Euglena Spaceships
When science meets games, it makes everyone´s eyes sparkle! Computer games are great fun and we all have our favourite games we played when we were kids, or even continue to play as grown ups. But computer games have been more than just fun. Games have increased interest in computing, and playful tinkering projects have been a valuable source of innovation, and have changed the way we interact with technology.
Now enter the 21st century, enter the century of biotechnology. It is time to embrace the innovative power of gaming in the context of biological systems. Join our workshop and interact with Euglena. Create new hardware, games or level designs in our workshop. Let’s have fun, all for the benefit of science and the progress of our understanding of microbial interaction in health and diseases.
Participants will use technology to interact with living organisms in a playful manner. They will turn the joystick and press the buttons to change the swimming direction of the protist protagonists, and track the position of the organisms digitally to interact with them as players in a computer game. During the workshop, they will build a biological gaming device and prototype a game. Connecting computing and engineering with biology, we hope a large public can be involved in biotechnology and make a positive contribution to formal and informal education.
Still, you might still ask yourself, why “Euglena Spaceships”? Not only have Euglena gracilis cells been sent into orbit to test the effect of microgravity, this is also our way to say thank you to all the hackers out there who brought us computer games in the first place. By hacking code on the PDP-1, Steve Russell and his hacker friends from the Tech Model Railroad Club created one of the first computer games, “Spacewar!”. From this point on, computer games did not only grow to be the centre of a major industry, they also became a new world of joy, creativity and a motivation to interact with technology. To embrace this, we decided to design our setup in the shape of a spaceship and we are working hard on a biotic remake of “Spacewar!”. All are encouraged to create space related games.
This workshop is intended for (bio)scientists, designers, (game) developers, engineers, artists and media technologists. Please bring your computer and phone. Background knowledge in biological gaming is not required, but highly appreciated.
Timetable
- 12:00-13:00 Ingmar Riedel-Kruse presents at Main Stage
- 14:00-15:00 Intro of the workshop on the Science Stage by Ingmar and Pieter.
- 16:00-19:00 Workshop room is at your disposal
- 19:00-19:30 Get some food
- 19:00-21:00 Reservation of maker space
- 19:00-22:00 Continue in open work space.
- 22:00-23:00 presentation of results at Science Stage
People
- Speakers: Ingmar Riedel-Kruse & Pieter van Boheemen
- Workshop organizers: Roland van Dierendonck & Christian Schulz
- Crew: Federico Muffato, Frido Emans & Xiamyra Daal
License
The content of this site is available under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This means that you may use it in a non-commercial setting if you provide attribution. Contact us for commercial usage. Feel free to hack the designs and games and share updated files =).