Rampa Laboratorij
Likozarjeva 1, SI-1000 Ljubljana
Phone386 (0) 40 212 292
Rampa Lab
From Culture.si
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Focus
This "laboratory" styles itself as an environment for hacking technology and society alike. DIY, interdisciplinarity, copyleft licensing and open source knowledge are the principles that inform most of its activities. Alongside explorations into fields such as bio-art, robotics, renewable energy and electrochemical processes of music-making, there is also a strong focus on initiatives that endorse and support gender equality in technology, software development and new media art.
Institutional context
Established in 2012, Rampa Lab is run in close collaboration with the lab BioTehna and the Kapelica Gallery, both of whom share its basic interest in technologically adventurous art. All three are a part of the Kersnikova Institute, which has previously run also the cultural and multimedia centre Cyberpipe.
Rampa often cooperates with RogLab as well as with a number of other organisations, initiatives, individuals and private businesses. It is a member of M3C Multimedia Centres Network of Slovenia.
Programmes
A number of projects, workshops and initiatives are taking or have taken place at Rampa. Of the workshops one can mention "Crafty builders", a weekly series designed to give the participants (aged between 12 and 15) a basic understanding and the skills needed to create simple 3D objects, environments and animations. It is led by Kristijan Tkalec (co-founder of Rampa and head of BioTehna) and his colleagues from the animation studio called CtrlArt.
There is also the "Friday Academy", alternately called the "5hek Academy", which presents a learning model by which children and youth cooperate with artists and scientists. These and other similar workshops are usually free of charge and take place on a weekly or monthly basis. Additionally, there are also more condensed events such as the so-called "Summer Academy", which comes with complimentary daycare for children.
Rampa hosted a series of events that dealt with the issue of books in the age of digitisation, during which a DIY book scanner was created. It has also run workshops on the necessary skills for DIY fixing of computer hardware; organised the Feminist Wikimarathon, a project of upgrading the Slovenian Wikipedia on the topics of female artists, scientists and publicists; and facilitated various artistic projects that featured internationally renowned artists like Gilberto Esparza (MX) and Erin Sexton (CA). In collaboration with the Lighting Guerrilla Festival, Rampa produced an installation called ČIPke: Nature_I Wear, created by attendees of a workshop about responsive electronics, eTextiles and hat design.
![Petkova akademija [5HEK] - Bioradovednost](/images/thumb/oembed/vimeo/160871092__576.jpg)
The ČIPke Intiative
A notable enterprise that has grown out of Rampa's platform was ČIPke, an initiative for women interested in technology and new media art. Led and founded by the artist Saša Spačal and the curator Ida Hiršenfelder, it was housed at Cyberpipe in 2011. ČIPke was foremost a series of workshops on a variety of topics, from software and hardware usage to robotics, with the mentors being both guests from abroad as well as the participants of the workshops. There were about 50 regular participants, and some of its projects gone public were a noise music band, a documentary (co-produced with RTV Slovenia) on female scientists, and various appearances at festivals such as the Lighting Guerrilla Festival, City of Women, Idrija Lace Festival and Pixxelpoint.
Of a slightly similar vein was also the CodeCatz initiative, which aimed at female software developers who were active at Rampa as well.
See also
- Kersnikova Institute
- Kapelica Gallery
- BioTehna
- RogLab
- List of the Multimedia centres Network members
External links
Gallery
