Hands on Lenses – a curatorial debut at the ArtScience Museum Singapore

Posted by Isabelle Desjeux on November 19, 2014 · 5 Comments 

Lab coats can transform you into perfect screens

I am happy to announce the Hands on Lenses exhibition at the ArtScience exhibition, curated by myself, and with most pieces fabricated by myself too.

“Have you ever observed the world upside down through a droplet of water? You were looking through nature’s own lens. Have you ever notice the bright spots under a thick tree on a sunny day? You were observing nature’s own pinhole camera manifestation, and the result of light traveling in a straight line. Lenses have been used for centuries by artists and by scientists alike to record and marvel at the world around them, from camera obscuras used to accurately draw, to microscopes to look at the unseen, and photography to record that world. With the advent of easily available lenses that can be recovered from everyday objects (disposable cameras, laser pointers, DVD players, magnifying glasses , eyeglasses…), it is possible to make simple but ever-engaging objects and contraptions, devices that harness the properties of light traveling in a straight line, and lenses bending (refracting) those lines. We now invite you to play with light with and without lenses, and get inspired to make your own.”

Conceived as an exhibition where the public can touch and manipulate the pieces to play with the lenses and basic optics, the space runs without facilitators most of the time. The goal is to get the public to look through lenses or simple holes set up to create interesting images. Some lens set ups allow you to deal with the very small (3 hand-made microscopes on display), some create real images on pieces of paper or other surfaces. Bonus: there are 4 take-home sheets for you to create these simple set-ups at home. When planning and setting up the exhibition, I followed this simple idea: “Playing gives you time to ask questions and answer them yourself”. In the words of one visitor carrying a large camera around her neck: “What you have done, is remove all the magic from these expensive and fancy cameras!” But she didn’t seem disappointed. Hands on Lenses is part of “Ocean of Possibilities”, a photography exhibition at the ArtScience Museum Singapore. Dates: 30th October – 28th December. Accompanied tours: 8, 9, 13 and 22nd November , 13th, 20th December. 3-5pm

Lab coats can transform you into perfect screens

Never too young to look down the microscope

Learning to use the phone camera microscope

Cross-generation sharing

microscopes for all ages

My Wundercamera Obscura in good place

By aligning the 2 camera obscura, you can see the world the right way up.

The microscope table: “Hack-a-lens”

The projection room

wave to project an mage of your hand.

The iPhone projector

Hack-a-Kodak. All the parts labelled

Hack-a-Kodak. With the famous Ecktar lens, used for making microscopes.

The microscope table, the entrance to the camera obscura, and the screen for the video

Play with the lenses: stack them up and get a sharp image.

The “eye” microscope: an objective and an eye piece

The phone microscope: place you phone on the platform to view the object magnified (up to 50x)

The computer microscope: a hacked webcam

The pinhole camera display. COmplete with cameras, walk-around cameras to wear on your head, and framed photographs that demonstrate the variety of “angles” obtained by the different boxes.

The Afghan Box Camera corner. Watch the video and look at the Afghan-Box-Camera Made in Singapore!

The Afghan Box Camera (behind). Made by Abigail Chui of

Step into the camera obscura to view the outside reflected inside.

Filed under Art, Education, Exhibition, Installation, Microscopy, Objects, Photography, Science · Tagged with Exhibition, Museum, Optics