workshop @ BAS :
Open Source Estrogen explores the various ways that estrogen performs a molecular colonization in our society, bodies, and ecosystems. Estrogen is the most ancient of sex hormones. Therefore the mutagenic effects of environmental (xeno) estrogens disrupt species across all animal taxa, including humans. In response to our collective mutagenesis (becoming alien), the project and installation uses DIY/DIWO laboratory tools and protocols for detecting and extracting xeno-estrogens. Examples include solid phase extraction with cigarette filters, wine-bottle column chromatography, and beer yeast biosensors. We see these tools as a way of detecting & extracting a form of slow violence (bio-lence).
Mary Tsang
http://maggic.ooo
MIT Media Lab & Hackteria
Mary Maggic is an artist-biologist exploring the biopolitical nature of new biotechnologies, their roots in society and transhumanism, and the question of who gets emancipatory access. Since 2013 she has partnered with a filmmaker to produce a documentary web-series on “bio-art” and emerging communities in DIYBio. The web-series DIYSECT hopes to initiate conversations on the rapid effect of biotechnologies on our society. Her most recent work involves gender-hacking, estrogen synthesis/mutagenesis, and promises of “significant otherness.” Maggic has participated in a number of interdisciplinary residencies including HackteriaLab2014 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, Ars Bioarctica Residency in Finland, Bio-Commons Lab @ Rural Hub Italy, and Interactivos?’16: Possible Worlds in Madrid. She holds a Bachelor of Science and Art (BSA) in Biological Sciences and Art from Carnegie Mellon University and is currently pursuing her masters in Media Arts and Sciences at MIT Media Lab, Design Fiction research group.
Byron Rich
http://byronrich.com
Allegheny College
Canada
Byron Rich: Having grown up on the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains in western Canada, where a seemingly endless wild gives way to the rapidly expanding influence of human hubris, Byron was compelled to make things that ask unanswerable questions. He pursued a degree in art at The University of Calgary before wandering the islands of the South Pacific, finally finding himself in Buffalo, New York where he obtained an MFA in Emerging Practices at The University at Buffalo. He now teaches Electronic Art, Intermedia and Painting at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania.
Paula Pin
Spain
Paula pin is a transhackfeminist performer and researcher focused on developing experimental proceedments using collective and free technologies. Her work and research areas range from drawings to the use of abstract video or circuit bending, placed in the intersection of biology, science and queer art. Her performances usually consist in experimental processes where noise and body interact through the use of synthethizers DIY DIWO (Transnoise alogon and pin, 2011 Piksel Festival). In 2011 her investigation process, Photosyntetika, is created as a sort of hybrid of gender, technology and nature where the individual reappropriates and uses knowledge and biopolitical tactics to generate an autonomous technological self. Currently she is developing together with Klau kinky a transhackfeminist laboratory called Pechblenda, where they experiment with the bio, electrical and chemical aspects of biopunk biosophy and its biopolitical practical uses, which include the use of plants, microorganisms and other sources of alternative energies which conform a complex web of interactions that fuse transversely into machines, plans and animals within the cosmos; revealing a different kind of ecology based on transhackfeminist premises. Since September 2012 she collaborates with the international network <
Gaia Leandra
https://www.behance.net/gaialeandra
Italy
Gaia Leandra is a free researcher in the field new technology. She started from biology to science fiction, her usage to experiment with technology and nature, always using the free software d.i.y. approach. Her interest is about the divulgation and sharing of knowledge of science. She does interdisciplinary work with plant, bacteria, funghi and body, and her research is based on the simbiosis between these different themes.
