Hackteria is a web platform that brings together various open source bioart projects, led since February 2009 by Andy Gracie (award-winning artist in VIDA 9.0 and VIDA 11.0), Marc Dusseiller and Yashas Shetty. The leaders of this project met at the Interactive?09 workshop at Medialab Prado in Madrid and decided to create this web resource to support projects that combine bioart software and open source hardware, experimental biology, collaborations between art and science and experimentation in electronics.
This year, Hackteria is promoting HackteriaLab in Yogyakarta (Indonesia), a meeting between a multidisciplinary group of artists, engineers, scientists, researchers and cultural managers from different countries and the local artistic communities and institutions. Different projects will be developed which are linked to the ecosystem of the region, namely the bioremediation of the volcanic soil at Mount Merapi, the environmental monitoring of the rivers in Yogya and the conservation of biodiversity in the Wonosadi forest. These initiatives will be focusing on the use of low-cost laboratory infrastructure and open source hardware, allowing local communities to continue to develop or take advantage of the contributions made by these research projects. HackteriaLab will take place between 13th and 30th April, distributed into two phases: a first phase of research and production in Yogyakarta and a second phase in which the completed projects will be displayed in an exhibition. Later, between June and December this year, various workshops and presentations will take place in different countries with the aim of publicising the work being done in Indonesia.