facing science

Facing Science gives a dynamical face to the scientific network of people connected to Berlin fusing the scientist‘s portraits into a movie projection. Each digital portrait of a person is represented by a single picture frame. In that way 1440 faces per minute pass by the spectator‘s eye to merge in a continually changing visage. So unlike the „composite photography“ used in criminalistics the pictures do not merge in a static archetype, but conjoin into a dynamic time based changing continuum.

The animation is presented as a projection in the jubilee exhibition WeltWissen at the Martin-Gropius-Bau (24.09.2010-09.01.2011). The number of participants has grown till the exhbition's end to 300 scientists from 37 Berlin based insitutitions and 47 research cooperations. The resulting network reveals connections to numerous researchers in the rest of Germany and  further countries in  4 continents. Parallel presentations have taken place since November at the Institut für Mathematik und Informatik of Freie Universität Berlin in Dahlem and at the Erwin-Schrödinger-Zentrum on the Campus Adlershof. Here some recent impressions in the documentation clip:

A crucial part for the production plays the web. Scientists can easily participate and upload their pictures via internet. A second part of the project will be to document this dissemination of the project. At the beginning of the project only a few people are asked to participate and to circulate the project to the people they feel related to - internally and externally. Recording by whom a participant has been informed a map of relations grows continuously and gives a dynamic image to the social networks behind the faces as well. Above all the growing network visualizes how interrelated a scientist is. The evolution of the network is visualized in the exhibition as touch screen presentation, but also can be accessed online using SemaSpace as visualisation tool. The platform stays active after the exhibition's end, so the participants can continue to weave the WeltWissenNetz.

Every Berlin based scientist can participate. External scientists connected to Berlin can be invited, too. Here you can sign to the upload platform.

facing science - print version of the concept:

Recent impressions from facing science at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. (more...)

Here you can follow up live the development of the network: WettWissenNetz . You find some German instructions how to use the Java based application here.