A Swiss open science gathering at Etherlaken

On 24 June 2026 we hosted the first gathering of the Swiss biohacking and open hardware community at the Etherlaken site in Matten bei Interlaken. Nine invited guests joined the two hosts for a tour of the site, an afternoon of hands-on open science experiments, and a shared barbecue at the fire place. It was a light hearted day. Each guest brought a small open science experiment of their own, and some food to share.

The meetup was hosted by Martin Etzrodt and Philip Dettinger of the Open Science Institute. Our guests each brought a different aspect of Open Science to the table:

• Marc Dusseiller (Hackteria). Transdisciplinary artist-researcher who co-founded Hackteria, the Swiss Mechatronic Art Society, and the Bitwäscherei hackerspace. He co-organises GOSH and the BioFabbing Convergence.
• Urs Gaudenz and Miranda Moss (GaudiLabs). Gaudenz is a Swiss microengineer behind open instruments such as the Wild Open PCR. Moss is a Cape Town artist, designer, and outsider engineer. Together they run accessible electronics and biohacking workshops.
• Antonio Lamb (Lambda Biolab). Molecular biologist running a shared BSL-1 community lab in Basel. It offers low-cost reagents and remote compute to researchers without an academic or corporate affiliation.
• Heidy Baggenstos and Andreas Rudolf. A Zurich art bio-hacker duo. Their fieldwork produced a peer-reviewed Mycoscience paper documenting previously unrecorded bioluminescence in Mycena crocata.
• Diego Garrido (Kultiva Bio). Biologist, formerly at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, now leading work across gene therapy, tissue culture, and carbon-capture biotechnology.
• Michael Rebhan (elevateHealth). Basel scientist and co-creator of GeneCards. He is building an open, predictive, preventive, and participatory health ecosystem with models shared openly.
• Sascha Radusch. Open science enthusiast with Gaudi Labs, wingsuit pilot and aerial cameraman from the Interlaken region.

An afternoon of hands-on open science

Following an extensive tour through the relics of Erich von Däniken's old Mystery Park exhibits, we ran a laid-back workshop across the outdoor benches next to the barbecue area. The OpenDrop digital microfluidics platform from GaudiLabs drove droplets across an electrode grid from a laptop. The open brushograph pen plotter wrote the words "Open Science" as a live demonstration. The OpenTheremin field measurement and sensor setup was assembled on the grass. A highlight were the humidity detectors, soldered and assembled hand to hand around the tables, using nothing but the power of the sun.

The OpenTheremin is a development of Urs Gaudenz's open hardware take on the theremin. The instrument is played without touch: as your hands change the electromagnetic field around the theremin's antennas, the instrument turns that into sound.

Cory Doctorow's novel Walkaway came to mind on this afternoon. The lawn was filled with clever people that each had found their way to walk away from a default path of academia, yet each built the proof themselves, that open source and open collaboration must not be a compromise. They are a better and more fun way to work. We felt encouraged and confirmed in our assumption that a lively community gathering in Etherlaken can do a lot of good in this place. As Etherlaken was just in the middle of its own transition this felt like a good beginning.

The lab is the people

Urs Gaudenz not only supplied Open Hardware gadgets but also a framing for the day. His essay Lab Making, written with Sachiko Hirosue after HackteriaLab 2014, was shared as reading. It reads the laboratory as a social space built by its users, not a fixed facility.

A lab is a place to labor, experiment, research and share. This could be anywhere. Build it. Open it. Hack it. And own it.

The projects will attract a community. Then let the community build the lab.

We aim to apply the template from the start. This means the programme and its community will shape the space. We will not create a fixed lab and then ask what it can be used for. We will drive the build-out in a project focussed manner.

One thing we identified that connected all participants was the shared interest in low photon emission from living things. That points to a clear first focus for Etherlaken, a topic the community can gather around and build instruments, materials, and research questions for together.

What comes next

Our plan is now to make this gathering a recurring format at Etherlaken, and to keep the invitation open to this community to shape the site and its first research focus. The Open Science Institute will follow up and strengthen the connections made. This was a prototype, and we will run it again.

The visit was also written up on the open hardware community's own forum: Visit to the Open Science Foundation, Switzerland. To read more about the site itself, see Etherlaken and our campus page.