High Tech Campus Eindhoven in the picture

In 2011 & 2012, documentary photographer and psychologist Jos Jansen investigated the mystic nature of advanced research at the Campus. The resulting book, ‘Entering the black box’, was recently presented at Paris Photo 2012, one of the most prestigious art fairs dedicated to photography. 14 December 2012, the exhibition will open in the ‘Krabbedans Gallery’ of the 'Witte Dame' building in Eindhoven.

Exploring the relationship between people and technology, Jos Jansen focuses in particular on three important aspects of modern scientific research - scale, complexity and abstraction. In an associative manner, he shows fragments of a world which is simultaneously alienating, fascinating and unfathomable.

Jansen captured his images in 2011 and 2012 at High Tech Campus Eindhoven. It forms part of Brainport Eindhoven, which in 2011 was proclaimed ‘the smartest region on earth’ by the Intelligent Community Forum in the United States. Every year, half of all Dutch patents originate at the Campus.

The artist’s fascination was to make a transition from the square kilometre that is the size of the High Tech Campus site to a level that can only be made visible by means of scale models and mathematical formulas. This is the area that scientific anthropologist Bruno Latour refers to as ‘the black box’. It is also the place where, in his view, science becomes dark and ever less tangible.

Jos Jansen observed how researchers wander around in artificial landscapes and continuously raises questions about precisely what they are doing, how everything is linked together, and into what larger context it all ultimately fits. Technology and people merge together, and it sometimes seems that technology is usurping the place of humanity.