Exhibitions

• Exhibition in the Old Auditorium
  In the exhibition "Caution! Glass! Perspectives on an (in)visible material", students from the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Göttingen have curated an exhibition that highlights the role of glass as a material in Göttingen's university collections.
  20 October until 11 December 2022
  
  In a seminar that spanned two semesters and was offered, among other things, as part of the certificate programme "Object Competences", the students, under the direction of Jana August and Professor Margarete Vöhringer, focussed on the material glass, its diversity, function, cultural and scientific significance. A wide variety of objects such as prisms and test tubes from the University's collections as well as everyday drinking glasses, artistically leaded glass windows or even glass shards opened up diverse perspectives on glass - a material that not only inspires science and industry, but also remains unique due to its materiality and is closely linked to our everyday lives.
• Digital Exhibition "Computer Senses".
  A digital exhibition by students of the University of Göttingen | Chair for the Materiality of Knowledge
  Winter semester 2019/20 until summer semester 2021
  
  It seems as if it is always "the same image" and that it is ubiquitous, according to philosopher Michel Serres: "people sitting in front of computer screens and hammering on their keyboards". In the digital age, it is neither comprehensible what scholars actually do on their computers, nor what kind of data they use to reach their conclusions. This is easy to understand in view of our increasingly digital learning and working. But a visit to the Göttingen University Collections reveals a different picture. The closer we look at the scientific devices that have emerged with the digital, the clearer three observations become: 1. that the human-machine interfaces are extremely diverse in detail; 2. that the digital becomes analogue as soon as we approach it and try to see, touch or hear it; and 3. that while the computer has changed historically, so have our senses. So what are computer senses?
  
  Students from the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Göttingen are exploring this question in a digital exhibition. Based on object analyses in the collections of the Institute for Astrophysics and Geophysics and the Computer Museum of the GWDG, they have researched the material, cultural, aesthetic and poetic dimensions of scientific devices. Along some central objects, they have traced the sensual activities on the computer - seeing, grasping, hearing and thinking.
• Nature Preserved. What scientific objects conceal.
  An exhibition of the seminar "Materiality of knowledge using the example of the specimen".
  7 October 2018 until 31 March 2019
  
  An animal skeleton in a film, a dried plant in a book or a skull in a painting? When scientific objects appear in new contexts, they often take on surprising roles. Students from the Seminar of Art History at the University of Göttingen show why this is so in the exhibition "Nature Preserved - What Scientific Objects Conceal". Together with Dr Margarete Vöhringer, Professor of the Materiality of Knowledge, they opened the exhibition on Sunday, 7 October 2018, at 11 a.m. in the Old Auditorium, Room 0.111, Weender Landstraße 2.
  
  The exhibition focuses on natural science specimens from zoology, human biology and botany, which the students of the seminar studied for two semesters. It became clear that animal skeletons, skulls, dried plants, corals and shells are not only charged with meaning in the sciences, but also in art, literature and everyday culture. "When objects appear in books, films or visual art, they evoke very different associations that also have an impact on the sciences," explains Vöhringer. For this reason, the exhibition organisers also present the scientific specimens in their various cultural forms. A glance at them gives an idea of what the objects conceal.
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