Right or Risk? The 1st Public BioBrick: Exploring Public Access to the Tools of Synthetic Biology :: September 24, 2012; 7:00 - 9:00 PM (BST) :: Grant Museum of Zoology, London, United Kingdom.

Synthetic Biology is turning genetic engineering into a simple exercise, with thousands of DNA components - BioBricks - available to program bacteria. What if ordinary citizens want access to these tools? Now, for the first time, UCL have teamed up with a group of ‘biohackers’ (citizen scientists in molecular biology) to create the world’s first ‘Public BioBrick’. Join us for an evening exhibition and Q&A hosted by UCL iGEM with C-LAB. Continue reading

Flashfl00d is a semi-secretive mass public exhibition of rapidly-distributed hidden flash drives containing downloadable exhibitions. Continue reading

[Tokyo Hacker Space's meeting place. Photo Credit: David Powell] 4S/EASST Panel: Hacking Science and Technology Studies (STS) - bio-hacking, open hardware development, and hackerspaces :: October 17-20, 2012 :: Copenhagen, Denmark :: Call for Papers - Deadline: March 18.

During the past two decades, hacking has chiefly been associated with software and computers. This is now changing as the figure of the hacker, together with the ideas and practices associated with this figure, are spreading to new walks of life. Thus we are reminded of the origin of hacking in hardware development. Continue reading

The reSource for transmedial culture, a new framework for the transmediale festival, aims to create a distributed platform for networking, curating and research throughout the year 2012 and beyond by envisioning the festival as a peer-production context of sharing knowledge and practices. Continue reading

319 Scholes presents Art Hack Day :: January 26-28, 2012 :: 319 Scholes Street, Brooklyn, NY. Continue reading

CuratingYouTube presents: Anonymous: Shared Identity in the Era of Global Networks — Online Exhibition Curated by Sakrowski with support from Ute Fischer:

Anonymous: Shared Identity in the Era of Global Networks attempts to give an overview of the movement of the Internet-activists ‘Anonymous’ through a comparative and aesthetic investigation in the form of a series of video-grids including videos that were made by the activists in the course of their protests activities.

‘Anonymous’ is applying the medium ‘web video’ in order to announce its activities taking place on the Internet and in real space, as well as call for others to participate. Thus, the videos should be seen as an important interface between the Internet and the so-called real world. Continue reading

Hacking the Academy: A Book Crowdsourced in One Week: MPublishing, the publishing division of the University of Michigan Library, is pleased to announce the open-access version of Hacking the Academy, The Edited Volume. The volume is forthcoming in print under the University of Michigan Press digitalculturebooks imprint.

This volume was assembled and edited by Dan Cohen and Tom Scheinfeldt from the best of over 300 submissions received during a spirited week when the two editors actively solicited ideas for how the academy could be beneficially reformed using digital media and technology. For more on the unusual way this book was put together, please start with Cohen and Scheinfeldt’s preface. Continue reading

Coded Cultures 2011: The City as Interface :: September 21 - October 2, 2011 :: Second district (Leopoldstadt), Vienna, Austria.

Coded Cultures is an multinational initiative of the group 5uper.net to discuss and reflect the intersections of media, art, society and technology in experimental settings of exihibitions, workshops, symposia, presentations and artistic interventions. For the fourth time, Coded Cultures presents a forum to discuss and present (new) media arts, digital communities and positions itself in the current international (media arts) discourse.

Cultural accomplishments of individuals or differently organized forms of human beings in context with an ever-changing (transforming) environment bring manifold products and processes to surface: cultural artifacts, »distributed agencies«, »framed interactivity« , collective ideas. Continue reading

Scanner, The News Of The World & The Art Of Listening In by Luke Turner, The Quietus:

Robin Rimbaud - AKA Scanner - once trawled the airwaves recording ‘found’ telephone conversations. He discusses his controversial work, and remembers when the News Of The World tried to buy his archive of recordings.

“Back in the days before digital mobile technology, landline phonecalls could be surprising affairs. You’d pick up the receiver and be able to hear, faint and distant, the sound of someone else’s telephone call. As voyeur, you were presented with the moral question of whether to hang up, or else keep listening in to this unexpurgated, uncensored confessional. Generally, most of the conversations would be mundane, but the very act of listening in felt uncomfortable, with a strange and dark allure. Continue reading