During this workshop, we will explore the multifaceted history of semiconducting materials their presence in electronic devices and environmental decay. Going back to the advent of communication technologies, we will look at early radio devices, both transmitters and receivers built from raw stones.

By transmission, we understand the modulation of a carrier signal, a sinusoidal oscillator. This workshop aims to explore the possibilities of building such oscillators as tone generators out of galvanized scrap metal and radio receptive stones.

The participants will be guided to produce negative resistance oscillations to understand the methods of reinforcing communication networks out of leftovers.

No prior experience in electronics is required.

Please bring a pair of headphones (with wire).

SUPPORTED BY

FWF | The Austrian Science Fund and FFG | The Austrian Research Promotion Agency

IOANA VREME MOSER

Ioana Vreme Moser (b 1994) is a Romanian sound artist engaged with hardware electronics, speculative research and tactile experimentation.

In her practice, she uses rough electronic processes to obtain different materialities of sound. She places electronic components and control voltages in different situations of interaction with her body, organic materials, lost and found items and environmental stimuli.

From these collisions, synthesised sounds emerge to carry personal narrations and observations on the history of electronics, their production chains and wastelands and entanglements in the natural world.

Dominated by alternative circuitry, bits and pieces of leftovers and subtle humour, Ioana's work resounds in installations, sound sculptures, hand-made instruments, sound-performance setups or workshops.

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/