Makery

All ready for Makery’s lab marathon at Ars Electronica!

Makery is inviting labs to hack the most prestigious of new media festivals, also the most ancient, Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria, during 48 hours this weekend.

Here, our map of the labs connected during a 48 hours marathon of information!

We called it “Around the labs in 48 hours”, in reference to a certain Jules Verne, this genuine innovator whom one would have called a maker if he had lived in the century of the DIY revolution! But it is more precisely a true marathon of information that Makery is preparing for the event “STWST48 infoLAB, infoDETOX, infoCRASH”, 48 hours of hacktivist agitation organised in the off of the in, understand in the wings (but still part of the programming) of the most ancient and prestigious new media festivals, Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria.

During these 48 hours of happenings, discussions, sets of DJs and the greatest variety of bio-hacked experimentations (we will come back to this obviously), from Friday September 4th until Sunday September 6th, 5pm, Makery has invited makers, hackers, DIYers and tinkerers to occupy the Stadtwerkstatt, cultural centre founded in 1979 in Linz, small quiet village in Austria, and well known place of the festival goers of Ars Electronica since it concentrates the most official off of the Austrian festival.

Stadtwerkstatt, between the Linz museum of the Future and the Future Lab welcomes STWST48. © DR

In concrete terms, from our labs map (revamped for the occasion), we are opening a window on fablabs, hackerspaces and makerspaces worldwide: webcams connected to ten locations on all continents (well nearly: we are missing Australia), the most varied possible, and regular rendezvous via Skype with members of these places where the future is being built.

Ars Electronica is the indisputable hub of digital culture (Ars Electronica awards (reward major innovations in terms of digital image creation, interactive installations, digital communities…), welcoming each year hundreds of artists, theorists, programmers and activists (for example, the organisers received 2,889 applications from 75 countries for the competition this year). Fablabs, biohacklabs, and other medialabs are of course present, but it is Makery that will give them all the visibility they deserve.

Upcycling, biohack and open source

Since information is the raw material of Makery, that roams the continents discovering makerspaces, hackerspaces, fablabs and other hybrid spaces where fabrication and uses of tomorrow are invented, our marathon will consist in interviewing and giving the floor to the most varied maker practises around the world, from the Japanese hackerspace to the Swiss biohacklab including the instrument tinkerers of Glasgow Make Some Noise. Open science and citizen politics, collective engineering and upcycling of music instruments of bygone days or electronic waste…the activities of labs are not limited to the 3D printer to which they are sometimes reduced.

To make them known to a larger public, Makery is activating its map of labs live from Linz and increasing it with regular live spans. During 48 hours, the invited labs are connected to Ars Electronica via a webcam (or, as with the Blackboxe in the process of moving, via an image of their space). At a fixed time (what a hassle to arrange rendezvous at fixed times with labs located in such uneven time zones), a lab is asked questions by the team of Makery journalists in Linz, to present its space, its projects, performances or a remote critical intervention for the public of the Ars Electronica festival and on Internet (off-line, Skype sessions will rapidly be recorded on video and embedded on the map).

Amiens, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Glasgow…

Our world tour of labs in 48 hours passes though France (of course) with La Machinerie, fablab and co-working space in Amiens that likes home made robots, and the Blackboxe (Paris), through Spain with the Fablab Barcelona at the cutting edge on the issue of the Fab City. We will also go to Africa with the Ouagalab in Burkina-Faso that built its premises brick by brick, through Brazil with the Garagem in São Paulo,one of the most ancient Brazilian labs that moved premises this summer, and also Noisebridge in San Francisco the origin of which Mitch Altman will tell us about. We will pass through Scotland to listen to the collective Glasgow Make Some Noise, through Slovenia and the Ljudmila Art and Science Laboratory, through Switzerland to listen to the biohackers of Hackuarium. Without forgetting the Tokyo Hackerspace in Japan and the apprentice gamers of the UCLA Gamelab.

From Friday 5 pm until Sunday 5 pm, the map of this World tour of labs in 48 hours will be active. Interviews and interventions, carried out through Skype or live in Linz, will be put on line progressively on the same map.

Today, Friday September 4th:
– At 6 pm: La Machinerie (Amiens, France)
– At 8 pm: Ouagalab (Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso)
– At 10 pm: Fablab Barcelona (Spain)

Saturday September 5th:
– At midnight: UCLA Gamelab (Los Angeles, USA)
– At 2 am: Garagem Fab Lab (São Paulo, Brazil)
– At 4 am: Tokyo Hackerspace (Japan)
– At 5 am: Noisebridge (San Francisco, USA)
– At 12 pm (noon): Hackuarium (Switzerland)
– At 2 pm: Glasgow Make some Noise (Scotland)
– At 4 pm: Ljudmila Art and Science Laboratory (Slovenia)
– At 6 pm: Ouagalab (Burkina Faso)
– At 8 pm: Blackboxe (Paris, France)
– At 10 pm: UCLA Gamelab (Los Angeles USA)

 

Around the labs in 48h

The project STWST48 

Ars Electronica Festival 2015