Coded Biophilia is a workshop designed to learn the basics of soft wearables and the exploration of biological textiles. During the workshop, participants will explore the potential of bacterial cellulose for textile futures in terms of growing living materials and creating speculative scenarios for second skins, sensors, and adaptive responsive structures. Learning new methods of making sensory surfaces for wearables and envision how biotechnology and new materials will shape our environment. At the end of the workshop, participants will be able to identify state-of-the-art soft wearable and bio-textiles applications. Technology is getting closer and closer to our skin. What we wear today will soon be forgotten and replaced with biological technologies that are not only changing and challenging the way we consume and experience design and fashion but also how we relate to and work with nature instead of against it.

Through Coded Biophilia and within this space, we have the opportunity to re-think the relationship between technology, design and society.

SUPPORTED BY

BMKÖES | Federal Ministry Republic of Austria Arts Culture, MA7 | City of Vienna Culture Department, FWF | The Austrian Science Fund, FFG | The Austrian Research Promotion Agency

The workshop is organised in cooperation with the Italian Cultural Institute, Vienna.

GIULIA TOMASELLO

Giulia Tomasello is an artist and a designer committed to female intimate care and its

innovation, combining biohacking and interactive wearables. Winner of Re-FREAM, STARTS

Prize and WORTH Partnership, awarded from EU Horizon 2020, for her projects Alma,

Future Flora and Rethinking the Bra. Recently recognised for her multidisciplinary work with

the Japanese Award World Omosiroi. Giulia offers a new deeper knowledge of females'

well-being, developing innovative tools in the intersection between medical and social

sciences. She is currently part of the Vision Health Pioneers incubator in Berlin, where she is

developing Alma. Alma co-creates tools for a cultural change in female intimate care

by combining technology and education. Coded Bodies is her teaching platform designed to

learn the basics of soft wearables and exploration of biological textiles. Tomasello is currently

a Visiting Lecturer in soft technology at Royal College of Arts in London and Politecnico in

Milano.

Feminist Hardware Festival

16th of May - 14th of June 2022

Queer, non-binary and female-identified media artists come together to rethink the notion of hardware from a feminist perspective. They extend the ethics of feminist hacking to ecological circuits. By using decentralized, fair-traded, modular, renewable, non-toxic materials they speculate upon future alternative technologies: they create hardware made from water, air, bubbles, waste, body-liquids, microbes, glass, soil or plants.

We proudly present a diverse selection of local and international artists who generate empathic, eco-sentient and anti-racist soft/hardware. They investigate the use of organic, biodegradable, microbial matter for creating ethical technology that helps to unpack the late capitalist industrial complexity of the high-tech.

Building their artistic circuits the artists are learning from biocultural, reciprocal restoration, feminist data science and environmental movements. By doing so, the artists prototype models of generative and subsistent commons with human and non-human agents.

Through workshops, talks, performances and exhibitions we will debate artistic, anti-colonial alternatives to sexist, toxic and extractivist commodity chains. This way we propose the term feminist hardware as a vehicle to diffract gender equality with sustainable and healing ecologies.

The 1st Feminist Hardware Festival is a synergetic extension of Feminist Hacking: Building Circuits as an Artistic Practice international 3-year art-based research project (PEEK AR580) conducted by Stefanie Wuschitz, Patrícia J. Reis and Taguhi Torosyan at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in collaboration with Mz* Baltazar’s Laboratory.

Participating artists

Arianna Forte / IT

Ce Quimera & Gaia Leandra / Wetlab / CAT

Giulia Tomasello / IT

Irene Agrivina / HONF / ID

Ioana Vreme Moser / DE

Marcela Suárez / US

Mary Maggic / US / AT

Mirjana Mitrović /MX / DE

Sponsors

BMKÖES | Federal Ministry Republic of Austria Arts Culture, BMUKK | Federal Ministry Republic of Austria Education, Science and Research, Civil Service and Sport, FFG | The Austrian Research Promotion Agency, FWF | The Austrian Science Fund and MA7 | City of Vienna Culture Department.

Supporters

Barcelona City Council, Hangar Barcelona | Catalan Center of Artistic Research and Production, Government of Catalonia | Delegation to Central Europe, Institut Ramon Llull, Istituto di Cultura Italiano and Wetlab Barcelona

Partners

Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Mz* Baltazar’s Laboratory and AIL - Angewandte Innovation Lab.

For more info and registration go to www.mzbaltazarslaboratory.org/