Kopenlab is a collaborative space for citizen science, diybio, contemporary art and maker culture. This year, Kopenlab has participated in the Science in the CIty Festival, a side event together with ESOF conference 2014 which is a biannual pan-European conference dedicated to showcasing the latest developments in scientific research and innovation. This time, the excitement took place at the heart of Copenhagen.
Through this festival, Kopenlab aims to show how open cultures in design, making and citizen science are contributory to knowledge advancements and outreach. In the near future, they hope to create a citizen science center where individuals from all walks of life can collaborate with no knowledge discrimination, In the process, a novel methodology of research, hardware development and entrepreneurship could flourish, eliminating the requirement for “access cards” to research laboratories and workplaces where an individual has to strive to earn certificates for entry into. This festival is the starting point in this long road and revolves around the activities and people of Biologigaragen.
The Old Storage Building at Thorvald Bindesbølls Plads in Carlsberg is where our Kopenlab space would be. The building was literally just an empty space:
But the talented volunteers managed to transform the space into THIS, an aura of a modern art museum, with chic resting areas and beautiful installations, coupled with cosy areas for workshops and talks to be conducted.
A blog post can never do justice to a 6-day activity-packed festival hosted by Kopenlab. You can go here to find out about the details of the festival. But just to entice you a bit, here are some of the photos taken at the festival. Do keep a lookout for the Kopenlab! Their activities would be something you might want to turn on your reticular activating system for.
A Bioreactor vest with Malthe Borch(Biologigaragen) and Brian Degger(Hackteria)
This is the “Shake it with Hackteria.org” series which include DIY design and constructions by people from Hackteria! A worksop called “Shake it Baby” was also conducted.
Racquel and her artwork “Thread of Fate”
Above shows 2 DIY hardware at the exhibition. The left is a 3D printer, the first in the world. And on the right is a wild open PCR made by Hackteria
Kate and I helped out at a DNA Barcoding Workshop conducted by Adeline Seah, a Science communicator at Biodiversity Connections and a Consultant at SCELSE, NTU. This aimed to use molecular methods to find out what are the species that are included in Herbal supplements where ingredients are usually not specified.
Above is the stage for “Joined at the Chips” performed by LoVid duo that comprises of Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus
The left is Pey (Lifepatch) busy facilitating her workshop “Home-made Kimchi” and Cristina Muñoz (Biologigaragen) for her workshop “Urine-reacter Co-Design“.
And after a busy day, we would usually gather together for a chill social night. Our topic of interest this time as we down our beers is “what are the various uses you can think of with gel boxes?” We had plentiful insights from having light displays in TBE buffer using LED lights kindly provided by Marc Dusjagr, to controlling our pseudo-Frankensteinisch Daphnias caught by Urs Gaudenz and Brian Degger to perform parade-like formations. DIYers FTW..
Thank you Kopenlab for this experience and the coordinators for making this happen 🙂
- Christoffer Bengt: hardware and tools coordinator
- Cristina Muñoz: Graphic Design coordinator
- Emil L Polny: main coordinator, Science Drop coordinator, emilpolny at gmail.com
- Jens Ulrik Jørgensen, Exhibition design coordinator
- Louise Dyhre Helles: volunteer coordinator
- Majken Overgaard: exhibition coordinator
- Martin M Borch: main coordinator, workshop coordinator, mmborch at gmail.com
- Stina Hasse: exhibition coordinator
- Søren Borch: economy coordinator, soren.borch at gmail.com
- Adeline seah: DNA Barcoding & Biolab Coordinator
