Short Abstract:

2 hands-on showcases dedicated to Open and DIT frameworks in Science and Technology. The first focuses Smart Citizen platform with debates on a participatory sensing tour to Fab Lab Barcelona. The second is centred on Waag Society's Open Wetlab with interactive biohacking dialogues and experiences.

Long Abstract:

This Session will consist of two participatory hands-on showcases (90 minutes each; no formal paper presentations), with focus on new transdisciplinary collaborative frameworks and active engagements of non traditional actors and communities in science and technology. The first will focus on Smart Citizen (SC), an open source environmental monitoring platform that comprises a sensor kit, an online platform for data visualisation and sharing, an open API, and a mobile app. The showcase will be structured around a neighborhood tour from Fab Lab Barcelona to the conference venue, with assignment and demonstration of SC kits for experimentation, and debates about new collective forms of data gathering, visualization, and use, to the social, cultural and political impacts that these practices may have at micro and macroscopic levels. The second activity will focus on an open source Do It Together (DIT) laboratory setting developed at Waag Society's Open Wetlab. It will offer a biohacking experience where participants will perform biochemistry and evolutionary engineering experiments using DIT tools such as spectrometers, microscopes and bioreactors. The discussion will focus on how science and technology are becoming accessible through new means, and the ways through which biohacking communities may lead alternative knowledge production schemes while offering both critical reflections and concrete innovation pathways. Our goal is to stimulate a discussion on the role of STS in these new contexts, engaging a broad range of participants in the debate as they experience DIT and open source tools in bottom-up and community-led science and technology initiatives.