During the Museum night 2015 in Amsterdam, Waag opens the Late night pet shop in the Theatrum Anatomicum of the Waag. Get your microben now!
Waag has a biobank full to bursting with friendly, adorable micro-organisms. During the Museum night, their microbes are on sale! Bacteria, fungi, molds, yeasts, and algae. You can buy these tiny cuties as micropets and experience the fun reward of caring for these tiny creatures. Wake up every morning and be welcomed by the enthusiastic growth of your flock.
Learn how to take care of night-owl photobacteria, cool-cat spirulina, or fluffy fungi (the golden retriever of micropets)—and they’ll treat you well in return. Yes! It pays to invest in the relationships with your smallest friends. Get to know their strengths and make them work for you. Some of them might even eventually take care of you and protect you.
Tickets for the Museumnacht and the full programme can be found here: museumnacht.amsterdam
All pets are treated with respect and all legal regulations of the Netherlands and the EU apply. No GMO’s are being traded.
The Late night pet shop is not just a way to find reimbursement for costs. Waag strives to make biotechnology more accessible to society. Their lab is housed in the tower of one of Amsterdam's medieval buildings and is full of incubators, petri dishes, and microbes. In their Open Wetlab, they (along with artists, hackers, designers, activists and scientists) work to open up biotechnology.
Waag has been working to open up closed systems since 1994 with the advent of their “digital city” (the first public, social use of the internet in the Netherlands). Since then, the organisation has dedicated itself to a philosophy of opening up the black boxes of closed technology: software, hardware, and even methodologies.
Pet shop is executed by a team of makers from Waag after an origial idea of María Boto Ordóñez.
