F93 is a cultural centre. Its self-appointed mission is to build bridges between the general public, the sciences and technical and industrial innovations.
Since its inception in 1982, F93 has been a partner of the Seine-Saint-Denis General Council. It also enjoys the support of the Minister of Higher Education and Research and the Ile-de-France Regional Council.
F93 is currently directed by Marc Boissonnade and chaired by Daniel Véron, head of the Art and Cultural Education Bureau within the Ministry of Culture and Communication.
Since 2008, all of F93's activities have benefited from the new national "Science and Culture, Innovation" label awarded by the Ministry of Higher Education and Research.
Grégoire Eloy is a photo journalist. His work has focused mainly on the Soviet legacy and post-conflict situations in the former Soviet Union and Central Asia. So far his photographs have had little to do with research and scholars and yet F93 asked him to work on a scientific and technical project.
"Ether", a photographic essay by Grégoire Eloy on the worlds of astrophysics.
Has progress been made on the question of the vacuum?
Working from the principle that nature abhors a vacuum, Aristotle used the term Ether for a supposed fifth element making up the celestial sphere, in opposition to the four traditional physical elements, Earth, Water, Air and Fire. Much later, in 1920, Einstein declared: "according to the theory of general relativity, space is endowed with physical properties; in this sense, therefore, ether exists."
So what progress has been made on ether today? In any case, the mystery of the vacuum is alive and well among astrophysicists, as is shown by work being done on two new "claimants", which nonetheless cannot be observed and are still unknown: dark energy and dark matter.
Outward signs
When we look at astrophysicists' research on the vacuum, we also see something of their daily lives. Other intriguing questions then arise and tangle with the previous ones: do their faces, bodies, and clothes give any clues to their work on the vacuum? Is there a specific topology common to all those who strive to understand the universe?
Laboratories, offices, people, things and situations will all be photographed to make us think about these things, fire our imagination, and propose an original, personal vision of astrophysics.
By trying to record the visible and fill in the invisible in the search for an elusive element – ether – this photo assignment aims to share with the astrophysicists the way they formulate and address problems about the universe.
This joint project involving an astrophysicist (Jean-Philippe Uzan), a musician (Eddie Ladoire) and several plastic artists (Atelier Van Lieshout) takes its name from "Vostok 1", the capsule which enabled Yuri Gagarin to become the first man in space in April 1961
VOSTOK is a plastic and sound installation about the universe. It wants to make audible some of the things that fascinate astrophysicists: the life and death of a star, pulsars and supernovae, black holes, planetary systems and so on.
Working on the idea that such things can be experienced, shared and ultimately understood through music, VOSTOK plays a 20-minute soundtrack which "places the listener inside a galaxy".
The principle is materialised by the evocative sounds created by Eddie Ladoire, the use he makes of the sound spectrums used by the astrophysicists themselves to decipher the mysteries of the universe, and the potential that sound has, at certain frequencies, to act physically on our bodies.
To make this fiction even more powerful, the plastic artists from Atelier Van Lieshout have built a listening booth for VOSTOK, which they have called "resistance".MIRAGES / Ceramics is a touring exhibition created by F93 in 2010. It is the first part of a triptych that takes an original approach to the relations between our society and three materials: ceramics, polymers and metals.
MIRAGES/Ceramics was presented in partnership with universcience at the Cité des Sciences in Paris from 2 March to 25 April 2010.
For more information:
Presentation folder and conditions of availability
Contact
: Nathalie Vaguer
In 2009, the Seine-Saint-Denis General Council called for proposals for a department-wide plan called "Culture and Art in Intermediate Schools".
This initiative is largely based on the idea of bringing an artist or scientist into the classroom to engage pupils in a process of research and creation.
On the strength of its long experience in running educational and cultural projects for schools, F93 naturally put forward several proposals. The aim is to develop the pupils' taste for the things that fascinate researchers and engineers today.
This season, our choice of themes for the pupils and their tutors was guided by three criteria:
Firstly, the determination to address "historical" questions still being researched such as: What is our democracy? What is an animal? How are territorial rivalries expressed?
Secondly, the desire to look at "social" problems which require expertise in many different fields: for example, television, sport, the clothes we wear, the city.
Thirdly, the wish to consider "things" shared by researchers and artists, such as symmetry, gastronomy or optics.
Science and Citizenship
Under the State/Region Plan (CPER 2007-2013), the Conseil régional d’Ile-de-France has introduced the possibility of funding activities focused on scientific culture. F93, the Banque des Savoirs (Conseil général de l’Essonne) and the Parc aux étoiles (Les Yvelines) have put forward a joint proposal entitled "Question de sciences, enjeux citoyens" (QSEC).
The idea was to arrange discussion groups each year between scientists and groups of adults living in the Ile-de-France region and to publish the points of views that emerged from their talks.
The project started officially on 9 December 2009. For the first season, QSEC chose the theme of Bioethics and recorded discussions in thirty groups from three departments: 78 (Yvelines), 91 (Essonne) and 93 (Seine-Saint-Denis). On 29 June 2010, the Ecole Nationale Supérieure hosted the final regional meeting for all participants.
For more information: www. qsec.fr
F93 is a permanent member of the QSEC steering committee and coordinates research and discussions involving residents of Seine-Saint-Denis.
Food is an exemplary theme for these new regional discussions.
It interweaves many strands of thinking (health, economy, public policy on a national scale, worldwide stakes, education, etc.) and is a crossroad for several scientific disciplines. It speaks to everyone, but will resonate differently according to the characteristics of each group of citizens. And it is a theme rich in contradictory discourses and expert appraisals.
F93 would like to see fifteen groups of adults participate in the discussions in 2010-2011, preferably from fifteen different towns in the department. As usual, F93 associates researchers from the top laboratories with the discussion groups.