Our mission
Cell Worlds an Art & Science project that aims to raise public awareness of the beauty, fragility and complexity of cellular worlds through wonder and emotion.
This project responds to a contemporary need: to reconnect the general public with microscopic living things, a topical theme but subject to many fake news.
For this, Cell Worlds has a very specific mission: to bring microscopy images and their stories where they have never gone.
Cell Worlds is thus a scientific, educational and artistic world first, featuring microscopic living things in proportions never before attempted. It is also one of the largest showcases of scientific research, bringing together nearly 25 research teams from institutes around the world.
Educational intentions
Curiosity and scientific wonder have been recognized by cognitive science as powerful tools for raising awareness about complex topics. The microscopy images of the Cell Worlds project become the vectors of this approach, by striving to:
Respond to the need to reconnect citizens with the microscopic living world which is today too mystified/unknown;
Discover the aesthetic beauty, complexity, interconnections and fragility of our cells;
Combine image, sound and narration to arouse emotions;
Using wonder and curiosity to generate engagement and promote scientific research.
From Open Science
science “for good”
Cell Worlds is part of an Open-Science approach, to reach citizens beyond the prism of the microscopic world. By sharing the true diversity of microscopy images, our approach aims to enrich the representation of the microscopic among citizens who today only have access to a small fraction of the titanic work of laboratories.
Through wonder, the project is a gateway to microscopic biodiversity, to its better understanding, and therefore a broader defense of life sciences. It is also a question of raising awareness in order to better understand the issues, in particular health and ecological, which link the infinitely small to our reality.
Management of scientific subjects:
Because Cell Worlds intends to reconnect citizens with our microscopic life, it approaches the reality of its subjects with a thoughtful approach:
Discovery of subjects through new narratives that “cut” with current communications. For example, the project proposes a new way of presenting images of cancerous cells, an opportunity to raise awareness with less “repulsive” visions of cancer;
Re-appropriation of subjects through images: a presentation of scientific research from a more “open and accessible” angle than the image usually made by the general public;
Particular attention to social issues around science: in particular the comments made around embryonic development and related bio-ethical issues.