Superheroes in the Lab!
© 2014 EPFL
You might not find Spiderman, Iron Man, or Batman among EPFL’s faculty, but superheroes have no qualms about entering the scientific psyche. Marc Atallah et Gianni Haver will join us on Wednesday, September 24, at 12:15 p.m. in the Rolex Learning Center to talk about this form of science that lies somewhere between fiction and reality. Entrance and lunch are free.
Watch "Science! On tourne" online!
Can superheroes who consider themselves grand scientists or the results of scientific experiments gone wrong to the benefit all of humanity claim any credibility in actual research laboratories? It may seem unlikely, yet scientists themselves often appear to seek inspiration in some form of imagined augmented human. This imaginary fiction is confronted with the same ethical issues facing science today. How should science be regulated? What are its inherent risks? And what could, or what should, tomorrow’s humans be like? Like the silk strings of Spiderman’s web, the dialogue between Marc Atallah and Gianni Haver will weave its way through science and science fiction.
This edition of our scientific café will also give you an opportunity to visit the posters designed by about 50 EPFL students, who drew inspiration from the exhibit hosted at the Maison d’ailleurs entitled “Superman, Batman, & Co… mics!” The results are surprising, to say the least. During the 2014 spring semester, Marc Atallah asked students to think about the Yverdon-based museum’s ongoing exhibit and to come up with their own artistic renditions. Synthesized as posters, these interpretations are now on display in the White Box, a mobile exhibition space that was set up for the occasion in the Rolex Learning Center’s Café Klee.
Marc Atallah is the director of the Maison d’Ailleurs, a museum of science fiction, utopia, and extraordinary voyages in Yverdon. He is a senior scientist at the University of Lausanne and a lecturer at EPFL’s College of Humanities.
Gianni Haver is a professor of sociology of images and of the social history of media at the University of Lausanne and at EPFL’s College of Humanities. He has written a number of research articles on the superheroic universe.