Get your hands dirty! The second part of our workshop trilogy by Sunjoo Lee, resident at FIBER Lab, invites you to co-create clay sculptures as habitats for energy-generating bacteria, plants, and insects. Simultaneously we will be speculating alternative cultures of energy in collaboration with Noam Youngrak Son. Everyone can participate, even if you haven’t been part of an earlier workshop, in which microbial fuel cells were made.

The workshop is part of a longer trajectory to co-develop an artwork that situates energy and electricity as a relational process. Electricity generation from bacteria through microbial fuel cells teaches us a fundamentally different way of engaging with electricity. In ‘Worlding Electricity,’ guided by the two artists, we’ll explore what cosmologies could support imagined traditions of ‘fermenting’ electricity. How might our material culture and political economy shift if electricity were no longer understood as a scarce, extractive resource? How would the metabolic labors of these non-human agents be perceived in such a world?

These, and many other questions, open space for multiple thought experiments around alternative approaches to producing and consuming electricity. Ultimately, you will learn how to create habitats for non-human life, linked to the surroundings of Zone2Source at Amstelpark, and contribute to an co-authored artwork to be exhibited at FIBER Festival.

Dates: 17 + 18 January 2026

Location: Zone2Source (Amsterdam)

Participants: open to all, no existing knowledge needed

Tickets: € 45 | Students: € 28.50

If you can’t afford these prices, please contact us and we will find a solution together: maarten@fiber-space.n

We kindly thank Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst, Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie and Zone2Source for their support. Thanks to Creative Coding Utrecht for their support on the first installment of an Electric Garden in Utrecht.

WORKSHOP LEADS

Noam Youngrak Son Noam is a communication designer, design theorist, and cultural worker. Their design work encompasses small-scale publishing projects, speculative worldbuilding, workshops, lectures, writing, net art, and occasional performative interventions. Son publishes the Archive of Patchy Studies as an experiment in how creative labor—namely artmaking and writing—can sustain its value without institutional mediation.

Son has expanded their focus from design to theory in order to critically engage with the ontology of the design industry, media, and broader material culture. This turn is informed by their observations of cultural assemblages that echo the extractive operations of capitalism on racialized and more-than-human populations.

Sunjoo Lee Working across art, technology, and ecology, Sunjoo Lee is an interdisciplinary artist based in the Netherlands and South Korea. Her practice reimagines the use of electronics and digital tools beyond human-centred purposes, exploring more-than-human philosophy, emergence, biomimicry, symbiosis, and permacomputing. She collaborates with biologists, ecologists, and engineers to conduct artistic research and create multimedia installations that promote hybridity between the biosphere and technosphere.

Her current research Electric Garden is a living network of microbial fuel cells that ferment electricity, reframing energy production as an emergent relationship between soil, microbes, plants, and machines. Sunjoo is currently FIBER’s Lab Resident 2025.

MORE INFO

Is this workshop for me?

This workshop is for everyone: artists, designers, researchers, and the simply curious who want to explore the living interface between technology and ecology. No prior technical experience is needed – just an openness to getting your hands dirty (literally) and to rethinking what energy can be.

What will I gain from participating?

You’ll gain first-hand experience in designing and creating clay vessels which will be a habitat for microbial cells and other non-human life, while speculating on the future applications of these artefacts. Beyond the craft-based experiments, the workshop invites you to reflect on energy as a living, relational process – one that connects soil, microbes, plants, and digital systems.

Expect to leave with a deeper understanding of regenerative computation and inspiration for integrating ecological thinking into creative practice.

How to prepare

Bring curiosity, clothes you don’t mind getting muddy, and a willingness to experiment. All materials, clay and tools will be provided. After the workshop we will organize the firing of the clay. If you’d like to read or explore in advance, we recommend looking into microbial fuel cells, permacomputing, and more-than-human design – but the workshop will guide you step by step. Coffee, thea, snacks, and fruit are included. Bring your own lunch.

Bigger picture

This workshop is the second in a three-part series exploring microbial energy and regenerative computation. A future session will focus on creating and playing electronic systems that can use their electricity. Together, the series will culminate in a collectively built artwork that connects mud, microbes, and machines.

If you have any questions, please contact us: Allegra Greher