Global DIYbio Networks: Singapore, Indonesia, Europe, USA

Here I will represent some of the groups that are happening in Singapore, and I hope Indonesia will continue with Jakarta, and maybe after me there will be the other group. I am also a designer, I am an assistant professor as a day job. I was inspired by people here in 2010, so I decided when I went back to Singapore, I will just skip- I don't think my qualifications are that interesting- I do research in policy and design. This is maybe in short what I see that is happening in 2010.

It was about rethinking labs, creating labs on expected places, so my question is not how to make labs legal, but how to make more labs in unexpected places, about the proliferation of protocols in other places, and prototyping in experimental areas. So, I call these global.. low tech, kits, protocol, open data, and so on.

About Asia, I will make a short summary. I see two models. One is more inspired by the US, I would say Singapore follows this model because it's this entrepreneurship and independence, it's very technocratic and techno-optimistic. I will explain the aspects. The EU model which is more like BioArt squatted places. I see that also in Japan in protocol proliferation. I think that we will present...

So what happened in Singapore? I got inspired in 2010 by you guys. So I contacted some people in Singapore Hackerspace, and Biopolis, and that's parto f Singapore, and I bruoght some artists together. So we organized some projects on molecular gastronomy, and local art as we create the DIYbio forum. We hacked some webcams. We had to use some.. music that was online. So then in 2010, it was very clear from the community that DIYbio in Singapore not really develop into art and design, which was my original interest.

Soon it got 'hacked' by these entrpereneurs in Singapore, so they got their own bio-entrepreneurship stuff at the local hackerspace, but I skipped those. So I can't say anything about it. I was sad that these people are not here right now. Right now we have a local DIYbio lab at the university, they don't have the safety issues because they are part of the local university. There's also an organization that does something called NTU Innovator's Nest. Basicaly she's summarizing the ideas about what the space will be like. She also works as a safety officer at some translational research about Astar which does translational research.

They are trying to do the DIYbio thing, it has the support of the government, it's trying to support the hackerspaces, these are some samples from 2012. They want to build more coworking spaces. So we started with molecular cuisine experiments, it developed into a cult, these workshops.. rice and so on, cheap equipment, ... so what I'm interested in are these two models of DIYbio in Asia. First one is connected to Singapore. It's in Kampong Glam, so it's in this paradox between religion and hedonism, or it's some interesting place to drink, but it's also a place for religious worship. So there are many places that are- you can't get drinks, so they are renewing the sites, so it's the traditional and bohemian culture.

Kraton origins of hacking, they will tell you more. I would say they have a different cultural origin. So they have the Sultan palace there, a model where art and others are supported and creative community around this open palace. This is the most interesting companion, we did some cooking in the hackerspace on diybio in singapore. So against the government's attempts to introduce healthy eating habits, they decided to have more extreme diets with paleo and they decided people should eat only meat. They wanted more scientific basis behind paleo diet and meat consumption.

Saccharomyces cerevisae project

Then we did an event in 2011. We had some residents, just like artists/designers staying at my place, doing some workshops, or explaining what they do. Romie from LA was there. These are some pictures, we met some people from the local biotech faculty, it's mainly based on agriculture. And now in January 2012, we connected with some interest in cooking/food with cooking mobile kitchen labs and hacking angkringan in Indonesia. There's this interesting organization there. Between Switzerland, India, and Indonesia and Slovenia, we have a strange network, we took this mobile kitchen lab called Angkringan, so I'm coming out this thing where people are selling food on the site, it's something you see in Indonesia often. We put some sound systems, this is just some example of what we managed to do. There was some hacked webcam, and some hacked UV illuminator. On the streets we performed some very simple molecular gastronomy protocols, verification, has some relation to some traditional desert in this country. It was an interesting contrast between cuisine and the street food culture in Indonesia. There were sound systems, it worked, it was funny, it was pretty disgusting ... this is my, last slide.

What I am interested in all this, I am both practicioner and active member of some of these communities, but also a researcher looking into it, and as a movement, rather than just communicate science, this connection between building community around prototypes is what I am interested in. I am also interested in specific global networks, integrating group project angles, and experiments, and tinkering with data, hardware, tools, humans, .. this should be more about contact, less about policing, how to share responsibility, integrate various legal social and even aesthetic aspects. Tomorrow I will present my personal project on citizen science conference and that will be all from me.

http://brmlab.cz/
http://diybiosingapore.wordpress.com/
http://genewired.com/en/diy.html