“Whether you were born into the networks or simply interested in digital creation, nowadays there are places and communities where you can learn, create and share knowledge. These laboratories (labs) are mediation spaces dedicated to practice, expression and creation as much as critical commitment on the role of technology in art and society. Individual users, artists, engineers, researchers and designers go there to research and produce in the free culture spirit.
In a “lab”, the future is not merely imagined, it is lived!

What if our planet had become laboratory? From Do It yourself (DIY) to Do It Together, whether linked to a lab or “lab-less”, these keen new media creators and explorers might well enable us to change our home into a “lab sweet lab”…

These places, networks and communities, define themselves by names testifying their diversity: media lab, hack lab, bricolab, city lab, Living Lab…up to Fablab. To give some reference points regarding the digital society, MCD and PiNG (new media culture resources space in Nantes), have drawn up a cartography of media labs in Europe, which reveals their specificities, questions their present and future roles and reports on these new learning, creation and co-operation dynamics.”

Source – http://www.digitalmcd.com/mcd-62-leurope-des-media-labs-media-labs-in-europe/