Garage Science at MediaLab Prado

We make money not art covers a series of biological art projects from the recent Interactivos? Garage Science workshop at MediaLab Prado.

Andy Gracie’s Garage Laboratory uses homebrew magnetic field and radio wave generators and investigates their effects on the behavior of microbes found in urban environments –

The project was using magnetic field data sourced from the Pioneer and Voyager probes to generate corresponding magnetic fields inside the cultures of organisms. There just wasn’t the time or resources during ‘interactivos?’ to study the results in any depth so we only made visual observations. When the tardigrades were first hit with strong magnetic fields they pretty much stopped moving and seemed to enter a sort of catatonic state. Normally after about an hour they would begin to move around quite freely again. I began to get the impression that the recovery time and the depth of shock was less each time, so maybe they were building up a tolerance.

Read more of the interview with Gracie here.

Alejandro Tamayo’s Fruit Computer Laboratory investigates the popular notion asserting that we will one day use techno-organic computing technology –

But, could chemical reactions in fruits be also used to create on-off switches, the basic building blocks of computer logic and memory? Would it be possible to create a computer with fruits? This project proposes to create a temporary laboratory, open to the general public, that will raise questions and reflections about the construction of a future computer based on fruits.

More details on Tamayo’s project on WMMNA.