Michele PedrazziAsteria Multimedia, Trento

Fixing a Sulfureus Compound:Science, Technology, Sicily

EASST 2010Track 1: Artificial life

MUSEO DELLE SOLFARE DI TRABIA-TALLARITA

(Trabia-Tallarita Mine, Caltanissetta, Sicily, 2010)

Designing for science

Exploratorium (San Francisco, 1969)

Solfara di Trabia-Tallarita with museum location

The Area

Power plant building

Inside the power plant

Science centre or industrial heritage?

American Precision Museum (Windsor, Vermont, 1966)

“Industrial heritage presents science entirely contextualized in a slice of history

in a specific community, whereasscience centres are more concerned with

universal laws and principles, whichtranscend particular times and places”

Sharon Macdonald, The Politics of Display

Positive science visions

Hidden bombs

Working in the mine

The Carusi

Commemorating the mining epos

A hybrid show

Sketching the sulfureus compound

The exhibition

Building the gate

The entry gate

The visitors’ route

The elevator

The elevator

Immersive room

Immersive room

The engines

X-ray engine

X-ray engine

Speaking engine

Sounding engine

Sounding engine

Science exhibits

Science exhibits

Timeline binary

Timeline

Walking on the timeline

Linear discourse

Assembly space

Without any physical partition to markour exhibition, the limits betweenscience and society were merely a

feature of our discourse.

Opening (March 8th 2010)

Assemblage: Making Things Public (ZKM Karlsruhe 2005)

“We assemble because we are broughtby divisive matters of concern

into some neutral, isolated placein order to come to some sort of

provisional makeshift (dis)agreement”

Bruno Latour, Making Things Public (Exhibition Catalogue)

By blurring a zone betweenaesthetics, entertainment,

reasoning, persuasionone can even try to blur

between the categories of“science” and “society”.

Blurred: The Weather Project (Tate Modern 2003)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alfrey, Judith and Putnam, Tim1992 The Industrial Heritage, London: Routledge.

Basso Peressut, Luca1998 Musei per la Scienza. Spazi e luoghi dell’esporre scientifico e tecnico,

Milano: Lybra Immagine.

Latour, Bruno2005 Introduction in Latour, B. and Weibel, P. (eds.) Making Things Public–

Atmospheres of Democracy, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Macdonald, Sharon1998 The Politics of Display. Museum, Science, Culture, London: Routledge.

Oppenheimer, Frank1968 “Rationale for a Science Museum”, The Museum Journal, Vol. 1, Issue 3,

p. 206-209.