkahautamaki.com/

Daniel Marti (CH)
Daniel Marti (b.1972) Performance Activist. Precarious Worker and Freelancing in Audiovisual Media or Videographer. In 2012 I was introduced to Contemporary Japanese Dance or for short - Butoh - by mere luck. Ever since, I have been a Sucker for it and gradually shifting my Performance Art Practice away from it's more language driven content about Identity and Politics, into the subject of the body circulating around questions of immaterial labour and resistance articulated through it's erasure or (re-)manifestation in (hegemonial) time - space. "Thinking public" that's my subject. Likewise, my initial aversion against the idea of digital Photography going to replace my then mostly analog artistic practice however, eventually led me to learn about Arduinos. That was back in 2011, shortly after the Arab Uprisings and my last photographic sojourn in Tunesia. In the meantime, with the grateful support by a few real electronic enthusiasts from VMK(ZHdK) and SGMK, I managed to develop my own performance projects including physical computing devices, that either connect motion to signal as in my work "Radio Three Terzi 2014" (http://www.wegorythm.net/?p=2599), or sound to light as in "Café Viennois" 2012 (https://vimeo.com/89696640). For my next project I'm currently chewing over Solar Flares that disturb Radio Emissions on Earth and how this effect could be appropriated for dance. Lives and works in Basel, Zurich as well as the tri-national Region of Jura, Alsace/Haut-Rhin. Co-Organiser of Butoh Off Festival 2016, Ancienne Synagogue du Hégenheim (FR) (for documentary please see http://www.wegorythm.net/?p=3002).

http://wegorythm.net.

Catcha Rush (CH)
Catcha Rush is a herbalist continuously experimenting with wild herbs and the benefits and healing aspects of them using them in culinary ways.

Masato Takemura (JP)
Really likes eating insects!!

http://www.take-space.com/

Kasia Justka (PO/DE)
Kasia Justka [born Warsaw, martial law) independent multidisciplinary artist and live performer. She is lighting up darkness with sounds, amplifying silence with images, feeding with music, enslaving frequencies, charging with waste. Stimulating imagination and sensitivity. Her work circuits invocations into the vast power inherent within electronic systems and networks. Kasia fashions dynamics and forms of primitive entropy and deconstruction of structures. Arranging order in chaos. Her passion with the medium of electricity, untamed nature and experiences brought her to the interest of enhancing and simplifying life in this complex world. Performed her audio-visual live performances and exhibited her work in international galleries, festivals and theaters. She is also running independent, experimental lab; Monoshop.

http://singing-kitchen.tumblr.com/

Zoe Romano (IT)
Zoe Romano is a co-founder of WeMake - a makerspace in Milan. She is a craftivist, digital strategist and a lecturer, and is interested in social impact, women in tech, digital fabrication and open design. Zoe graduated in philosophy, working for several years in digital communication agencies while developing her social skills as a media hacktivist on precarity, material and immaterial labour in the creative industries. She worked for Arduino as a digital strategist from 2013 to 2017.

http://www.wemake.cc

Servando Barreiro (ES/DE)
Servando Barreiro its a nomadic sound nerd with interests in Biochemistry, entheogens, DIY hardware & software, Lucid dreaming and many other topics.. With background in Electronics and Audio engineering and experience in live visuals, graphical programming, human-computer interaction and artificial stupidity.

http://servando.teks.no

Giorgia Petri (IT)
Giorgia Petri is an interaction developer and audiovisual artist. She is co-founder of the Calembour project, with whom she has developed systems of technological interaction between man and organic matter. Graduated first in aerospace engineering and later in new technologies, she worked at the National Research Council in new technologies and for several companies, using Arduino and various interaction software. She currently collaborates with the WeMake fablab. She lives and works in Milan.

Ke-ting Chen aka Kurt (TW)
Ke-ting Chen is a collector, farmer, art creator, and Ethnobotany researcher. He was born in 1985 and grew up between Taipei City and the tea village, Pinglin in Taiwan. He researched the biodiversity of the lichen Family Collemataceae in Taiwan, and received his MSc degree from the Plant Pathology of National Chung Hsing University. Then he did some agricultural technical cooperation projects in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Palau. From 2013, he joined the Ethnobotany research group in the Botanical Garden Division, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute. His survey is focusing on taro, other crops and the Traditional Ecological Knowledge of Taiwanese Aboriginals. During the period in TFRI, he also assisted operating the exhibition room and Japanese garden, "Nanmon-cho 323" in Taipei Botanical Garden. Besides, he continued his creation of photography, paper cutting and nature material weaving. His exhibitions “Conflux”, “Specimen of Time”, and an ongoing project “Lei for Love” are showing his interest of daily life, work and nature environment. Now he is back to his hometown, Pinglin. And he tries to set up a sustainable farm and co-studio combining plant, art and living.

Laura Migliano (IT)
Laura Migliano is an interaction designer who lives and works in Milan. Graduated first in philosophy and then in new technologies, she is co-founder of Calembour's artistic project (calembour.org), which has often conjugated art technology and science. She has written for several contemporary art magazines, where she has dealt with themes related to indi games, eugenics and posthuman. She recently collaborates with the WeMake fablab.

https://calembour.org/

Maya Minder (CH)
Maya Minder‘s (b. 1983, lives in Zürich) Gasthaus combines artistic, curatorial, and activist interests into communal culinary events at various locations. For the Klöntal Triennial, she designed the opening dinner and also offers a series of workshops, including a biohacking workshop and a fermentation workshop, over the course of the Triennial‘s duration. Fermentation repeatedly features as a central aspect of her work, not only literally but also as a metaphor for social ferment, agitation, and incitation to resistance. Minder opposes the structures of food industry by promoting local selforganization, ecological sustainability, and community. She resuscitates traditional food productions methods with a certain relish, saving them from otherwise being forgotten. Her interests span the fields of art, politics, and biohacking, and she often invites other protagonists from these and various other fields to participate in the process of communal exchange. Facilitating interdisciplinary, intercultural dialogue amongst the participants is one of the primary goals of her practice.

http://mayaminder.tk

Marc Dusseiller aka dusjagr (CH)
Marc Dusseiller aka dusjagr is a nomadic researcher and workshopologist and works in an integral way, combining science, art and education. He is part of the Center for Alternative Coconut Research and the Swiss Mechatronic Art Society (SGMK), co-founder of the global Hackteria network and co-organizer of the different editions of HackteriaLab 2010 - 2014 in Zürich, Romainmotier, Bangalore and Yogyakarta. Before travelling the world for making DIY / DIWO laboratories for creative biological experimentation with living media, Marc entered the world of DIY electronics, designing printed circuit boards for synthesizers and organizing workshops and festivals in Switzerland and Slovenia. He lives and works in Zürich, Yogyakarta and Taipei. He also loves coconuts.

http://me.dusjagr.guru

Klöntal Triennale
Klöntal Triennale 2017 – Part of a Moment

The Klöntal Triennale was launched by Alexandra Blättler and Sabine Rusterholz Petko in 2014 as an exhibition project in the landscape near Glarus as well as in the Kunsthaus Glarus. From May to September 2017, it is taking place for the second time, again as a guest at the Kunsthaus (until 30 July) and in several places in the Klöntal valley. This year's Triennial focuses on transient and cooperative artistic strategies. In the same vein as the title’s motto Part of a Moment, artistic glimpses appear and fade with ephemeral synchronicity. Since its beginnings, participatory art has possessed an emancipatory political potential and encouraged alternative models for social relations. Klöntal Biohack Retreat, initiated by the artist Maya Minder is a contemporary example of this tendency and reaches out to a transdisciplinary collaboration with the bio-activist movement.

http://www.kloentaltriennale.ch/

David & Mary - Global Community Bio Summit, MIT, Boston, USA


The Community Biotechnology Initiative at the MIT Media Lab is organizing a Global Summit on Community Biotechnology this fall from Friday September 22 to Sunday September 24. Our goal is to provide a space for the global community of bio-hackers and members of independent and community laboratories to convene, plan, build fellowship, and continue the evolution of our movement. Our programming topics will include: diversity and inclusion, sharing and learning, bio security, enabling technologies, bio art and design, and more.

Proposing:
 * Boston: Sat. 23.09. 4pm
 * Klöntal: Sat. 23.09. 10pm

https://www.biosummit.org/

electronnes - Zurich


electronnes is a small festival. «electronnes» does not have a theme, but varying content and takes many forms. It is an attempt, in a little city like Zurich, to make visible female practices in the fields of art/technology. It is not important if a project is concerned with feminist issues, even though some may choose it to be.«electronnes» is not about feminism. «electronnes» is the result of an examination of feminism as part of our practice. «electronnes» may be feminist in the sense only, that it makes visible the work of women* and is based on collaboration and support of women* of each other. electronnes is radical bottom-up. electronnes is not curated, but organised-by-doing. electronnes is a beginning. electronnes is open to all (genders). https://electronnes.ch/wp/

Nordic Biolabs Network - virtually and in Vilnius, Lithuania


The newly shaping DIYBio network is emerging in Nordic and Baltic region which connects the researchers, makers, artists, scientists via their shared interest in DIYBio and their desire to shape own future by the process of making. It brings together biolabs, individuals and organisations from Nordic, Baltic and other European countries and represents the critical mass currently working in DIYBio field, coming from grassroots initiatives.

http://www.howto-things.com/Vilnius_meeting_2017

Parasite Radio link to Pixelache Festival "LOCAL & DECENTRALISED" - Helsinki, Finland


The festival is titled Local & Decentralised and it happens from 22.9 to 24.9 in Suvilahti, Helsinki. Local and decentralised governance seems to happen when collective design and a tangible group effort come together. In order to decentralise temporally the festival and to materialize the festival theme itself, reflecting perhaps on the current edification of Helsinki, Pixelache Helsinki hosts an open forum for collective design and construction of a temporary venue, versatile and open to multiple uses. These new spatial configurations along with existing DIY area such as the skate-park coagulate together with the festival participants to create fluid places where knowledge can emerge and where it can be applied.

https://festival.pixelache.ac/

Related Projects on this wiki
As one of our key formats we have developed a series of "Collaborative Events for Production and Research", so called Temporary Labs.

See other editions on Temporary Labs Overview.

Notes about the Region
The lake is owned by the bigest Swiss Energy Holding called AXPO. See Axpo is also the operating company of the world oldest nuclear power plant, Beznau. See watson