Author: Dina Con

Shahab ud din is a young nanotechnologist and studying as a doctoral student at King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi (Bangkok) under Petchra pra jom klao scholarship and his future research work is about growing organs on a microfluidic chip. He is interested in designing and coding while public speaking, singing, traveling and entrepreneurship are some of his greatest interests. He wants to achieve professional excellence in his field of interest and he wants to utilize his capabilities and academic background for the possible contribution to his country and for the human welfare. He received his honours degree from Peshawar, Pakistan in the major of biotechnology. He is currently serving as a CEO of an education tech startup “science on wheels” based in Pakistan. He has attended several workshops and had been a part of several social societies in his hometown.
https://www.facebook.com/shahab.din.16

Oya Damla is a multimedia artist based in Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY, USA. Her work explores the body in relation to thought formation, the experiential components of sound making, and the process of art /identity making as a first generation american. Founder of The Ear, a DIY community arts and performance venue, geared towards creating a neutral space for female and non-binary artists, primarily focused on showcasing women working in sound, performance & interdisciplinary arts.

Dates: 5-15 June
Architect and Maker / DK
PostDoc researcher at IT-University Copenhagen, Dept of Computer Science

Flora Robotica is an EU-funded project developing plant-robot hybrids. As part of the project research on electro-physiology from plants have come a long way with the commercially available Phytosensor developed by Cybertronica research.
I will bring a phyto-sensor to measure plant signals in various natural environments. We will translate electro-physical signals from plants residing in nature to other media of signals e.g. sound, to make them accessible to human cognition.
In turn we will use naturally occurring phenomena, sensed by the plant to trigger cameras or alert humans to capture these significant events.
A sensor-hub captures UV, light, temperature, gas and air-pressure along with images and electro-physical signals. Images, plant-signals and data are in turn processed to find patterns of events in the every-day-life of a plant.

In addition, I bring a waterproof programmable camera to capture underwater stop-motion movies, and movies of other projects in need of documentation. So give a shout if you need to document something under water between 5th and 15th of June 🙂

Kira deCoudres

[June 10 – June 24 (maybe July 1)] 

Kira deCoudres is a remix media artist and theorist specializing in topics of body-mind decay, mutation, and mutilation. deCoudres graduated from Hampshire College as a Five College Digital Humanities Fellow studying Science, Technology, and Media Studies.  She has presented theoretical work at the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA), the Electronic Visualization of the Arts (EVA London), exhibited media work at the International Symposium for Electronic Arts (ISEA) and the Global Community Bio Summit at MIT.  She has been an artist-in-residence at Cultivamos Cultura, worked at Wave Farm Radio, and performed at Rosekill Performance Art Space.

ImmerSea: Subversive Submersibles

ImmerSea: Subversive Submersibles is about underwater and semi-submerged experiences of Augmented Reality. What if we altered Augmented Reality Goggles to make the User Experience water resistant? The ImmerSea: Subversive Submersibles team plots to evolve this into a durational performance of human & non human participants that could be fed/broadcasted live as it evolves throughout the duration of our presence at the conference.

The ImmerSea team plans to put a lot of work into making Novel Economies of sensual data. The ImmerSea: Subversive Submersibles project engages with topics of behavioral immersion by connecting environmental and experiential bio datatics across human, animal, and technological populations. Here, media manipulation serves to make environmental/biological information experientially available, stimulating curiosity and interest previously inaccessible to large populations. Relevant themes are: Behavioral Immersion, Open-Ended Tools, and Technological Agency. This distinguishes our approach to both the media and the interface that AR provide people to feed their sensual data-bodies. We are studying obscurely in the realms of psychology, biology, art as research and free thought. The data of difference is most fabulous for the uncovering unique ideas about new technologies. So is a seaside retreat with a gaggle of fun funky creatives!

Dates: 21st – 27th June

Project:  Citizen Naturewatch is a project being conducted at the Royal College of Art and the Interaction Research Studio, Goldsmiths University.  We are aiming to create new interactions with nature for public audiences, via open source technologies. We are creating a series of low-cost, accessible, DIY devices, using off-the-shelf components, that collect content (video, audio, images, data) about animals, to excite and educate people about wildlife and technology. So far, the projects’ explorations, testing and prototyping, have been limited to the UK. In joining the Digital Naturalism Conference I will make, deploy and test new iterations of the devices taking inspiration from the more diverse ecology of Thailand.

Bio:  Amina is an independent artist and Research Fellow at the Royal College of Art, London, within the Design Products department.

She graduated from the RCA with an MA in Design Interactions. She is interested in finding points where fiction can become reality and aims to disperse metanarratives to give way for a more diverse range of ideologies. She creates designed interactions, speculative systems and sonic fictions, using designed media to expand reality and broaden people’s notion of what design can encompass, manifest as and effect.

Amina has presented her work at the London Design Festival, Milan Furniture Fair, Venice Architecture Biannual and Critical Media Lab, Basel, Switzerland. Also, given lectures at Harvard University, America, Queen Mary University London, the V&A museum, to industry and government

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.