Marc Dusseiller, NGM Interview
"The forming and foundation of Hackteria was a global thing already"
Interview host: Shih Wei Chieh
2022.07.09
Jakata, Gudskul

Can you tell us the origin and the current states of Hackteria?
In 2009 we started Hackteria, in fact, at that time it was hackteria.org with the idea of making a website and a knowledge kind of sharing platform on a wiki. It started during an event in Spain that I joined in 2009 in February. I was very new to this whole media arts or DIY culture at that time, just doing some workshops already in Switzerland with my geek friends but I was not yet connected at all internationally. In 2007/2008 I did some DIY electronics workshops in Switzerland. That's kind of the beginning of Hackteria was connected to my personal freshly found enthusiasm, do it yourself activities and also open source, open source as an approach to science and technology. I was already teaching a class of nanotechnology, a lab class where I also introduced the students into building their own laboratory equipment using open source approaches using pure data of visualizing microscopy image, using Arduino to make a setup to measure some nanoparticles. This was a lab course I developed in 2008. And so with this kind of backpack of like teaching, doing DIY science equipment and like really enjoying making synthesizers and experimental music. I saw a call for participation in an event called “Interactivos?” hosted in Madrid in Spain which at that time was already quite famous. I heard a little bit already about it. It's kind of an event with a strong open source culture mindset. So you come together, very internationally. For two weeks to work on a prototype, not on a finished product or something, and it's kind of a two-step process. First, there's a call for a project leader who suggests a topic he wants to research and investigate and then there's a second call for participating in one of these nodes. The topic of Interactivos? in 2009 was garage science, so like doing science in the garage which I really liked totally fits my interest: do it with yourself and low cost science. There was one research node on astrobiology, life in outer space, so I applied to participate in this event. So I went to Berlin, first to Transmediale to join some other lab there. And then I went to Interactivos?, and somehow, during this trip I met a lot of other international media artists that have a strong focus on open source and this was a bit of time there. Everybody using Wiki and open source was really hot in the media art and Puredata. And I also used, for example, wiki in my lecture with my students to document your work. Interactivos? was a fantastic event, so you are like in these groups. The topic is somehow prepared by one person, so the material is already ordered. During the event, it's really like a team work, that you don't, you know, it's research together, it's not about already a pre planned activity, it’s like just the topic was already predefined "Garage Astrobiology”. I came packing my my little synthesizers and packing myself with microscopes I was building like a few months before. We were in a team that was led by Andy Gracie. He's an artist originally from the UK but living in Barcelona or somewhere in Spain and Gijon. He was the mentor of this node on Astrobiology. He has been working for many years already in the field called bio art or art and technology, merging living systems like insects or other animals or also rice growing with robotic elements and using a kind of machine learning and algorithms and combining with natural elements of bacteria. Many, many cool works, His cybernetic system, very philosophical context always.He has a strong interest also in life in outer space. He likes rockets and life on Mars and some of these... so he was suggesting his garage astrobiology. He's also a very craftsman DIY guy. So we're a team of like 6, 7 people, like architects, artists, me as a kind of science educator I would say at that time and DIY enthusiast and that's made this one one of the main projects that later on followed Hackteria for all the time. I already brought the self-built microscope that's made from a webcam. And we worked in this group with the tardigrade, the little animals that can survive out of the space conditions. We were hunting in Madrid for these little animals, the tardigrade. The European space agency did some research with them. Into how they survive out to space conditions and there was I guess partially the inspiration for the project is like there is this animal here on earth that somehow can survive out the space conditions. That was a very surprising result, it was very popular media also, this research recently crashed on the moon. The Israeil research did an experiment then crashed on the moon. So maybe they're living on the moon. They can survive surprisingly long, but of course they don't survive the radiation in outer space. Nothing can survive from radiation, so they have to be inside a stone or something. t Interactivos? was a crazy group mass event for two weeks where the final output is not a final product. It's a documentation on the wiki of a prototype, Also at the final day, we just show people our table. Of course, we clean up a little bit and show what we have been working on. But there was no pressure at all, to put an object there that is like for an exhibition, not at all. There was a strong pressure that everything you do should use open source, kind of tools and should be documented on the Wiki. So that's medialab model in Interactivos?, they have done this already for many years before with some of the most famous and meanwhile also successful enthusiast in media art. A lot of people were in at Interactivos? at that time was very famous. Some of the best media artists of the world come together there. It was really cool and for me it was like mind blowing experience. People from all over the world there from China from Australia from the US from all over Europe we're participating from India travel there to participate at this event.

In fact, if you look at the Hackteria website, the first sentence is: "Hackteria was formed in 2009 at Interactivos.?" with the link. We went to shows, in the evening we all hung out in the youth hostel together, partied together, and I met this other guy called Yashas Shetty. He was in another group doing environmental sensors on balloons to measure pollution in the city. There were many other cool projects, people building 3D printers or drones with Arduino or using microscopes and doing things with openFrameworks, doing some kind of Sonification of the motion of bacteria. Interactivos? is the hotspot in the media art scene, and so a lot of people came in the evening to see what we're doing, like friends of the space, it's Medailab-Prado. Later it became much bigger and as a Fablab, an exhibition space at that time, it was more like a media lab in a basement. I talked to Yashas and said let's do a jam session, some music together, so we formed like a little group of five people, and we like jamming a bit, so we had this kind of improvised music concert in one other, venue in the evening with some saxophone I played a synthesizer and Yashas was playing some other thing on the computer. We talked and he said he's starting a new class on teaching artists genetic engineering and synthetic biology. Synthetic biology is a more radical approach to genetic engineering. Instead of changing a few genes, you totally kind of rearrange a bacteria, let's say, with the view set from an engineer to kind of make machines out of living systems, it's a bit their metaphors. It's a very geeky engineering subject to rearrange genetic engineering to make it more cool. So genetic engineering it kind of involves that you modify the genetic code of a bacteria, synthetic biology means you totally look at this from an abstract engineering view to rebuild the machine with living or components and they call them building blocks. So let’s say if you need an oscillator in a bacteria, you click, chikopa!software, so it's a very engineering approach to modify genetic organisms like organisms and we were really interested because I followed this.

I talk about genetic engineering also in my lectures and I follow this kind of interdisciplinary field of synthetic biology where artists and artists, biologists and engineers work together. So I was super interested that this guy already does a class with artists. So we talk and then also let's say this synthetic biology scene. It's very much surrounding an event called iGEM. The Internationally Genetically Engineered Machines competition. It's a student competition started by MIT in 2004 or 2003, I don't know. It's very much this syntheticology and iGEM is very much overlapping and I followed this already for many years as a kind of observer because I liked it because all the students they work like during the summer they publish everything on the wiki, they have also strong open source component and all the thing you develop for the genetic engineering has to be open source. So other people can use the blocks, the building blocks for building bacteria that would ever glow in the dark or something, but I was a bit critical to it, also it's a very kind of rebranding of genetic engineering to make it cooler. This iGEM and also there's no artists involved, there's no kind of social responsibility involved. That's all I like. “Yeah. Yeah, we can do it. We solve all the problems with genetic engineering bacteria.” At that time it was still quite small, it became huge. Now 2,000 universities are competing at this. And at that time there were maybe 50 groups or something, and in fact, Yashas and the institution where he's employed, let's say, or even an artist residency at an art school in India called Srishti. So he collaborated with some biologists in the national center of biological science to host a class for artists to join iGEM and also work on synthetic biology. And so I thought they were super cool so we talked about wiki, making like do it yourself, laboratories for genetic engineering and combining machines and robots with living systems, this open source approach too, also working as artists with biology with Andy Gracie and Yashas Shetty. We thought this IGEM is bullshit, because it's just fucking students and engineers, there's no artists, there’s no critical elements, there's no anthropologists, there's also very western influence. It's a very American-based and kind of mindset there. So we thought we should start something ourselves, inspired by Introductivos that has this wiki platform to allow other creatives and artists to also work with biology and their studios in the kitchen at home. And so we were just drinking beers and said let's start something together. I think we were very motivated by this collaborative research we did all the week by building in microscopes, talking about, you know, modifying bacteria and India and artists involved and designers involved. And so yeah, we kind of kept in the loop, Andy Gracie, Yashas Shetty and myself, and you know we email each other and maybe how should we start this project now? And yeah, and then Yashas Shetty started already, let's say with his student class and he came up with this idea to call it Hackteria. They also made a logo of some kind of a bacteria that looks like an electric circuit. And so, we already organized a trip to India, and I also got some funding. I apply for some funding to do these kind of do it yourself workshops for artists to get started with biology and working with microorganisms. We already then used the name Hackteria and we had really fun and so then we thought, okay, we have to make this website and you know, so Yashas invited me to Bangalore and so a few months later I traveled to India to work with his students when this project was going on, building like this equipment, building these microscopes, going for field trips in the city, collecting samples and talking about genetic engineering. And we set up the website, hackteria.org, we set up the wiki. Also on Hackteria.org there's a big wiki and the first post is this workshop we did in Bangalore. With the students of art and design. It was 2009! The starting idea!

In 2009, I also kept in the loop with some friends I met that invited me to a festival in Indonesia, it’s called Yogyakarta International Media Art Festival held by HONF, Cellsbutton. It was organized by an Indonesian media art collective called HONF, the house of natural fiber. So Cellsbutton International Media Art Festival of Yogyakarta. So I combined my trip to Bangalore to continue to join the media art festival in Yogyakarta, so I traveled from Bangalore to Jogja to join there. Back with my whole bag with DIY electronics workshop material that I already did also in India, pack my bag with webcams to build microscopes but also look locally where I can find the material, go to electronics stores on the streets of Bangalore or check electronics stores here in Jogja. On the same trip I showed this stuff and during the media art festival, which was also a fantastic experience. Cellsbutton is not an art festival just like two days with an exhibition and a concert, it's like almost two weeks or 12 to 13 days, it’s kind of a mixture of maybe half of the people are Indonesian kind of collective artists, individuals, freaks including the team and also half of the participants are from international. There were people from Japan, Hong Kong and from different places in Europe. There were a lot of people from Česká and Slovenia when I was there in France, I was the only Swiss guy. It was a mind-blowing experience, and people I met there at the Cellsbutton Festival were really happy that someone does such DIY synthesizer workshops. I built a little oscillator synthesizer and we built a case. I think for some people it was the first time they made his self-made electronic circuits for his Synthesizers.

And people at the workshop were for example Helmi Hardian from Surabaya, Andreas Siagian that I still work with, he's now in Lifepatch, Togar. I think they all super motivated about this DIY Synthesizers, but the local group I was mind-blowing, they already did workshop like growing bacteria for let's say artistic purposes. They collaborate with the local scientists also on making body modifications and a lot of crazy amazing shit and we made like noise performances in the evening. We had a live VJ set where people use Puredata and other like live coding sessions and breakcore concerts and we go camping. It was also very much a group activity. We're all kind of young people at the festival I would say. We're all we like a group of 50 people go camping somewhere and we spent the night partying, making music together, talking all kinds of stuff. Also more like a camp and what you would say as an art festival as you would know it from Taiwan, like we worked together all day long. There was some schedule of doing workshops at a local kindergarten at the university. Also we went to some place for handicapped people or we did workshops, also soldering or some people like mentally handicapped and we built some synthesizers with them. It was fantastic experience and I didn't even know the program, people would say, in two hours you have workshop at kindergarten, you're like, okay! and then you catch your stuffs and go there and do a workshop. I was kind of exposed to this idea through practice, I think you have to learn to improvise and adapt to the local situation. And you know, change your concept of what is the workshop in the media art circles. Yeah I met people like Togar and we continued the collaboration also on friendships with those people. So that was the kind of first year on of Hackteria. We also applied to do workshops in many other places. We do workshops in Berlin on building like scientific equipment like microscopes. Everything is documented on the wiki, 2009 let's say a foundation year.

It also involved many other international activities like workshops in Berlin, workshops in Norway and so forth. The group and the idea started in Interactivos, in Madrid, then in Bangalore, in Berlin, in Indonesia, in Norway. The whole year was like this with Yashas Shetty and Andy Gracie and also Urs Gaudenz. We did a lot of workshops all over the planet. So me and Andy Gracie did a workshop called "Bioelectronics for artists' ' at an event called Piksel in Bergen, Norway. Somehow we build equipment, we like microscopes and we work with Puredata to track the motion of the small animals to make music with it. It was a five day workshop on building your own bioelectronic music devices, using cameras and Puredata and electronic sensors and how to measure signals from living systems to make music with it. But because we were doing animal experimentation at the workshop, the whole media banned reporting about the festival, because we do animal experimentation just for fun, let's say for art which is obviously fun although most of art is not so funny. So that year was groundbreaking, also went to Hong Kong to this Microwave International New Media Arts Festival to do a workshop, also on like tracking the water bear, the tardigrade same as we did at the first workshop, making music with the water bears and building projectors with the laser, laser pointer and a little drop of water with the water bear, to project everything on the wall at Microwave Festival in Hong Kong. So from this foundation year, there are people involved from Hong Kong also from Taiwan, from Indonesia, from India, from Switzerland from other parts of Europe for example, Spain. I think with this founding let's say being very globally connected, this had to have an impact on how the project developed further on. The very core idea was to develop knowledge that is documented on a wiki about Interdisciplinary collaboration, artists work with scientists and Hackers work together with some designers on making the work with living systems more accessible. Living systems means plants, human body, bacteria, water baths, and also building the equipment to be able to do so, and allowing other people to build this low-cost equipment to set up a bio lab in your own artist studio. We use recycled stuff from old computers like a computer fan we use to make a spin coater. We use other motors to make a shaker, when you cook something like, you know, you need to shake it all the time, during the cultivation of the bacteria. So we built a lot of this, we recycled some electronic trash to build scientific equipment, especially myself, I was working a lot on this while Yashas Shetty worked a lot on this like making this genetic engineering more and more critical approach with artists and designers.

Yashas Shetty did a few events, participation at this iGEM, in the first one they built this books SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY FOR ARTISTS & dESIGNERS. They wrote the book and they built the bacteria that produces the smell of monsoon rain. The rainy season in India, it’s called “monsoon”, they introduce the gene into a bacteria that smells like rain. They won also the prize because it was the first time an artist's critical approach, it's about the environment, environmental change. When the monsoon rain shifts, there is going to be problems in India about rice culture and stuff. So they kind of make a bit of a joke about this synthetic biology, and can only offer you a memory when still before the climate change, you can still be in the laboratory, smell this smell of rain, beautiful work. And also then they built in other sessions, they built this mobile laboratory to go into the forest and to do a kind of simple analysis of genetics in the field and so that was really mind-blowing. We had the wiki and we had a lot of interactions all over the world, people were also very motivated, all the people we met at these workshops we did another workshop at Luzern Media lab on building Spectrometers and working with light and lasers, and kind of analytic performances with this rainbow colors of Spectrography with Andy Gracie again.

And then we thought, It doesn't work by itself. The fact that we have a wiki will not motivate anybody to write something for the wiki. Although I believe in open culture, Wikipedia is the best example that it could be self-motivated. So we thought we have to do an event to motivate people to develop new content that can be a workshop or a new prototype, similar to our experience at Interactivos. So we thought let's do an event. Andy Gracie and I organized an event in Switzerland called HackteriaLab in Dock 18 in 2010, with this little funding we had from 2009. So we brought a lot of cool people together. Maybe 15, 20 participants or something, half Swiss half International, the people we met at the workshops before, you know, they were really motivated. "I want to do this stuff again!" So we try to invite them, host them at my friend's place. And that's when it's kind of shifted from this idea that it's a website. We thought about it, also, it has to be activities like real-world activities where we come together, we research things together and during that week we create content that is also documented on the wiki. The motivation is that people are in a group together, drinking beers, eating pizza and then by the end of the event, they are really motivated to show what they have been doing this week. So that's kind of when this idea started that to create content that we can share through workshops or online, through the wiki, we have to have these research labs, that we call “HackteriaLab”. That motivates people because you know we invite them, we give them food, we give them a creative environment, and by the end of the week there is some new content on the wiki. It's a common thing also called wiki sprints or hack sprints or Hackathons. This is a model that was developed already a while ago, especially in the software environment and we were inspired by this. But again it's about making biology and living systems more accessible to work with for artists and creative teachers, hackers, makers. During the first year, that is kind of where it changed from a pure wiki idea to organizing physical events, and the main activity was towards developing workshops that can be implemented somewhere to teach people, how to work with living systems, how to work with bacteria, how to work with microscopes, building your own equipment for like a spectrometer, measuring signals from plants.

Can you introduce or describe your role in these practices?
Andy Gracie is a real artist and craftsman that builds big installations. I really like his work combining living systems with robotics and machine learning back in 2009. And Yashas I'd say very philosophical approach to work means science or means lives and also working in India, also, he is mostly a musician by his enthusiasm. My role definitely comes from my background also being originally trained as a scientist. Also doing a lot of, let's say, material. So my role is quite influenced from my background in nanotechnology. Where I already tried to bridge biological systems with material science and my newly found enthusiasm in working with DIY electronics, and open hardware like Arduino, with our community in Switzerland is Mechatronic Art Society and DIY electronics community. So my role was very much also developing new ideas for making scientific science equipment, a lot of the workshops I developed were going towards this and I really liked doing workshops, I like to travel. So within the Hackteria, let's say activities, trying to to go around the world and do workshops on this DIY, call it “do it yourself biology” or “do it yourself laboratory equipment” always also with creative elements of making music with it, or building it like from trash very cheap. Science equipment doesn't have to be a black box, something magic in science is something you can understand. It’s usually a laser and you put something in the between and you look at some sensors. So conceptually a lot of science equipment is very simple to understand, But to make it robust for scientific analysis is a bit difficult, but for playful experimentation for artists or who make music with it, it's easy to do it in workshops. I got invited to many places and we got invited to Finland for a series of workshops. We got invited to Slovenia for a series of workshops on artists and nanotechnology. We have a lot of international activities in these years. At these workshops we met people, you know that kind of we kept in contact with the people that like sharing their knowledge, building stuff and working creatively with living things. More people joined this Hackteria network. And after the first event in Zurich, we also thought we have to organize a bigger event again in Switzerland. So my role then also became besides building by developing workshops and building DIY equipment and kind of being trained as a scientist and bridging to art. I also became a kind of organizer, kind of trying to organize global events where I invite all these people that we met.

During the first one or two years, to come again together and still inspired by this, you know, collaborative development we started in Interactivos, we spent like a week or ten days together developing new stuff. So I also became kind of a coordinator and organizer raising funds for doing so, and keeping in the Loop with everybody, making some Google docs, writing down numbers when and renting a venue, building a team. So I became an organizer within this Hackteria network for organizing events. Because purely online we were not so interested, we want to make this face-to-face meeting activities. We didn't have a clear goal where we should push it, we just knew that purely a website is not interesting. And also we knew we are not gonna have a small group, collective. We talked about it in the beginning, maybe Andy, Yashas and I could form a collective, and you know, do artwork together or something. But we also were not interested in that collective idea, so we wanted to make this more like a platform of organizing physical meetings for code development of new ideas and prototypes, for hosting the wiki. My role was being the scientist and the DIY enthusiasts and eventually becoming an organizer in these global activities.

Why global? Why global and how the global network was formed? and what is the best value you see in the global exchange and gathering?
The forming and foundation of Hackteria was a global thing already. There were collaborators like co-founders from India, it was already there. We started this as a group of enthusiasts that already were globally distributed. The first year, activities in Indonesia happened, activities in Taiwan. Also we did a workshop and building microscopes together, with my Indian collaborator in 2009. We went together to Taiwan to also build microscopes at Playaround in Taipei art school there. Interactivos was very global, people from all over the world, that’s where we formed the idea. So, participants in these co-founded activities were already globally distributed. And at that time you know wiki, online collaboration was all like this, it was before social media, you have to think about this. Facebook was just young, I didn't even have a Facebook account at that time. So this is when we had mail lists to collaborate on open source projects together. We had wikis to collaborate with some guy in Brazil. This was totally the times of global open source collaboration using computers before social media when such social media came a bit at the same time, there was this scene in the 2000, maillist, wiki, opensource when wiki were from the mid 2000. And so everything you know the Internet connects people globally, that was how we were kind of this generation.

Personally I'm from Switzerland, it's kind of a small country and also Switzerland is very globally connected. I grew up in an environment, where in Switzerland, more than 30 percent of the population has an immigration background from some other country. In my neighborhood maybe 60 percent of the population are not from Switzerland. Just to tell you what it's not like Taiwan, in Switzerland we are very global. There are people from all over the world in my neighborhood. In my old house there's maybe not a single person that's originally from Switzerland. Besides me, there are people from Sri Lanka, people from Italy, people from Croatia, Albania, Brazil. This is my neighborhood where I live in Zurich, this is how I grew up. Somehow I'm a global citizen. Also, let's say my university that I worked at, ETH is very global. People from all over the world study there. It's a very international university, but on the Phd level, it may be 70 percent of the PhD students are foreigners. I was already globally connected through Zurich. And when I was starting this DIY activity outside of the university, I missed a bit of these global interactions. But suddenly I got invited to Berlin, to Taiwan, to Indonesia. So it was kind of funny that with these electronics circuits, I also can continue my global activities. I was always interested in this. I went to conferences, I studied abroad, and this has already shaped me when I was much younger. It's not something new and Switzerland is so small, if you walk a few hours, you're outside of the country anyway. Because a lot of the other projects that I saw have a very western bias. When I suddenly was at this new media art festival in Indonesia I was like blown away, a cool shit happening in some other parts of the world that I had no idea. So I thought this is cool, that this will also be part of the Hackteria mindset is that we work with each other all over the globe.

And the Asian direction is a bit of coincidence, just the people I met from India, the people I met from Taiwan. Pei Wen Liu who lives in Switzerlandorganized these events in Taiwan and I was involved, so I also put more focus on continuing these collaborations. We had not so many connections in the US, for example, but there was a big coincidence, it was not a clear decision, but then me and also my Indian collaborators, we are a bit critical to some of the American Bio art circles. We thought they have a very elitist focus on, like, elitist, they think they are the best in the world and they don't know that there are other parts of the world. For example this iGEM also is very American, and we were very critical in the beginning that some bunch of American rich kids think they can solve the world problem by hanging around in MIT. So Hackteria has been a bit of a critique to this kind of American idea of "we can do it.” They don't know the whole ethics and the global context so much. I think all of us shared some values like being more globally and socially aware.

I think a lot of people who went to these events in the first two or three years were also inspired by meeting people from all over the world. It doesn't happen so often. So I think that creates a uniqueness and energy to grow the network because it was and the Indonesian we then later invited to Switzerland. Maybe some Slovenian friends first time meet an Indonesian in their life and they like wow, we do the interesting stuff and somehow there was something very motivating. Also for the participants to be part of a global event. It's not the most efficient but you know from the human side, it's very inspiring to meet people from all over the world. And because we have shared values like geeking around with life, living systems, do it yourself, and also this sharing culture is something that brings us together. The events are also very social. We cook together and party together. We sleep in the same place for a week and go hiking together. It's not an exhibition, it's kind of a hangout.
A: The other question is going to.... how do you raise the project money?

Mine is very diverse. small funding group, we didn't start with money. Let’s say, I asked these people in Berlin if I could do a workshop and you know they have maybe a few 100 bucks to pay for my trip, and you know we sometimes get invitations, so we use the context and the content of Hackteria, we apply to do a workshop at a festival. This project in Taiwan had some money, so we did Hackteria activities at some invited events but also I applied to the Ministry of culture in Switzerland, like, to start the project, I got 10 thousand Swiss francs which allows me to travel to Spain to work with my other guy, which allowed also my trip to Indonesia, and the first meeting with which I mentioned before, the 10 thousand money goes away fast. And so then we had some project based funding, the inviting organization found money for us to come. Hackteria became a bit of a brand or a label that was cool to have at your festival, so other people wanted us to join like some activities and they found money from wherever, but there was no single system for financing it, each activity had its own financing. A lot of it was like enthusiasm by people joining, we did some activities in Slovenia, also the Slovenians found some money, but this is all also on the Hackteria wiki. Many people in the growing network used the Hackteria wiki to document their work using this mindset of open culture and sharing culture. Whenever they do an activity with whatever funds or even self organized or self-founded, they put their stuff on the wiki. And so what Hackteria does is to motivate people to share their content. While they may already have wherever it's from, it doesn't matter where the money is from, it's not Hackteria's problem. But of course organizing an event, inviting people, buying food, that needs some kinds of money. So when we had an idea for an event, we tried to find money. And we also were thinking, should we, as Hackteria, apply for big funding for three years in the early days, 2011? When we quickly became successful and we said now we don't want big funding now, we don't want some university to take it over and say all this is us, we wanted to keep this more freedom and you know, being more like this centralized activities here and there, so it is a network that can grow. Because if me and Andy go for a €500,000 grant to get within the university, then it just becomes this university project where me and Andy are there, and it cannot grow the network, so we didn't, we on purpose did not try to get some big grant, although at that time it was really hard. We might even have been successful. We were really pioneering with this stuff, but we on purpose didn't want to go for a grant because we didn't know how it will develop in the future and we wanted to leave it open, for people to join and maybe develop something we cannot even imagine.

We were really pioneering and something very new and fresh, so people threw money at us. They even asked us to apply. Another foundation in Switzerland and also founded us15,000 Swiss francs, dollars, to organize something in Switzerland. So we did an event in 2011, we did a big event in Switzerland. But the idea we had at that time was really like, as a network, maybe then the group in Helsinki also wants to organize a Hackteria event, and they will find their money there, maybe a hacker space in France also wants to do something, and they anyway never work with money, they’re like hackers. They just self organize things and invite people, and people sleep on the floor. But there was a bit the idea, that is to modify a network with similar values and activities and each event or activity is funded differently and not centralized at all. There was something that inspired us also, that is called Dorkbot, ”People doing strange things with electricity.” This was kind of a network of activities and a maillist. Where you know there was a Dorkbot in Zurich, there was a Dorkbot in London, Dorkbot. They started Dorkbot also very late in Hong Kong but then it totally got taken over by the university. But Dorkbot is a very self-organized no-money network of people giving presentations on "doing strange things with electricity" of prototypes, of like unfinished products who get feedback from the group. It's ten years ago. It kind of faded out meanwhile, but this was quite also inspiring Hackteria and we are a connector through a wiki and a maillist. We had a wiki and a maillist and people may pop up. "I want to have a Hackteria event in Sao Paulo”, I don't care how they finance themselves, they don't have to ask for money.

But it didn't work so well wiill grow into a self-organized decentralized network? There was a big division we had. So we were waiting until someone organizes this, maybe HackteriaLab in Helsinki and which can go on. So me and Yashas say after a year after the event in Switzerland, still, I think we're not there yet. I still think we will have to take the responsibility to organize another global event. So Yashas and I were kind of thinking, let’s organize something in Bangalore which is one of the other hot spots and funding places. So in the end and by January, February 2013 was when we did an event in Bangalore, we tried to get funding, but we failed everywhere like Asia Europe foundation. We tried so usually we first have the idea, let's do an event. And then we find money for it or we get invited or a workshop by an existing festival when we use their money to do Hackteria activity and they invite us, and some activities are self-funded. I do a workshop in Zurich and build some whatever sensors and people pay me 100 bucks to join the workshop and I am happy, with self-organized, self finance. But the event in India was because we didn't get any funding, we got a little bit of travel support for the individuals and they can apply for travel support to go. But this is let's say their money, this is like a participant's money and the rest was supported by the art school, Srishti and the National Centre for biological science, that we can get venues, a place to sleep and stuff, food, and not so money had to flow. So the Indian version was very much hosted by a big institution, like the National Centre of biological science, which is like the most prestigious research institution in India for biology. They hosted us, they already partnered with Yashas for many years. It's an old school friend, in fact, we will work together, which in fact, for me a lot of let's say successful art science collaboration that they start because the people maybe are trained as artists or scientists, but they already know each other as friends through some other activities. Maybe they will go fishing together or maybe they'll get a music band together. Or in the case whatever I think, they even went to school together or something. I think from a friendship, you have different careers, different disciplines, but you think ah we get along, we should do something together. I think this is usually the most successful. Art science Collaborations doesn't start with the idea of an artist with scientists, it starts already as a human friendship. I'll do something together because you kind of have shared values and friendship.

So continuously we had activities and project funding. Yashas did Hackteria activities in the school mostly, but also inviting non-school participants, because Hackteria should be an open form and not something only accessible for students that are participants, which is some values we had. But we also always like when after these great events 2011 and also in India, we always say, we don't want to too narrowly define what Hackteria is. We want to keep it open so people can join with their own ideas and that of course, is a bit in contrast to kind of a small group that applies for funding for the next five years. Because then you have to have this plan, we have milestones and we didn't want this, also Yashas is really not into this kind of organizing and administering big grants. I was sometimes tempted to do so because we were really hot and we had a great amazing team and we were like, you know, totally pioneering. Sometimes I asked, should we try to get the 3 years grant? Like Bill and Melinda Gates foundation? We look at them, for example, should we get more million dollars to do this kind of activity? But then we always didn't do it, we never applied for a big grant, no one was ready for it. I also didn't want to risk a bit of free spirit of the network If we apply for a big grant. And the one problem that I still think about is sometimes getting money in Switzerland. Maybe my role was maybe the most active within Hackteria, I worked a lot, I promoted it a lot, and of course I also applied for Swiss money. So then sometimes people outside think it's a project from Switzerland funded by some Swiss cultural money and that was very contradictory to being a global network. And they say if we get invited for an event in Moscow, they try to get money from Switzerland and then they write "Swiss collective Hackteria” and I really opposed this all the time because first of all, it's not true, it's not a collective, it not consists of Swiss people, but they just wanted to get the money from Switzerland, so they write in the description "Swiss collective", the Taiwanese do the same always and because I was really pissed off, like, they can write "the Swiss member of the global Hackteria network" or something. But they wrote the "Swiss collective Hackteria" and so it was really hard to convey this message. To the organizers or other activities that this is not a national project of an individual or a collective. But you know every art event always has to show nationality and this is bullshit.

Distinguishing the money based project and the value based project
We had some intense discussions about this, also, we I think anonymously decided we don't want to go into having a big money project. We want to keep it open as a platform. And if we get big money then only we work on it, so it's very exclusive. These people will not work on it any more if it's self organized and whoever has a little bit of money contributes to the wiki and development of the network. But it changed later, the last couple of years we were thinking, maybe we can think more about also establishing something more long term in Switzerland. We never had a place or an activity with a strong focus in Switzerland. But the last two or three years I was thinking, maybe it's the right time ten years later to maybe have a Hackteria hub Or Lab. Yeah and so now we even have a space in Switzerland and for that maybe I'm thinking of having a three year grant to run Hackteria activities with a focus on the new space we have. But this was not the idea ten years ago . We never wanted a space for it now in the beginning. We wanted to be nomadic, but now I think I got older and also with some collaborators in Switzerland. We thought it may be nice to have a space in Zurich and we have this opportunity now and for this space I would like to have a three-year grant so we can plan something a bit more properly. This is again, only one activity within the network. That's why I call it Hackteria ZET, ZET for Zurich (Zentrum für Experimentelle Transdisziplinarität).

Yashas is still working in this art school. He also shifts his interest more and more to make more music. So he's less engaged. So now this was, you know. Many years and when he was doing this like working with scientists working on environmental monetary now, he is a bit into music again, which he always wanted. The Indonesian partners were already part of the network, many partners in Slovenia, partners all over, England, like growing the network a lot until 2015, 2016 and Paula promoted a lot of stuff in Spain with this Hackteria. She is also a strong important member of this, many people They say part of the global Hackteria network in their signature in their email. But then somehow we made maybe some stuff not right or it was not clear, either part of the Hackteria network or not. So we didn't really... we left it very diffuse, maybe on purpose or maybe we failed to clearly, let's say, make this a bit more structural as a the international network. Is it just everybody who ever joined one of the events, is kind of part of the network. I would say yes but maybe people didn't know. So then the last few years we were thinking a lot. So like now the network is large. People feel affiliated, I would say, to the activities and the values. And but what did not really happen is that a lot of people self-initiated something, somewhere. They go on with their own artwork a lot, and something I learned is. Maybe artists are not such a collaborative species. Also the art world works very much about, you know, promoting the individual. And a lot of the people that were engaged within these activities and even benefited a lot from this exchange and what they learned. They went on as individual artist careers. So I guess Hackteria also involves a lot of more emerging artists. We never really worked so much with the big established artists. That was also quite typical for how we started the Hackteria network. Many people at that time maybe had only one show first or were like emerging young artists, and I think it's a cool role to be. And also, I guess Hackteria Lab is very much a playground where these emerging artists can experiment, try out ideas, have feedback from other participants you know, develop their practice, and that worked, a lot of the people were influenced by the earlier Hackteria activities. Ten years later they are quite established and I think took some of the content with their work, but sadly not so much the sharing value. So, the subtitled "open source biological art.” That was the idea that we promote in the art scene that if you do a work. Also document how you do it so another person can reproduce these activities and learn from your practice and also develop their artwork differently with an open source mindset. But the artists are the worst to do so, not only their own fault, the whole art world around it doesn't support this. Because a lot of these projects are highly collaborative. It depends on other people's work, other people's knowledge, and other people do technical development but in the end it's the art world wants the single artist's name on the fucking piece that they can sell. And not a collaborative, and science works differently, science like each paper has many authors, many references to where the materials and the knowledge comes from. So you want to promote a bit this mindset of accreditation and also materials and methods. So you write how to build this artwork. So another young person can learn, use this art to make their own artwork, which is different conceptual and aesthetic of course or “output". But the art world I think has the least understanding of open source culture. I know farming may also not be so much. But I think it's a hard bunch. But so in the IT, geeky community it's very easier for people to understand this collaboration and kind of giving the credits in Github and forking some software, and you know, building on each other's work, it's very normal in the tech scene, with the arts scene, not at all.

What kind of outcome do you expect in the future for this network, assuming we are building a new machine, how do we expect this machine to be different from the current one?
First of all humans don't work like machines, machines are human made, and we cannot return the metaphor to say humans work like machines. Because machines are made by humans, yea but, social system huh? We had a lot of ideas and visions in 2015, 2016 on how to continue? and we have had a bit of hope it will grow even more decentral and it didn't work so well. And so it's now when I was doing, let's say these activities in 2019, it was also the ten year anniversary of Hackteria, so we were thinking, you know, a lot of activities. We tried to get money here and there and hope to do activities all over the planet and also in Switzerland, but we were not so successful to raise money for the ten year anniversary program. This was a bit of the idea that we also bring some of the old school people together with me, or more like a retreat and really think of what the next ten years will bring. In the end we couldn't raise money to really organize it. We had some money which you were also involved in the program, which is for finding new partners.The idea was also to expand the network and you and Toru you know joined this network and started to do activities in Taiwan in Okinawa, and also continued the collaboration with our Indonesian friends. But somehow this event that we were hoping for was like a retreat with also some of the old school, let's say members of the network, you know, bring them all together. You know small like ten people, and really think about how to develop it for the next ten years, but this never happened.

A lot of people also left a bit from the earlier phase, they had all the things in life like they were new, but became a mother and you know more interested in being a mother than a cultural global network organizer. Pei Wen Liu was from the very beginning, very active when she organized the event in Taiwan, she organized the HackteriaLab in Switzerland, organized Hackteria Lab in Indonesia as an example, she lives in Switzerland. And like Urs in the meantime, he is very focused with his company GaudiLabs on developing this because it's his full job now. So he has a bit less time to structurally shape the global Hackteria network. So we lost a bit of organization structure. We wanted to keep it open but then the more people leave because there are other more important things to do so. The structure fell a bit apart, and I would say in 2014, 2015 was a bit the peak. We had many people with regular meetings, and also dreamed of big activities here and there. Then we did some events in 2017 with Maya, another Hackteria lab in Switzerland, again. 2018. Also, we collaborated very closely with this GOSH network to bring a lot of Hackteria networks into this even larger new network about open science hardware. Hackteria is a small contribution to GOSH, GOSH is much bigger. And I was enjoying that it also makes sense to bring the network into other larger networks instead of Hackteria itself becoming the mega global network. This was a bit manic when we were always at the meetings, that the goal is world domination. That's why the (Hackteria) logo is like that. We were joking and we had these meetings that in Geneva we had some events in Geneva Biofabbing also, together with the University of Geneva in 2017 and then you know, we're joking to make this UN logo for Hackteria as a global organization. And also then I redefined my role as the global Hackteria network Ambassador. So a global network needs a lot of care. It needs a lot of, let's say, one person responsible for this global, you know, networking, traveling around, bringing people in, reminding people that they are part of it. It also needs a lot of face to face maintenance and care. I don't believe so much in this purely online and kind of value-driven activities. It has to be also face to face, hanging out together which I do again here.

So then with Maya, we did a lot of activities, and Maya fully embraced Hackteria network and the values that are embedded in it coming more from this fermentation and performance installation stuff. But she was totally enjoying this global network and we did an event called “Biohack retreat Klöntal” . People came from all over the world. Two people from Taiwan, Ketin and I-Chern, TAKE came from Japan, and then we started HUMUSsapiens, also within the Hackteria network as a kind of more local activity with a focus on soil. That one we funded with KROMA, we're talking about. We had some crowdfunding money also, so not Kickstarter, but some other crowdfunding platform that had a focus on citizen science, one HUMUS sapiens and also the Biohack Retreat Klöntal that event with Maya we also did with with crowdfunding, but it was a bit special, so it's crowdfunding plus support for citizen science. So when you reach the 10,000 goal, the other foundation gives you another 10,000, double, and only because of this makes sense to do it crowdfunding otherwise is crap. It's just stealing money from your grandma to do your art bullshit. Because it's doubled by this foundation in a way, we just get this money from this foundation to do work. But we already have commitments from people to tooth money into the project also. But in fact we paid it back. We just use this double money and we paid this money back to the people, we acted. If you reach the goal, you get the same amount of money from this other foundation. A foundation is not a crowdfunding platform, so there was a special program on the crowdfunding platform that gets extra support from the foundation to support citizen science. Many crowdfunding platforms have this like special collaboration with topics that gives you extra money, very typical, many have it. But pure crowdfunding? We looked at it many times. It's totally stupid. We were prominent, we were like project of the month on this platform. We have a big network globally, but the idea that I do some cultural activities and and I have to ask my friends to give me money is stupid. The state has to pay for this, we pay taxes for culture and I want this money. I don't want to ask my friend and my rich cousin to give me money for artists. The lowest level of arts funding is crowdfunding, because you just mean your family supports you or your friends, and you are like if your art is so useless for society that the state funds that taxpayers money you don't receive that you have to pay for your art by asking your grandma. That's for me the lowest level of appreciation you can have. That means the society thinks it's useless. I can also ask my grandma to give me money and I chill on the beach, doesn't matter if it's art or chilling on the beach or getting a big fancy car. If art ends up in crowdfunding, that means it's kind of the last stage of neoliberal crap capitalism.

Links from interiew

1. Interactivos?
2. HONF
3. Cellsbutton#03
4. Piksel
5. Microwave Festival
6. Mechatronic Art Society
7. Synthetic Biology for Artists & Desginers
8. HackteriaLab 2010 - Dock18/Zürich
9. Dorkbot
10. Hackteria ZET
11. HUMUS sapiens