Since 2024, IBSA Foundation has been organising workshops in Basel for school classes that combine science and art in collaboration with the Cartoonmuseum. T. Each event takes its theme from the museum’s exhibitions. This partnership, launched in 2023, is rooted in shared values and continues to grow through creative collaboration.
The Let’s Science! Events and topics
The very first event in 2024 was about the topic of ”dreams”, in line with the exhibition of comic artist Dominique Goblet. Professor Dr Serge Brand, a psychologist from the Center for Affective, Stress and Sleep Disorders at the University of Basel, gave a lecture on the latest research findings on this subject.
Then, the art mediator, educator and illustrator Dale Forbes Molina, created a booklet with young people featuring surreal figures inspired by dreams.
The second theme of 2024 was “waves”. Composer Ali Latif-Shushtari used musical examples to explain the physics of waves. He has studied both music and solid-state physics. Malen Widén, illustrator, author and art mediator at the Cartoonmuseum in Basel, was responsible for the artistic aspect.
Under her guidance, the two participating school classes drew the sounds of Latif-Shushtari's music. They then developed posters and figures from these images.
This year, Dr Kirsten Beyer-Hans from the Swiss Nanoscience Institute at the University of Basel led the scientific part of the workshop on the topic of “blood”, referring to Thomas Ott’s spring exhibition at the Cartoonmuseum. Four school classes from Basel and the surrounding area participated in the Let’s Science! events.
The Swiss comic artist creates his curious and often rather dark black-and-white stories using scratchboards. He also uses this medium to depict medical motifs or crime scenes with drops of blood. He finds that drawing these subjects has a therapeutic effect. Illustrator and author Malen Widén explained his work to the classes.
Blood: the body’s vital circulatory system
Blood performs many vital functions in the body. However, without the heart to pump blood around the body, this “liquid tissue” would be useless. The heart and blood are closely connected. To study them, one has to look closely - very closely. This is where nanotechnology comes into play.
From the smallest to the even smaller
Dr Kirsten Beyer-Hans from the Swiss Nanoscience Institute began by providing a brief overview of nanotechnology: the science of the smallest parts.
She then presented an innovation from the institute that can test blood for multiple antibodies simultaneously. This is achieved using tiny channels etched into acrylic glass.
This can also be used as an artistic concept: The teenagers carved patterns or smileys into round copper plates that had been painted with nail polish. These were then etched into the plates, and the teenagers could take home their own unique pendants.
The students then had the opportunity to examine blood and heart tissue under a microscope and use the scratch technique to create their own pictures based on the shapes they observed. The results were a wide variety of creative figures and patterns.
The goodie bags, handed out at the end by Katalin Vereb from IBSA Foundation, gave the young students the chance to deepen their connection between science and art. The book The Cycle of Life from the Foundation's Let's Science! series provides more information on the topic of blood circulation along with drawing tools and a short comic-drawing guide.
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