An exhibition about the multifaceted uniqueness of Homo sapiens.
What makes us human beings so special? What are our abilities, peculiarities and individual characteristics? Starting in March 2022, visitors can measure, test, compare, “feel” or simply marvel at the multifaceted uniqueness of humans at the AUDIOVERSUM. They will get to know themselves and their special features in a whole new way. An interactive special exhibition under the heading TO BE HEARD AND KNOWN for the unique sense of self in the midst of the diverse human species.
The special exhibition “You are unique!” focuses on the dimensions of the human body. Visitors can show full physical commitment and test their eyes, memory, reaction time and nerve strength, among other things, at 12 interactive stations.
The exhibition focuses on two aspects of measuring: On the one hand, we have more and more possibilities to measure our bodies. On the other hand, it is quite difficult to estimate weight, distances and time when we only rely on our senses and intuitions. Our own perception sometimes diverges quite a bit from reality. The title’s ambiguity refers to two ways of looking at the uniqueness of man: To the numerous ways in which one can measure one’s own body and to the fact that we connect our senses with feelings and our own creativity, which – as numerous experiments in the exhibition show – sometimes works better and sometimes worse. At one exhibit, for example, you can measure your abilities in long jump; at another one, you can measure how happy you feel at any given moment. The encounter with formerly common units of measurement such as the cubit, foot, step, span, inch or finger width and their different interpretations shows the unreliability of human body measurements. The fact that estimating weights, distances and time is not quite easy and always subject to a wiggle room can impressively be experienced.
The AUDIOVERSUM Science Center combines a unique variety of experiment stations and offers almost endless possibilities to experience science around humans in a playful and educational way. Each exhibit comes with instructions on how to experiment as well as a personal list of results in order to document one’s uniqueness.
On an analogue mood board, each visitor can note down his/her mood to give positive expression to the individual feeling. It should be made clear that the eye can be easily deceived and the ear easily distracted: In the special exhibition “You are unique!”, visitors encounter first and foremost themselves and will realize that they are a very special “work of art”.
“With this new special exhibition under the heading TO BE HEARD AND KNOWN, AUDIOVERSUM fulfills another, scientific claim as a science center. The interactive exhibition format – to playfully measure human beings and thereby highlight their uniqueness – was developed together with Hüttinger, a company in Nuremberg,” explains Julia Sparber-Ablinger, Head of Audioversum. The expertise of Dr. Eckhard Schulz, founder of AUDIOVERSUM and former Managing Director of MED-EL Germany, is to be highlighted in particular. He has been intensively involved in the creation of the exhibition’s content and can thus point to the development of new “hands-on exhibits”.
The special exhibition “You are unique!” will be on display for about a year.