Thats me

I wanted to get a remote control boat when I was around 7 years old. The
south of Mexico can be a tough place to get all kind of modern toys (it is still
like that in remote regions like the jungle or the uplands). By that time, one of
my cousins gave me his old remote control car while He got a newer one. It
was not the boat I wanted, but I did not give up. I started to disassemble the
car and finding out the component parts: motor, control, batteries, gears and
so on. I found a propeller and eventually managed to put the control system
and propeller in my boat and it worked! That was my first hack. I used these
motors later to build water fountains and stuff I was interested in.
But, what is hacking? The German term hacken means to chop something
(wood normally). The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as to cut with
heavy blows in an irregular or random fashion. It was until the 50s that the
term acquired a technological connotation thanks to people in the computing
department at M.I.T. There are up to eight different definitions by the Jargon
file, a glossary for computer programmers launched in 1975. The one I like
the most is One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively
overcoming or circumventing limitations. The term is constantly confused
with the malicious side of computing technology: the one who tries to
discover sensitive information by poking around which correct term would be
Crackers. There are white and black hat hackers. Among the white ones one
can find Steve Wozniak, Linus Torvalds, Tim Berners-Lee, Julian Assange,
Tsutomu Shimomura and the sad case of Aaron Swartz. We see hacking as
understanding the parts that integrate a system (i.e. computational, electronic,
biological, social) and use them for a different purpose than originally
intended. The journalist Steven Levy describe the hacker ethic in his book
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, which can be summarized as:
sharing, openness, decentralization, free access to computers (technology),
world improvement.
Bio-hacking can refer to two things. There are grinders, the ones obsessed
with body enhancements, modifications, bio-punk movement and
transhumanism. In the other hand, the Do-It-Yourself Biology (DIYbio) which is
a biotechnological social movement with the aim to study biology and life
sciences using the same methods as traditional research institutions. There
are scientists and people from Academia who mentor and oversee other
biologists with no formal training. The terms wetware hacking or biohacking
emphasizes the implications of hacking ethics: to take things apart and putting
them back together in a new, better way. Even if there were biohackers in the
San Francisco scene as early as 2005, the whole movement started with a
meeting of 25 members in 2008 in Boston, MA. Now, there are more than
five thousand members in the mailing list and it keeps growing. The first
DIYbio meeting in Europe took place in 2012 in Paris and the first lab was
founded the same year with support from the City administration.
I found a Community Wetlab (HiveBio) in 2013 while working in Seattle,
Washington. I had to move to Barcelona in 2014 to continue with my PhD and

I decided to look for a place like this upon my arrival. To my surprise, there
was nothing yet. I sent an email to the DIYBIO mail list looking for candidates
willing to start a group in Barcelona. We decided to meet all together in FAB10
congress during summer of 2014 in a round table about biohacking where I
was also invited. A small group of geeks was assembled around Thomas
Landrain (founder of LaPallaise and co-organizer of the first DIYbio meeting
in 2012) asking for advices in how to start a DIY BIO group in Barcelona. The
next week we were together in a local maker-space where we decided to
setup the laboratory. Even though we all have full time occupations and work
on this in our free time as a hobby, one year after, the group has grown so
much that we had to move this February to Hangar to set up a bigger lab.
But, what do people do in these spaces? Well, it depends; we keep saying
that each lab has its own flavor. For example, people in America is able to
do molecular biology, thus there are projects as the glowing plant, or modified
bacteria to produce proteins to make a real-vegan-cheese, or equipment as
the open source PCR after Roche patents expiration. In Europe, due to the
molecular biology regulations, things are a bit more complicated and it is
going slower. As a first stage, the European community of biohackers has
been working on prototyping open source equipment, protocols, a lot of bioArt and discussing the ethics, regulations, etc. Anyways, there is in Cork,
Ireland, the famous Cathal Garvey who may run the only official synthetic
biology garage lab in the world. Other groups as the WAAG society
(Netherlands), La Pallaise (France) and OLGA (Graz) have obtained approval
to work with GMs this year.
Locally, one of our first activities to recruit members was to organize the local
chapter of the ten-weeks BioHack Academy leaded by the WAAG society from
Netherlands and replicated via streaming in Dallas, Rio de Janeiro and Rome.
Other activities include the home made DNA extraction workshop or turn
your optical mouse into a microscope workshop. We participated in the
Novum design fair, or the mini maker faire, and one of my favorites, the
+Humans exhibition at the CCCB in Barcelona. Biohacking in Barcelona has a
long run to go. Barcelona is one of the largest biomedical research hubs in
Europe and it has a long tradition in design and architecture. It is a
multicultural city with smart and restless people from everywhere concerned
about technology and society. There are other associations trying to start
community wetlabs in Catalonia and we are in close collaboration with them
creating a very special network of open biolabs. In the Valldaura Green
Fablab (part of the Institute of Advance Architecture of Catalunya) students try
to explore different alternative sides to architecture. They study the
intersections of digital design, 3D printing, biology, permaculture, architecture,
robotics, etc. A former Masters student came to us with the idea of making a
bioluminescent bulb and we just told her to extract bioluminescent bacteria
from a squid (bought in La Boqueria), to make her own Agar (with ingredients
bought from the supermarket), and to grow her bacteria. On the other hand,
there is the company Mamotok - a startup created by another former student
who was part of the first generation of students in the BioHack Academy.
Basically, they use fungi dough to 3D print objects making edible objects.
Alternatively, one could find more radical groups such as Calafou. They have
created a whole self-sustained community in an old abandoned industrial

town up in the hills in Catalunya (2 hours driving from Barcelona). They have
several production machines and, eventually, a wetlab, where they organize
open workshops; develop their own tools, projects, etc. They brew their own
beer, food, and so on and have built low cost colorimeters and turbimeters as
well as other open designs of low-quality biosensors.
Globally, we hope that this movement will be the seed of a new conception of
reality, as it was for computers in the 70s. It should help people to understand
what can bio-stuff do for you. We envision a future in this revolution that could
change the way we relate (and have related) to matter and biology, opening
the doors to a new reality between citizens, science, environment and the way
we live.

Bioluminescent bacteria in Petri dishes extracted from a squid from la

boqueria. Magnetic stirrer made out of a computers fan motor.

Cathal Garvey runs the first licensed synthetic biology home lab in Europe.