How can interactive design benefit tropical field biology? There’s many different ways to design WITH nature instead of against nature.

Dr. Andrew Quitmeyer (@hikinghack) is a hacker-adventurer studying interactions between wild animals and computational devices. He left his job as a tenure-track professor at the National University of Singapore to start his own field-station makerspace in Gamboa, Panama. At Digital Naturalism Laboratories (the Institute for Interactive Jungle Crafts) he blends biological fieldwork and technological crafting with a community of local and international scientists, artists, engineers, and animal rehabilitators. All of his work is published openly for sharing and remixing. Quitmeyer and his research were also the subject of a television series called “Hacking the Wild,” distributed by Discovery Networks.

In this talk, Dr. Quitmeyer will describe mobile workshops called “Hiking Hacks” in which participants develop interactive technologies in outdoor field sites, or make toys for animal enrichment. He will also discuss the Digital Naturalism Conference, an event bringing together over 100 participants annually from all fields to collaborate on finding new ways of interacting with nature. He will also talk about bubbles. You’ll have to come to the talk to find out why!