New App «WonderAlp - Wonder and Science»
The Alps and the Culture of Curiosity
WonderAlp is a cabinet of curiosities that transforms your iPad or Android into an Early Modern Wunderkammer. It displays objects discovered in the Alps during the early period of exploration. These are grouped under three titles: “Dragons of the Alps”, “Fossils and Crystals”, “Plants to Landscapes”.
WonderAlp presents some fascinating images found in Early Modern travel literature. Written and audio documents provide explanations geared toward different audiences. The visitor can roam from one screen to another, select his itinerary, create his favorites list, read and listen. He can also manipulate images, comparing or enlarging them, and admiring the artistry of their illustrators.
WonderAlp helps apprehend a natural world that is both rational and wonderful, scholarly and popular, unlike the compartmentalized thinking
of modern life. It explores an alternative scientific history of the Alps
and a bygone form of rationality, one which discovered empiricism and classification while at the same time finding in the world’s objects a source of inexhaustible wonder.
By : Claude Reichler
VIATICALPES Production, Lausanne, 2015
Library partners: BCU Lausanne, BGE Geneva, NL Bern, BPUN Neuchâtel, MV Sion, Bern Burgerbibliothek