001 - Dawn Walker on saving environmental data

For this edition we spoke to Ariane Krause, engineer, researcher, and founding member of KAnTe (Kollektiv für Angepasste Technik - in English, “Collective for Appropriate Technology”) about their work around sustainable technologies. Focusing primarily composting, charcoal and favourite topic, compost toilets, they host workshops and produce educational materials as well as coordinating larger projects. We take a deep dive into their ongoing efforts to bring activists, small companies, and researchers together for collaborative research to lay the groundwork for a campaign to change the legal framework around waste processing in Germany that blocks more widespread use of compost toilets.

Lucy reports back from her trip to Dinacon – the “digital naturalism conference” – where she spoke to organisers, Tasneem Kahn and Andy Quitmeyer, about why they brought 120 interdisciplinary artists, scientists and hackers to a small island in Thailand.

Open Science is a concept understood very differently by those taking part in it. Institutions and administrations focus on funding for publications, researches care about open access to their publications and the public wants to be an integral part of the scientific process. With Célya Gruson-Daniel, co-founder of hack your phd, we take the situation of France and it's recent bill on digital legislation as an example to explore the meta concepts of open science.

Kat Austen combines art and science as an independent artist and researcher. Deeply concerned with environmental issues, she started out as an academic chemist, but now combines artistic research, installations, workshops and performances to inspire empathy with the natural world and convey a sense of urgency for action. In this episode, we talk about her deep connection to science, the DIY science aspect of her work, and the challenges she faces in sustaining her practice.

Winnie Poncelet is the co-founder of ReaGent and Magma Nova, among others, in Gent Belgium. For the last years Winnie worked with a growing community of biohackers and found interesting ways of being productive, research different topics and become good friends. Winnie's expertise lies in growing fungi as a new biomaterial to replace plastics and other conventional materials. We were really happy to have him on the podcast to talk about what can go wrong when growing insects in your basement, what to do with a gifted 454 sequencer, and where the name Magma Nova comes from.

The work of the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative presented by activist Dawn Walker