Flip Your Field: Objects from the Collection

For the third installation of the Flip Your Field series, UMMA invites Georgios Skiniotis, Professor of Biological Chemistry at U-M’s Life Sciences Institute and Medical School, to curate an exhibition from the Museum’s collection of three-dimensional objects.

As a scientist, Skiniotis creates three-dimensional models of cellular components by combining their magnified shadows or projections viewed from different perspectives. This type of study inevitably raises questions regarding the cognition of the objects around us—how, in the absence of perspective, are we to read elements like color, contrast variation, and depth of field in the dark outlines of objects? How do we make the cognitive connection between a two-dimensional shadow and the three-dimensional object that casts it? How many two-dimensional projections are needed for us to understand what we are looking at, and at what level of detail?

This exhibition poses such questions by juxtaposing three-dimensional objects from the Museum’s collection with two-dimensional projections created by Skiniotis using a similar process with which he creates models of cellular components. The presentation aims to provide a glimpse of the impressions of the selected the works from varied directions through interplay with their own projections and our minds.