Exhibition "ZOOM! Microscopic images between science and art"

The Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg offers around 40 degree programmes. Artistic subjects are not among them. And yet studies and research sometimes produce results that are characterised by a special aesthetic. In the exhibition at the Rheinbach campus, 23 exhibits provide fascinating insights into the microscopic world of nature and materials. Sometimes a picture is reminiscent of a church window flooded with sunlight, sometimes endless spaces seem to open up. Anyone who engages with the works will find numerous associations. In fact, the images conceal concrete motifs from the environment. What you see here is a fly's eye, the crystal structure of a hoover's cable reel or the structure of silk - each in extreme magnification, captured by researchers and students from the fields of materials science, biology and forensics

Because scientific knowledge plays an important role in society, as the Dean of the Department of Natural Sciences, Professor Richard Jäger, demonstrated in a keynote speech. He chose a local example: the Rheinbach witches' tower, which symbolises irrationality and the belief in supernatural causes such as magic or witchcraft and represents a dark chapter in the town's history. "Today there is a primary school next to it - which is somewhat ironic," said Jäger. At the time of the witch trials at the transition to modern times, most of the laws of nature had not even been discovered and knowledge was very incomplete, unlike today. But something else was just as crucial: "Education was by no means a common good at that time," said the Dean. Teaching the natural sciences was no less important than scientific research itself. Both are closely linked to technological progress and rationality, which today underpin our prosperity and our society.

Counteracting irrational tendencies even today

Even today, it is still important to counteract irrational tendencies. "The teaching of scientific principles and methods is an ongoing task and represents an extremely important social achievement of schools and universities, through which enlightened rationality is anchored in our coexistence," said Jäger. The exhibition "ZOOM! Microscopic images between science and art" makes a contribution to this. "Microscopy is a technique with which even the inexperienced can easily penetrate into the realm of the hidden and thus gain initial access to the foundations of our reality," he emphasised, also with a view to simple devices that are also suitable for children and young people.