The Griffin Museum of Science and Industry recently unveiled a new interactive “Beyond the Surface: The Art of X-rays” exhibit by photographer Andrei Duman, allowing museum guests to examine the interior of everyday objects.
The exhibit takes up four rooms in the Kenneth C. Griffin Studio. Entering the studio, guests walk past an introduction of Duman and the show, then are introduced to the history of X-rays. Multiple posters give a more detailed description of Duman’s process while creating the exhibit. Other rooms display Duman’s photographs from his six-year project, as well as X-rays of artifacts from the museum.
Images show X-rays of common everyday items like toys, a coffee maker, alarm clocks and more.
Voula Saridakis, head curator of collections and archives at the museum, said Duman’s work balances art and science.
“(He’s a) photographer who’s walking into science,” she said.
Historical artifacts include an Enigma coding machine from the museum’s U-505 submarine.
Saridakis referenced the movie “The Imitation Game” as a way to better understand the history of the device. She said the X-ray showed the complexities of the Enigma machine from the inside.
Creating that image in particular was challenging, Duman said.
Due to how much metal there was in the machine, he wasn’t able to capture the X-ray in one shot. Instead, he took around 10 photos with different exposures. He then “flattened” the images together in post-production and chose bits from each photo to make one composite picture.
Other historical artifacts from the museum were light bulbs from a Thomas Edison patent trial. A clear glass case contains two lightbulbs from Edison’s patent infringement trial. Saridakis said Edison frosted the bulbs so no one could see what the filaments looked like inside. While in court, he was forced to break open one of the bulbs, leaving one of them cracked.
When Duman X-rayed the other bulb, he noticed that one was cracked as well, which was news to museum officials.
Another artifact is a camera box from the 1933 Century of Progress World’s Fair.
“You kind of marvel at that level of detail,” Saridakis said while looking at the X-ray.
A final room displays six scaled models of Bugatti automobiles. Duman teamed up with Amalgam, a scale model car company, to create 1:8 scale models of different vehicles. Bugatti was chosen “because of the prestige of the brand, obviously the legacy that they have, and also just a variety of the models,” Duman said.
Whenever one of the cars is displayed on the floor, it’s also displayed on the wall. Using tracking technology, when guests walk across the car projection on the floor, the X-ray display moves with them.
Molly Powers, 42, said she and her children enjoyed the museum during their visit from Dubuque, Iowa. Reed, 10, said his favorite part of the museum was the fourth room because of how the cars moved when he did.
“It was really cool getting to see all things inside and knowing what’s inside,” said Reed.
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Cate, 8, said she chased the cars when she saw the X-rays move.
Dan Powers, 43, said some parts of the exhibit gave him motion sickness.
Duman said he’s worked on the project for years. “The whole project was really driven by that concept of ‘What happens if I X-rayed this?’”
Duman said his interest in X-rays came from his infatuation with design.
“There’s so much amazing stuff in there that they crammed into that space, I found it fascinating to expose that,” he said.
He said he photographed a lot of artifacts from the museum, but only chose the ones that looked the most interesting to show in the exhibit. His form of X-raying is different from more typical forms of X-raying, he said
“There were many times when I thought ‘Oh, this is going to be really great,’ and you put it on an X-ray and it’s just not, there’s nothing really that interesting,” he said. “And vice versa too, there’s something that I left at the very last minute I’m like ‘Ugh, this is probably going to look like crap,’ and actually it turned out to be actually really interesting stuff in there,” Duman said.
“Beyond the Surface: The Art of X-rays” at the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry Chicago, 57th Street and DuSable Lake Shore Drive; included with regular admission, msichicago.org
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