biohack // waag future labs

For an exciting three months I will be based Amsterdam in the Netherlands to undertake a short course called the Biohack Academy at the Waag Future Labsa. Ironically The Waag Future Labs are in one of the oldest buildings in Amsterdam. Before arrival I had assumed that Waag was an acronym but turns out it refers to weighing things because this used to be the location of the fairest scales in all of Amsterdam. This old building at various times has housed everything from masonry guilds to human anatomical dissections for public showcase (we can pretend the Rembrant was painted here). And now it houses Waag. An organisation rooted in at an old place but with a steadfast gaze towards creating a better future. "Oriented towards having a positive, lasting effect on our societies."

“Oriented towards having a positive, lasting effect on our societies”

— Waag

To contribute to the development of a sustainable and just society "Waag works in a trans-disciplinary team of designers, artists and scientists, utilising public research methods in the realms of technology and society. This is how Waag empowers as many people as possible to design an open, honest and inclusive future.”

Personally one motivator for this trip was to see, in peron, a transdisciplinary organisation like Waag functions and to think about how this model could be translated into the Australian context. Speaking of Oz, I also find it ironic that I have flown across the world from the Asia Pacific to discover that Waag is situated in Amsterdam's China town equivalent and to live opposite Java Island. Of course the unfortunate Dutch colonial history is to thank for that! Follow along here.

dynamism // mortality

What do jellyfish do with their time?

Rhythmic expansion and contraction of the bell of their body. In part by these indolent propulsive forces and in part by the tug and push of the currents, they drift through the oceans of their existence entangling prey in trailing tentacles.

They live there.

Dynamic and alive.

They, like us, exchange essential gases with their environment. They form cells, burn energy, replace lost parts. The soft jelly of the bell as security for when the waters in which they find themselves can no longer provide what they need.

The jelly stores oxygen.

Diffused there from the water when abundant, and ready to diffuse back when scarce, traversing through the living cells of the jelly fish in which the jelly is enveloped and where the gas will be consumed and embraced by the dynamic process we call life.

This exchange of gases.

Is this what defines being alive?

Deep inhale to provide our cells with the atoms of combustion that they need to change food into fuel and to drive our bodily machinery onward.

Obtained direct from the substrates, air or the water, in some creatures. Some with branching tunnels through their body to bring it close to where it is needed, right to the cell. Or it may pass through specialized surfaces in specialized structures in others. Gills or lungs. Bringing this gas close to transportation networks that channel it around for use, and out again at these same sites once consumed and transformed.

Exhaled. Atoms once free become free again.

“Exhaled. Atoms once free become free again.”

What happens when this process of capture, consumption, emancipation stops?

If it is the dynamism within a body that defines its life, is this, death?

The tiniest of creatures can challenge this thought.

Perhaps they should be called time travelers but they are more often known as water bears, or tardigrades. Microscopic, metabolizing, moving life.

If the water is sucked from a water bear, there is no sign of life, no consumption of oxygen. But if the water is returned, this desiccation reversed, then the tardigrade reanimates, once again alive and consuming.

So, it retains its potential for consumption and it has resisted decay in a state we would consider death in ourselves, but perhaps we should call a pause.

Then is it the equilibrium between capture and consumption of atoms and their liberation, that is the fragile state we call alive.

Imperfect equilibrium because try as we might in life we do decay.

We call it ageing to signify our understanding of its relationship to our linear concept of time. It is our inability to retain the dynamic associations between atoms as a consistent system.

A dance where some of the dancers, replaced with fresh understudies, begin to forget the steps.

But growth too is a departure from a consistent dance. As is development.

New dancers can be invited to the party.

There is a species of jellyfish that along with pulsing through the ocean has figured out how to escape death.

It does this not by stopping time. Not by preventing decay but by instead reversing growth.

It’s machinery marches backwards.

When external stressors are too much, rather than die, it simply returns to its juvenile form in an eternal oscillation between bell and polyp.

It starts life again.

Immortality by reversal.

Life in animal bodies is a process rather than a state. It is the current rather than the water.

The direction of this current in a particular moment may matter less than we think.