Eye-catching: technology pokes its beak into imaginative design at Science Gallery exhibition

PART FACT, part science fiction and part art, the Science Gallery's new exhibition shows how science and the imagination are interrelated.

What if . . .posits scenarios which may come true based on science - however outlandish.

What if meat could be created without killing animals? It is possible using the growth of tissue cultures. What if we could modify clouds to produce ice cream (theoretically possible using nano-technology)? What if women had a real-life body clock which would feed physical, financial and emotional data into a machine that would determine their chances of conception?

The exhibition in Trinity College Dublin includes some eye-catching experiments such as a coin-flipping machine which demonstrate the result is not a matter of probability but physics. There is also an armchair which replicates take-off in a Soyez aircraft - scientist/artist Nelly Ben Hayoun has also created a contraption to create dark matter in the kitchen.

Artist Thomas Thwaites has replicated the cheapest toaster in the Argos catalogue by building one from scratch, mining iron, copper, nickel and mica himself. He describes it as "half-science, half-madness". The purpose to show how complicated the simplest appliance can be.

Science Gallery director Michael John Gorman said the exhibition has been designed to stimulate people's imaginations and to bridge science, design and art. "Some of what we are exhibiting is bordering on science fiction, but by taking it into the world of design, something interesting happens," he said.

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What if . . .at the Science Gallery, Pearse Street, Dublin, is open from today until December 13th; noon-8pm, Tuesday to Friday, and weekends, noon-6pm. Admission free but donations are invited