September 10, 2011
Bestival: Sunday
11:00 Where are all the Cyborgs? Sarah Sydney
If sci-fi’s anything to go by, bionic people should have been walking among us years ago. Prosthetics expert Sarah goes in search of our transhuman future, by way of Oscar Pistorius, Captain Hook and the latest robotic hands.
12:00 Galactic Gourmet: Rachel Edwards-Stuart & Jessica Chambers
Experimental epicures Rachel and Jessica will take us on a whistlestop tour of the history of space food – eating in orbit is even harder than it sounds. Sample interstellar ice cream, dehydrated steak and zero gravity cake.
13:00 Rocket Science: Simon Foster
Witness rocket-man Simon go ballistic as he cooks up an explosive mixture of Newtonian physics, Nazi flying bombs, and Cold War moon missions. Expect loud bangs, ion drives and hopefully some lift-off.
14:00 Synthetic Aesthetics: Daisy Ginsberg & Fernan Federici
Synthetic biology may soon give us the power to redesign life. So what should we make? Join artist/designer Daisy and biologist Fernan to discover a project that invites artists and scientists to explore the coming bio-synthetic age.
15:00 Biochemical Assault Course: Mike Hughson & Chris Grant
Become the drugs as they are made and fight for survival through the obstacle course filtration process: first one to make it to a blister pack wins. Come purify, centrifuge and vacuum-pack yourself into a pharmacological treat.
AND OUT AND ABOUT ALL WEEKEND
11:00-17:00 Microbial Menagerie: Microbiologist Zookeepers
Featuring the flora and fauna of the human body. Spot the bum!
11:00-17:00 Creepy Cornucopia: Tim Maynard
Scorpions. Snakes. Tarantulas. Maggots. Oh yes.
16:00 Cockroach Racing
Winner takes all.
May 17, 2011
Smelly Tweeting
How long can you last without washing? Could you endure 40 days? What if there were a sweet prize at the end – say, a ticket to the Secret Garden Party?
We cordially invite all with a partiality for putridity to join us as we investigate what it means to be dirty and attempt to last 40 nights without a wash.
How could the shunning of soap change the way you live your life, how you feel about yourself, or what others think of you? And does being stinky affect your sex appeal? Napoleon certainly is famed for having written to Josephine, “Will return to Paris tomorrow evening. Don’t wash.”
We are issuing a call to arms for the defense of dirt in collaboration with Dr Leslie Knapp, an immunogeneticist and expert on the role of smell in human behaviour. With the assistance of Dr Knapp, we will recreate the famed t-shirt experiment alongside the competition to investigate the molecular basis of attraction.
Contestants must report daily on Twitter using the hashtag #smellytweet about their experience of being physically filthy, the reactions of those around them to their odiferous state, how being dirty makes them feel, and their reasons to quit the contest should they choose to drop out.
Discover your own personal capacity for dirtiness and let us know by entering our Smelly Tweeter competition which launches on 21 May. Sign up by 18 May here.
Image credit: Bark
This competition is part of our exploration and celebration of all things filthy as part of the Wellcome Trust’s Dirt season.
September 27, 2010
2010 Highlights Reel
Highlights from Guerilla Science’s 2010 summer season at the Secret Garden Party, Lovebox and the Secret Cinema’s homage to Blade Runner. Featuring explosions, flame tubes, mad chemists, flavour feasts, neural maps and tasty experiments.
September 17, 2010
The Sensecam & The Secret Garden Party
We follow neuroscientist Adrian Owen’s gadabouts through the Secret Garden Party in July 2010 – from raves to our secret island hideaway to – with a handy Sensecam, a nifty device that takes a photograph every few seconds to create a continuous record of all his experiences.
“Almost everything you experience is laid down in your brain, somewhere, but for the most part we can’t access it,” he explains. The most interesting part about the Sensecam record, he believes, is what it teaches us about human memory: only the things we might want to remember are actually made available for easy access. “And this shows us how important social interactions are for constructing memories… a large component of ‘memory’ is what you were thinking or feeling at the time you experienced these events.”
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