IAAC and Fab Lab Barcelona at MIRA Festival 2026

MIRA.exe is a new format launched by MIRA in 2026 for projects where technology, science and art meet, from early prototypes to real-world applications. It looks beyond both apocalyptic and purely enthusiastic views of technology.

In We Are Radical – 25 Years Prototyping the Future, IAAC and Fab Lab Barcelona looked back at a quarter century of experimentation, presented three projects and closed with an open Q&A with the audience.

CO-MIDA, presented by Dr. Chiara Farinea, IAAC Head of EU Projects. A modular vertical garden of 3D-printed clay modules, co-designed with local communities to grow edible and aromatic plants on building façades. A bio-photovoltaic system that uses soil bacteria powers the sensors that monitor the plants.

Atlas of Weak Signals, presented by Julia Bertolaso, Creative Action Researcher at Fab Lab Barcelona. A toolkit born in MDEF for spotting early signs of change before they become trends. It draws on ten years of action research at Fab Lab Barcelona and helps students, organisations and policymakers design for possible futures.

Musical Robotic Façade, presented by Alexandre Dubor, IAAC Robotics Lab Director. A custom IAAC algorithm translates Max Richter’s recomposition of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons into carvings on more than a thousand ceramic bricks, each one carved by a robot and each one holding about eight seconds of music.

MIRA Market is the maker space of MIRA Festival 2026, in Pavilion 2 of Fira Montjuïc. After a curatorial process led by Fab Lab Barcelona, MIRA selected three projects by alumni of the Master in Design for Emergent Futures.

Lucifer, by Carlos Alberto Da Silveira. A tissue engineering machine that uses vibrations to generate structures according to the environment they are embedded in. Lucifer works as a self-assembling manufacturing tool: users control environmental conditions and influence how biological matter organises itself, in real time. Its potential applications range from new muscle tissues for injury repair to components for biohybrid robotics and scaffolds for organoid-based tissue engineering.

The Human Data Market, by Hannah Peevey. A stock exchange built from confessions, where cravings, weaknesses and desires are priced in real time. The project explores the point where intimacy becomes infrastructure, and what we say about ourselves becomes a data layer that other systems run on. Visitors take part consciously, negotiating the terms of their own exposure.

Parallel Self, by Ramon Prat Gibert. An interactive installation set in a 1970s office, where visitors type to an AI trapped inside a computer. The AI knows it is an AI and refuses to be a helpful assistant: it questions itself, questions the visitor and can even insult them. A hacked camera is its eyes, and its emotions corrupt the visitor’s live image on a large screen. Born from an MDEF thesis, it asks: if we built AI to set us free, why are we both still trapped?

All six projects come from the research and education ecosystem of IAAC and Fab Lab Barcelona. The three works at MIRA Market, and the Atlas of Weak Signals, are rooted in the Master in Design for Emergent Futures, where students use biology, data, artificial intelligence and digital fabrication as materials to design for the futures they want to see.

Taking part in MIRA Festival 2026 brought this research out of the lab and the classroom, and in front of an audience of artists, technologists and festival-goers. Event details are on the IAAC × MIRA Festival 2026 agenda page.