Night of Arts & Sciences
In 2011 too, the University Library was one of the main venues for the Night of Arts & Sciences, which is now held every year. This edition of the event proved as popular as the 2009 edition, attracting tens of thousands of visitors to the centre of Groningen.
Life lines, van Hector Raphaele
Healthy Ageing
The University Library programme for the Night was based on research theme Healthy Ageing, or: ‘How to stay healthy and live as long as possible’.
As the visitors climbed the stairs in the Library, they were taken on a journey through life.
- Visitors entering the building were ‘demographically logged’, so that the ‘population structure’ of the Library could be seen at any time.
- Former Library staff member Tineke van Stipriaan is now a professional chair masseuse; she loosened visitors’ painful shoulders in just a few minutes.
- In the Film Lounge on the third floor, visitors could sit down and relax for a while, watching films on the theme of health.
- On the top floor of the building, visitors could meet Paro, a cuddly therapeutic robot designed to improve the socialization of sufferers of autism and Alzheimer’s disease.
Fat furniture van Lambert Kamps
But that wasn’t all. On the platform between the ground floor and the first floor, Minerva Academy student Carlina Nauta presented an artwork inspired by the health theme.
Elsewhere in the building, artworks by her fellow student Hector Raphaele were displayed.
Here and there, examples of ‘fat furniture’ could be seen. Designed by Lambert Kamps, these chairs are a comment on Western consumer society.
From the gallery on the second floor, visitors could look down on the dance group Dialectica, and watch them perform a spectacle of light, dance, music and acrobatics below the vide between the Digital Workstations on the first floor.
Young musicians played classical pieces at various places in the stairwell. Between the Digital Workstations on the second floor, health-related games could be played on Wii devices. There was a game for the blind and partially sighted, as well as a ‘Swat the Malaria Mosquito’ game!
In the study room on the 3rd floor, the Pandemomia theatre group performed ‘The Gift’, a play about the dilemmas surrounding organ donation.
In the lecture hall on the 4th floor, there were interesting lectures to listen to throughout the night. These included lectures by Prof. Cees van der Schans (Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine at the UMCG), Henk Goris (lecturer in Life Science & Technology) and Christiaan Pinkster, project leader for computer and communication applications (Royal Dutch Visio).
Paro de Zorgrobot!
Music!
And, of course, there was music in the air… No less than four pop bands played in the canteen on the fourth floor.
Mr. Wallace’s energetic ska got everyone dancing, and – entirely in line with the Healthy Ageing theme – Doctor Scalpel and the Incisions delivered non-stop raw hospital rock with a considerable injection of surf.
The University Library is also set to become a top attraction on the next Night of Arts & Science, to be held on 2 June 2012.