There is a summit of techno-monks at transmediale's CAPTURE ALL. Known as unMonastery, this collective of social innovators considers itself a "social clinic for the future" with the goal of addressing issues such as empty space, unemployment, and depleting social services.

How do they aim to do this? Well, by building, as unMonk Ben Vickers said, a "corpus of open-source technology". What this will mean going forward isn't precisely clear to Vickers and his compatriots, but that seems to be by design. And it isn't stopping them from laying out a 200 Year Plan to achieve their amorphous goals. And part of this plan includes setting up shop at transmediale to gather more open-source visionaries. 

At CAPTURE ALL, unMonastery is occupying three spaces simultaneously. Not by astral projection, but by some resourceful and assymetrical thinking. Ironically, festivalgoers aren't likely to notice unMonastery's most visible physical manifestation, The Foyer at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. There, visitors can engage with unMonastery through workshops, discussions and presentations. Vickers said that it is, like the other spaces, a place for ideas to spread, but it's also a way to gauge if people are interested in hopping on the unMonastery train.

Its other manifestation, The Network, is more ethereal. Described by Vickers as an offline mesh network Internet that connects The Foyer with unMonastery's third space, The Apartment. This manifestation is the communal space where unMonastery lives, cooks, and generates ideas together. For two weeks it has been ground zero for unMonastery's corpus-building efforts, and it is here that the biohack lab takes place (The Foyer merely broadcasts these events).

The thing to understand with unMonastery is that you might not understand exactly what they're up to. But, Vickers said that a big priority is creating open-source technology that people can use to solve problems in spaces that are of little to no interest to market forces. This could be potentially be any number of things, keeping unMonastery busy for 200+ years. Assuming they build their techno-monk ranks.

Check out unMonastery's schedule of events here. 

Photos by Julian Paul