Critter Salon with Machine Project

"Enormous Microscopic Evening" was a traveling event held at the San Francisco Exploratorium and the hammer Museum in Los ANgeles in 2009 and 2010, respectively. Organized by CRITTER Salon (with Machine Project), a San Francisco-based artist group dedicated to expanding the relationships between culture and the environment, the evening was all about microscopes: building them, manipulating them, and peering into the unseen recesses of the world through them. CRITTER called the event a "microscope jam session."

THe microscopes involved in the event ranged from homemade devices and simple water lenses to state-of-the-art microscopes that truly allowed participants to see the invisible. Organisms, live cells, insects, plant matter, objects brought from home- very little was safe from magnification. With the assistance of various scientific and natural history organizations, the CRITTER Salon held workshops in DIY microscope construction  and demonstrated how a new age of "social microscopy" is transforming the sciences.

The focus (so to speak) on microscopes presents them as a metaphor for what a scientific or technological approach can bring to the practice of art: if an artist's job is to look at things in an unexpected way, how better to sharpen and intensify that gaze than to use a microscope? To see the unseen, to reveal hidden truths about the world- this is the work of both scientist and artist.

Further Reading

Machine Project Post: http://machineproject.com/archive/events/2010/11/06/calling-all-microscopy-hacks/

CRITTER Salon's Blog: http://crittersalon.blogspot.com/2010/06/hammer-to-microscopes.html