Open Source Body: Makery has its festival
Makery is organizing its first big event around Open Science Hardware and open hardware for healthcare. A DIYbio festival like you have never seen before in France.
With Open Source Body, the medialab Makery proposes from January 22-27, 2018 a week of festival, workshops, meet-ups, conferences and performances to grasp the challenges of open hardware for healthcare. Originating from the practices of open and citizen science, biohack and DIYbio, the Open Science Hardware considers that in order to generalize access to medical devices, reduce the cost of research and analysis equipment, one needs to facilitate their production, customization and recycling. Open Source Body, cadenced by five days of workshops and meet-ups with the partners of the festival la Paillasse, Echopen, the Interdisciplinary research center, and two days of presentations, equipment demos and performances at la Gaîté lyrique, offers the opportunity to meet for scientists, doctors, designers, artists committed to the movement, and the general public.
From the lab to the portable analysis briefcase, equipment plays a determining role in experimentations and advances in the world of scientific instrumentation. Like it has in the different scientific revolutions that enabled to extend observations beyond the five human senses. Even though scientists are born DIYers, the present supply chain in scientific equipment limits access to this equipment and stands in the way of creativity and customization. Reducing these costs would bring significant improvements to research and healthcare. Better, equipment and software could potentially be open source, in the sense that their development would be distributed without a copyright and their commercialization more open than today.
Art workshops and open healthcare
Impossible, of course, to imagine an open hardware for science festival without a large part of experimentations and workshops. Open Source Body will therefore begin at la Paillasse, the Parisian biohacklab, with three workshops where artistic creation and open science converge.
The Unborn0x9 workshop calls for bio-hackers, social actors and political agitators to design a sound environment deriving from the conversion of ultra-portable ultrasound ultrasonic frequencies. Makery’s keenest readers will have noticed this is about a new development phase of Shu Lea Cheang’s artistic creation project around the open source and low-cost echo-stethoscope from Echopen, the Hôtel-Dieu fablab in Paris. Objective: prepare the hacking performance led by Shu Lea Cheang at la Gaîté on January 27.
The Spaniards from Pechblenda and the Swiss from Hackteria will lead the workshop Science Friction and Noise Disturbance at la Paillasse’s biobase, “time and space for the confluence of cyborgs, cyber-witches and degenerate alchemists”. On the program: “noiSEX disruptions from DIWo, fluids and non-static bodies”.
Bureau d’études seized the opportunity offered by Open Source Body to make progress on its tactical theater collective project Aliens in Green around the controversy of endocrine disruptors. On the program: On 22 and 23, design of a serious game on the endocrine disruptors policy, then from 22-26, calling on specialists and non-specialists to conduct interviews evoking our life in toxic environments (pesticides, industrial pollutions, etc.).
Initiations to biological open hardware
From January 24, Open Source Body will propose in partnership with the CRI and the program Doing It Together Science two open hardware for healthcare workshops. The first one, led by André Maia Chagas from Prometheus Science, is an initiation to the Flypi microscope, an open source platform printable in 3D for fluorescent microscopy, optogenetics and temperature control. Alexey Zaytsev, coming especially from Shenzhen in China, will test DI-Lambda, an open hardware colorimeter allowing you to make essential colometric analyses. The workshop will allow you to learn how to measure the concentration of protein in milk and the concentration of lead in soils.
The workshops will be cadenced by meet-up evenings bringing together participants (Tuesday at Echopen, Wednesday at la Paillasse, Thursday at the CRI). On Friday at la Gaîté Lyrique, the meet-up will be an opportunity for workshop outings.
Big public day at la Gaîté Lyrique
On January 27, Open Source Body will propose a general public day in partnership with la Gaîté Lyrique. To learn about and understand the issues of equipment for open science, discover prototypes of mobile healthcare equipment and its potential impact on the reduction in social inequality regarding access to healthcare. But this day will also offer the opportunity to explore convergences between scientists, doctors, hackers, makers, designers and artists. Conferences, demonstrations, performances will give rhythm to the day from 2pm to 10pm.
Open Source Body wishes to bring together actors across the world at the crossroads of research in biology, first line medicine and development of open source healthcare equipment. Objective? Talk about the perspectives opened by this low-cost new equipment and the issue of scaling for practical use in the field. There will be talk about (among others) the Médecins Sans Frontières minilab, the Hôtel-Dieu Echopen fablab in Paris,the health and disability lab My Human Kit. Also present will be members of the bioDIY Hackteria and GaudiLabs networks, researchers from Institut Pasteur, the Open Wetlab from the Waag Society in Amsterdam or the Italians from Made4You. One will also talk about les Parleuses, sexual education kit made of fabric dedicated to women’s sexual organs.
Cyberfeminist and gynepunk performances
The cost reduction promised by the open equipment for science movement and the development of “forks”, these variants for creation, open new possibilities for the physical artistic practice: ultrasound imaging, digital microscopy by webcam or digital binocular magnifying glasses, digital and robotic endoscopy for surgeries, DIY gynecology and fluid analysis, sonication of bacterial and cellular exchanges… Open Source Body will therefore end Saturday with an evening of performances from cyber-feminist, transhack-feminist and gynepunk artists. We don’t really know yet what to expect, except that the aforesaid performances, Unborn0x9 from Shu Lea Cheang and Labomedia and [[Performative lab]o[dy Ritual]] from Pechblenda and Hackteria are intended for an adult audience.
Registrations and information on the Open Source Body Facebook page and on the festival Open Source Body