DESIGN NAME: Paper Brains
PRIMARY FUNCTION: Exhibition
INSPIRATION: The aim was to set up an experiential exhibit by means of creating a ‘book page’ in the exhibition space. All elements of the book page —text and images—, were placed on the floor of the gallery space. The audience walked, literally, on the area corresponding to the margins and the text of the ‘book page’, including the footnotes. Kindly notice that the exhibition design also plays with the idea of bringing “footnotes” literally to the viewers’ foot.
The page number of this ‘book page’ in space (number 15), is the number of the building where the exhibition took place.
UNIQUE PROPERTIES / PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Paper Brains exhibition is visualised as a book page in the exhibition space. All the images of this page in the space are presented within black wooden boxes. They are intended to be browsed by the viewer in order to discover how layered representations of the human brain appeared in book pages.
OPERATION / FLOW / INTERACTION: All spaces corresponding to the ‘images’ of the ‘book page’ in the space were intended to be browsed or to be interactive. This is in view of creating and experiential exhibit that highlights the history of human brains as depicted in book pages since the Renaissance and until present days.
For example, one of the “images” of the “book page” recreates a fugitive sheet or a flap book spread. The viewer had to open all fugitive sheets by lifting its layers (See video attached to this submission)
PROJECT DURATION AND LOCATION: The project started in June 2017 and finished in July 2017, and was exhibited in Book & Manuscript Studies gallery, Turfdraagsterpad 15 – 17, 1012 XT, Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam (UvA), The Netherlands.
FITS BEST INTO CATEGORY: Interior Space and Exhibition Design
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PRODUCTION / REALIZATION TECHNOLOGY: Text pasted onto the gallery floor, black wooden boxes, paper and acrylic boxes as exhibits.
SPECIFICATIONS / TECHNICAL PROPERTIES: Gallery space dimensions: 8480 x 3660 mm
TAGS: Exhibition design, experiential exhibition, human brains, book page in the space
RESEARCH ABSTRACT: One of the most recurrent metaphors about books is that they are journeys across authors’ brains. Conversely, the exhibition Paper Brains is a gaze at different reproductions, ‘dissections’, and artistic interpretations of selected brains re-presentations. It approaches the question of how the human brain has been represented as a subject of study throughout different epochs in prints and books. The exhibition hints at the multiplicity of ‘readings’ of the brain from scientific and artistic perspectives.
Largely based on the archive of the Special Collections Library, University of Amsterdam, Paper Brains showcases a visual continuum about how human brains have been layered down and printed on book pages. The exhibition includes reproductions made by Andreas Vesalius, whose seminal work De humani corporis fabrica (Basel, 1543) defined the Renaissance’s groundbreaking representation of comprehensive anatomical structures through illustrations and prints. The display extends up to fugitive sheets and recent Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).
CHALLENGE: Being an exhibition about historical books, all materials had to be re-created from scratch. This is because all original books were rare books that would not be able to be exhibited in the designated space due to climatic and preservation conditions of the space.
ADDED DATE: 2017-08-28 14:17:54
TEAM MEMBERS (4) : Curator: Danne Ojeda (in collaboration with Lisa Kuitert [Book and Manuscript Studies] and the Special Collections Library, University of Amsterdam), Exhibition design: Danne Ojeda, Exhibition assistance: Szilvia Mondel, Eline Kortekaas and Photography: Stefanie Archer.
IMAGE CREDITS: Paper Brains exhibition, Fragments.
Book and Manuscript Studies, University of Amsterdam (UvA).
Photography: Stefanie Archer.
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