Last weekend, I had the opportunity (along with two participants from the Biohack Academy, Tamara and Giacomo) to represent the Open Wetlab at the Sónar festival in Barcelona. The Sónar festival is not just about music, but also about creativity, innovation, technology, and business (like, for exemple, Sónar+D). Over the course of three days, we shared a space with other institutions under STARTS umbrella from the European Commission.
To demonstrate what we did during the Biohack Academy in Amsterdam, we brought several prototypes: a spectrometer, a microscope, and a magnetic stirrer. A few participants from the academy also joined us: Tamara's bacterial printing pattern, Giacomo's living structures, and bacterial typography from Eline.
On Friday and Saturday evening, we organized the Bio-ink Workshop in which the festival participants were invited to make their own bio ink (starting from soil to a petri dish, from a petri dish to liquid medium, and from liquid medium to paper). Afterwards, they got the chance to use the bio ink developed in the Ingrid Nijhoff project, Living Pixels using the bacteria Janthinobacterium Lividum.
We were also part of the Open Digital Science and Art Workshop with agents from other institutions: Future Everything, Eutema, ArtShare, Ars Electronica, European Commission, Fundación Ibercivis, Libelium, Maastricht University, Fundació La Caixa, Sónar+D, Goteo and University of Barcelona.
But it wasn't just about biohacking—we still had some time during the night to enjoy concerts by Chemical Brothers and Duran Duran. So, not a bad weekend at all!
