Microscope

Natascha Sadr Haghighian’s piece Singing Microscope was shown in the second half of a two-part exhibition at the MIT LIST Visual Arts Center. The exhibition explored the various ways that artists address the influence of technology on the senses. Her installation featured an old microscope once used at MIT. She replaced the eyepiece with a headphone speaker so at the point when the visitor expects to see something, he or she discovers a soundtrack. Next to the microscope was a take-away brochure –which our studio designed together with the artist– of a conversation with the MIT Professor Evelyn Fox-Keller. Fox-Keller’s work in the area of gender and science was the inspiration for Haghighian’s piece. The installation is a reflexion around the « dead metaphor » (a metaphor which has lost the original imagery of its meaning owing to extensive, repetitive popular usage) in science and by extension in art and daily life.