The sound of science

The Science Gallery in Trinity College will be welcoming its millionth visitor next year, and has an ambitious schedule lined up to mark Dublin’s designation as Europe’s City of Science

WHAT MAKES US happy? What foods will we be eating in the future? And how can we “hack” and plug into information from our cities?

We’re soon to find out, according to the just-released 2012 schedule from the Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin, which lays out its menu of exhibitions.

Since the Gallery opened in 2008, it has attracted around 200,000 visits per year and next year, when Dublin rechristens itself the City of Science to mark the hosting of internationally renowned Euroscience Open Forum (ESOF) conference 2012, the venue hopes to record its millionth visit, according to the Gallery’s director Dr Michael John Gorman.

“The great thing is that people are really interested in science, from all walks of life, if you can open it up in new ways,” says Gorman, who became interested in the fusion of art and science when doing a doctorate in Italy on exhibitions about Leonardo da Vinci. “We don’t think what we do is about dumbing down science – we are more about opening up science to new kinds of conversations.”

So what will we be chatting about in months to come? The current exhibition – Surface Tension: the Future of Water – runs until January, and after the drink comes the food: in February the Science Gallery will host Edible, which Gorman describes as an exhibition you can eat.

“We’ll have people come in and taste the different directions food is going,” he says, citing biotechnology and new culinary practices, molecular and even genomic gastronomy as areas to be explored. “As eaters we are agents of selection, we are shaping selection of agricultural and ecological factors.”

The next set of questions are about happiness. “In indices of national, self-observed well-being Ireland always comes out really well,” says Gorman. “No matter what is going on, we are implausibly happy, and we will be trying to get to the bottom of why that is.”

Visitors can take part in experiments that look at how we respond to canned laughter and how good we are at assessing happiness in others. There will even be a nationwide experiment where people can report on their happiness over time and what causes it.

“This is real research where the people getting involved are contributing to experiments leading to published journal articles,” says Gorman.

The spike of activity in the Dublin ‘City of Science’ calendar will be the week-long ESOF conference in July, and the Gallery is looking to echo one of its themes: future cities.

“We want to look at the city itself as a scientific subject – how do cities work – how do energy, information and people flow through cities,” says Gorman of the ‘Hack the City’ exhibition that will run in the summer.

He describes planned experiments such as measuring the mood of the city using biosensors on T-shirts, tapping into statistics such as crime and electricity use and encouraging children to map plant species in the city using smartphones.

When that’s all hacked the Gallery moves on to nanotechnology – running NanoLab in conjunction with the Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices (Crann).

“Lots of people on the street have no idea what nanotech is or how it can transform clothing, business, medicine, so we want to open up that world,” says Gorman.

And they will see the year out with an exhibition on gaming, which is an area where Ireland is emerging rapidly as a global hub, he adds.

“We’ll be looking at what defines a game, what’s the future of gaming, what happens when you blur the boundaries between real and virtual – as well as offering the experience of what it is like to be a games designer.”

The Science Gallery has no contract or partnership with ESOF, but is supportive and involved in the local organising committee, according to Gorman, who sees the initiative as a good opportunity to make Ireland more visible internationally in science and engagement.

But is there a risk of the City of Science not impacting on the public radar here?

“It depends on what you make of it,” he responds. “Dublin is really expanding on what has been previously done in ESOF, where there has been a conference and small amount of activity. The ambition in 2012 for a year-long programme is already a huge step up.”

And he is particularly keen to make sure that interest in science sparked during the City of Science tenure won’t peter out after the calendar year.

“There’s a danger with events like this that you can do a lot and then it’s gone,” he says. “But the science gallery can be a legacy for ESOF – we can build relationships and activities so we can have the potential to continue on. We are not going to go away.”

For more on upcoming events see sciencegallery.com