In Chemistry of Life, we get to explore a world at nanoscopic scales. Among other things, we experience what it feels like to fly through an electron microscope, travel into a leaf, and journey inside our own brains’ vibrant networks of neurons. You will definitely look at your body in a new way after experiencing the groundbreaking visualizations that Chemistry of Life—An Invisible Inner World offers.
This movie is the third production in the Wisdome project and is produced by Norrköping Visualization Center C with support from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.
We want to make the biomolecular world more concrete and accessible. We focus on how we can understand what we associate with life—breathing, eating, and thinking—through the biochemical processes in the body’s cells and mitochondria – the body’s own energy producers. The dome format gives us a unique opportunity to experience shrinking to a few nanometers in size and to get a picture of how the molecular world inside our bodies works.
We start with a research phase. We then develop a synopsis that forms the basis for a script we work on with input from subject matter experts. In this film we worked with researchers in Visual Learning and Communication at Linköping University. We also collaborated with Australian animator Drew Berry who has focused his entire career on creating dynamic visualizations of biomolecular science. Visualizing the molecular world in a scientifically accurate way in dome format was both interesting and challenging. Chemistry of Life took almost three years to produce.
This type of scientifically accurate dynamic visualizations of data from molecular biology has never been produced for a dome before. Here, you can get an immersive experience of a world that is otherwise completely invisible to us, and you can understand how all life on Earth is interconnected.
Humanity’s fascination with the mysteries of life has existed for thousands of years, and our understanding has evolved through the discovery of atoms and molecules. Research continues to shed light on the biomolecular processes that occur in all living things. At the same time, the chemistry of life can seem abstract and difficult to grasp.
Chemistry of Life can be used in education to introduce biomolecular processes and the building blocks of life in a visual and engaging way. It connects chemistry and biology, making it useful for interdisciplinary projects and discussions about the necessary conditions for life. Here, the biomolecular world becomes more comprehensible, especially for children and young people, by explaining how the body’s biochemistry is linked to our fundamental functions, such as breathing, eating, and thinking.
In the interactive installation that accompanies Chemistry of Life, you can explore the molecular processes that are essential to all biological life. How do the body’s cells respond to an infection? How is vital energy generated inside the cells every second? Now, you can discover and see some of the smallest—yet most crucial—processes clearer than ever before.
The installation has been created by Visualizationcenter C within the Wisdome project, with support from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, in collaboration with Dr. Drew Berry at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, as well as Nanographics. The content is based on research data from molecular biology studies.
The installation is available at our Science Centers. It is also possible to purchase a license to display it in museums, science centers, or other educational settings.
