Open Wetlab Opening Ceremony, Premiere and Party

Official opening Friday 21 June 2013

17.00 Opening Ceremony – 18.00 Toast with home brew GMO lager

20.30 International premiere of ‘Bio Art Camp’, three channel video documentary of a legendary Bio Art field trip by artists, scientists and philosophers into the Canadian Rockies

21.30 Opening Party with more GMO beer

(detailed program of the Opening Ceremony will follow soon!)

(2 days prior to the opening of the Open Wetlab a workshop by Dr. Jennifer Willet of Incubator Art Lab of windsor University, Canada will take place in Amsterdam Amstel Park and the Open Wetlab)

Waag Society opens the Open Wetlab, a community life sciences laboratory for makers, designers, artists, diy biologists, scientists and citizen scientists. After number of years and projects propagating art-science interactions at the intersection of biology and biotechnology the Open Wetlab will be Waag Society’s own ‘open and wet’ laboratory facility in proximity of the Amsterdam Fablab. Open as in Open Source hardware and Open Source protocols; Wet as in laboratories where living biological matter is handled and as in OpenWetware.

Why? Because the Open Wetlab believes Life Sciences technology can and must be democratized and demystified; the Open Wetlab sees the potential of the knowledge of the crowd and the potential of bringing together the arts, design, science and engineering for change; the Open Wetlab is convinced OPEN as in Open Source can be applied to hardware and protocols (taking all (bio)safety measures needed into account); because Life Sciences are an aesthetic and a possible new domain of artistic representation and expression. The Open Wetlab is there for education, outreach, community building, creativity, arts, entrepreneurship and for fun.

What? The Open Wetlab will organise workshops, have resident artists, scientists entrepreneurs and makers of other kinds, working on a variety of biology, life sciences, bio informatics and bio information projects. The Open Weltab will host a platform for Open Source hardware and protocols of wet-lab practice.

Anyone interested in performing wet-lab experiments is obliged to complete a bio-safety course.

The Open Wetlab is in part made possible by the generous support of the Mondriaan Fund, the SNS Reaal Fund and the Creative Industries Fund.