Trauma, roast guinea pig and future of farms on Science Gallery 2016 menu

Trinity venue will also run project on design and violence in link up with New York’s MOMA

Lynn Scarff, acting director of Science Gallery Dublin, and Patrick Prendergast, provost of Trinity College Dublin, at the launch of the Science Gallery Dublin’s major new exhibition and education programme for 2016. Photograph: Mark Stedman/Photocall Ireland.
Lynn Scarff, acting director of Science Gallery Dublin, and Patrick Prendergast, provost of Trinity College Dublin, at the launch of the Science Gallery Dublin’s major new exhibition and education programme for 2016. Photograph: Mark Stedman/Photocall Ireland.

Fancy a plate of roast guinea pig or seaweed made to taste like bacon? These questions and more will be asked in a major exhibition on what we eat planned for Science Gallery at Trinity College next year.

The Gallery revealed its 2016 line-up and educational programme on Tuesday, with four exhibitions planned.

Field Test: Radical Adventures in Future Farming runs from March through June and will dig deep to challenge our assumptions about food and what we might be eating for dinner 50 years from now. Visitors to the exhibition will be offered an opportunity to sample "crops" developed by artists and scientists.

Seeing: More Than Just Looking explores the complexities of vision and how beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. The exhibition will question whether artists really do see things differently. This runs from June through September.

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In Design and Violence the gallery asks people to consider what happens when these two collide in "creative destruction". The exhibition, which runs from October through to January 2017 is a co-production in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It looks at how art and engineering mix with power and politics.

The exhibition currently running at the Gallery is Trauma: Built to Break which looks at how we deal with trauma and recover from it. It looks at biological, psychological and societal traumas in our connected world. It runs through February 2016.

The Gallery’s exhibitions are designed to appeal to young adults from 15 to 25, but they prove of interest to any age category, said gallery director Lynn Scarff.

The exhibitions seek to blend art and science to create a potent mix that makes both more accessible to ordinary people, she said.

"By increasing the science capital of our young participants, we are enabling a more scientifically literate population in Ireland which has immediate knock on effects on the social, economic and cultural success of the country," Ms Scarff said.

The Gallery has won a Google Field Trip Days grant that will help bring more than 5,000 students from all over Ireland to visit during 2016.

Dick Ahlstrom

Dick Ahlstrom

Dick Ahlstrom, a contributor to The Irish Times, is the newspaper's former Science Editor.