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Zahid Ansari

Dates: 26-May to 2-June

Project: Ultraviolet Photography of Flowers and Critters on the Cheap

Zahid is working on modifying his old digital camera to image in the UV to be able to see the pollinator attractor features of flowers that are visible to bees. To make it more challenging, he has set a budget of £250 for the kit. He also hopes to have a play (I mean conduct serious scientific experiments) with fluorescence of plants and critters.

Bio: Zahid is a grey haired engineer with a limited attention span, who having got bored of design and manufacture of computer chips, has spent the last several years working on DNA based medical diagnostic device and other sensors. Not able to deal with good weather, after almost 20 years in Northern California, he moved to Cambridge, England in 2000.

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Lucy Patterson

Dates: 23/6–3/7

Project: Recording an edition of the diy science podcast. And hopefully geeking around in the soil a bit.

Bio: Freelance science hacker and community organiser. I’m one of the co-organisers of the annual volunteer-run community hackathon, Science Hack Day Berlin, that brings together scientists, artists, designers, developers and enthusiasts for collaborative hacking. I am part of a collective space and community, Lacuna Lab, focussed on hybrid art practices involving science and technology. I live in Berlin but am originally from the UK, and have a background in molecular biology.

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Catharina Karlsson

 

4th of June until the 10th of June.

Plans: I’ll be working on adding on a low power data relay system to our acoustic monitoring stations (currently we use raspberry pi’s as a base). Currently our main issue is battery life so if we can get a system up and running that can survive on solar panels and that can relay data back to a main station we could figure out what is going on in the nature around us in real time, rather than having to wait several months to collect the data and analyse it.

 

The equipment for this project is funded by Wildlife Reserves Singapore Conservation Fund. 

Bio: I just finished a PhD in ecology at National University of Singapore. I mainly use amphibians and tropical mountain systems for my research. Currently I work on community and co-occurence data and trying to assess why these change and what is a natural variation and what is not. Mountains present a special challenge, not only do they tend to hold a greater biodiversity and endemism, but they are inherently difficult to survey and collect data from. Tropical areas are also in dire need of extensive basic data collection (such as what species are where) needing to be done over the next few years, necessitating new approaches to be coupled with the old classical survey techniques. I thereby try to utilise technology and more automated techniques for data collection and work on standardisation of some of these techniques or how they compare to our classical methods. As I am currently based in Singapore this is an ideal location to try some of these out before we move testing of things like data relay from monitoring stations into more hard to reach areas. I am interested in why amphibian species are where they are? What other species are present and why and when does the amphibian community shift and is this due to the other species or variation in the environment around them?

 

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Rob Faludi

PLANS

Technology separates us from nature, but does it need to? My focus will be using technology to encourage people back into relationships with nature. Three planned week-long explorations include: 1. A clock that determines local time of day from environmental factors (light, sound, movements) to promote a natural sense of timekeeping. 2. A personal weather station that detects and whimsically describes the current weather around your body, to counteract the industrialization of weather. 3. A structured method for taking a random walk in the woods, possibly using an assistive device to promote exploration & discovery. (Wilderness version of my ruleset for random walks in New York: faludi.com/random ) 

By using technology to encourage human relationships with nature, I hope to highlight that machines can encourage us to be *more* human and organic rather than slowly making people irrelevant. As a counterpoint to consuming industrialized time, weather and directions, we’ll obtain time from scratch, declare our own version of the weather and make systems to help us wander rather than simply arrive. I look forward to taking a few weeks far away from distractions and close to the organic inspirations that drive my best work.

BIO

Robert Faludi was the Chief Innovator at Digi International, working to forge strong connections with the maker community, uncover new innovation methodologies, support outstanding new work and create prototypes that spur new product development. Faludi has been a professor in the MFA program at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan and in the Interactive Telecommunications graduate program at NYU. He specializes in behavioral interactions through physical computing and networked objects. Rob is the author of Building Wireless Sensor Networks, with ZigBee, XBee, Arduino and Processing published by O’Reilly Media, 2011. He frequently consults on interactive projects including recent work in entertainment, architecture and toys. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Wired Magazine, Good Morning America, BBC World, the Chicago Museum of Science & Industry and MoMA among others. He is a co-creator of LilyPad XBee wearable radios, and Botanicalls, a system that allows thirsty plants to place phone calls for human help.

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Michelle Lai

Dates: 14/6 – 22/6

Project: Foraging onsite, and also a  documentation of species with notes on culinary usage and edibility. Hoping to work with the kitchen – cooks to introduce some fun into the dishes as well 🙂

Bio: Michelle is interested in issues related to the local agricultural and food system. She is also interested in exploring community-driven innovation and community engagement practices. Together with Huiying Ng, she is part of TANAH (Singapore), an interdisciplinary collective that playfully questions urban living via site specific interventions within and around the city.

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Ananda Gabo

I am here as part of the documentation team for DiNaCon 2 (2019) to help archive some of the collaborative interpretations of the digital + natural world through the perspectives of creative technologists, scientists, and hackers.

When I’m not at DiNaCon, I am based in Toronto where I run a series of community biology workshops  in the basement of a mall in Chinatown and play in between the realms of food systems, culinary arts, biohacking, and crafting.

My dream is to run an experimental farm built on open source hardware + software that includes a biology lab and a greenhouse for experimental plant breeding.

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Salman Khan Promon

 

Dates: June 9-11, 2018

Project: Children of Mother Nature-Natural Finger printing

Bio: Mr. Salman Khan Promon is currently working as a Teaching Assistant and researcher at the department Mathematics and Natural Science, BRAC University, Dhaka. Mr. Promon is also the co-founder of ‘BioBangla’, a nonprofit organization in Bangladesh which is working on making biological research and bio-hacking available for the society. His areas of expertise are molecular biology and microbial genetics. Along with being a scientist and a bio-hacker, he is working as a ‘Biology Instructor’ at The Tech Academy a tech firm that sponsors children’s talents in electronics, software programming, hardware, robotics and bio-hacking. He is the head of content creator at Nerdiz (nerdiz.com) and manager of research & communication at Beyond Innovation and Technologies Ltd. Mr. Promon is very fascinated by research and willing to make his findings public for the benefit of scientific development.

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Mónica Rikić

Aug 25-31

Bio: I’m a new media artist and creative coder from Barcelona. I focus my practice in code, electronics and non-digital objects for creating interactive projects often framed as experimental games, which aim to go beyond the game itself. From educational to sociological approaches, my interest lies in the de-hierarchization of traditional art relations. With my works, I have participated in different festivals such Ars Electronica, Japan Media Arts Festival, FILE Festival or Sónar, among others, and I have also done residences in TAG Montreal, an EMARE Residency at QUT (Brisbane) and Platohedro (Medellin).

Project:
At this moment I am working on a long-term research project around robots, artificial intelligence and social relations. The purpose of this research is to create an interactive installation based on a hybrid multi-agent social simulation. The multi-agent system is based in a master environment and a series of intelligent networked robots. The robots have wheels and different sensors that allow them to move, feel and communicate with the environment. They also have AI software that allows them to have their own personality, social status, and to learn and communicate verbally with others. The main objective is to visualize and analyze the power relations within a society in a physical way, through objects that represent the different individuals, their status and behaviour in a procedural simulated world. I’d like to bring some of this devices to the Dinacon and see how they interact with that environment.

Home

Project:  http://www.dinacon.org/2018/07/06/island-take-away-sound-glasses/

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Biomimeticx2 (Päivi Maunu and Marko Nykänen)

Dates: 27.5.-8.6.
Project: Creating a link between visual art and bioinformation.
Bio: Working group Biomimeticx2, Päivi Maunu MA (environmental art) and Marko Nykänen PhD (cell biology and biotechnology) utilize their expertise in art and science-combining studies and works. The natural cooperation between the environmental artist and the cell biology reveals unexpected connections and solutions. The members of the team work actively and participate in festivals and conferences in their own fields.
..and same in Finnish..
Työryhmä Biomimeticx2, Päivi Maunu TaM (ympäristötaide) ja Marko Nykänen FT (solubiologia) hyödyntävät erityisosaamistaan taidetta ja tiedettä yhdistävissä tutkimuksissa ja teoksissa. Ympäristötaiteilijan ja solubiologin luonteva yhteistyö tuo esiin yllättäviä yhteyksiä ja ratkaisuja. Työryhmän jäsenet toimivat aktiivisesti ja osallistuvat omien alojensa festivaaleihin ja konferensseihin.