GMU:BioArt Laboratory

Alessandro Volpato
Termin der ersten Veranstaltung: 11.April
Time: Mittwochs 9.00 – 12.00

The goal is to support artistic practices in a DIY bio lab and enable students to achieve bigger goals and execute long term projects.

During the course students will learn about bio-art, will learn to hack scientific equipment and rebuild own inquiry tools.

Besides, students will realise a long term bio-art project, which will be exhibitied at Summaery. If selected, the works will also be exhibited at the international conference in Weimar and also Ars Electronica festival in Linz.

Sylabus

Day 1: (3h) lecture

• Introduction to the course
• Design the recipe and prepare the media for different organisms
• Set cultures of different organisms (Euglena, mushrooms and slime mold)

Day 2: (3h) lecture

• Checking cultures, preparing new medium and expand them
• Conceptualise long term cultivation projects

Day 3: (3h) lecture - workshop

• Freak show: Lab teardown session
• Workshop with Matthias Vetterlein
• Doing what lab scientists don’t dare to do: disassemble precious lab equipment

Day 4: (3h) lecture - workshop

• Lab rebuild session: Open source spectrometry
• Using open source principles to design an easy to assemble and maintain lab, artist etc. friendly

Day 5: (3h) lecture - workshop

• Using an open source spectrometer:
• Extracting pigments from plants and other objects, and fingerprint theirs spectrum (rainbow)

Project days: (29h)

• Conceptualise: (4h)
• Draft the concept of the project, discuss with Miga the artistic content, generate with Ale the experimental plan

• Execute: (19h)
• Work in the lab to create the project

• Document: (2h)
• Create the documentation on the GMU wiki

• Exhibit: (4h)
• Prepare the object for the exhibition of July