Goals

• The Virtual Laboratory (VL) is a public forum for scientists, students, museologists, collectors and all those interested in the history of the experimentalization of life. Scholars can discuss their ongoing research. Rare material and sources can be searched and exchanged. New cooperations between universities, museums and private collections become possible.
  
  
• In the digital library, the user finds scans of journals, handbooks, monographs and catalogues dealing with physiology, psychology, biology and psychotechnics. A rich collection of images offers depictions of experiments, instruments and sites of knowledge production.
  
  
• By combining and linking these various texts and images, new and unexpected relations between science, art and technology are revealed: How do objects and techniques move and circulate in these different but related fields? How do experiments shape scientific research as well as artistic practice in a common material culture?
  
  
• Combining an archive and a public forum, the VL is itself an experiment in new modes of historiography. By exploring the possibilities of advanced computer technologies, a multi-media method of writing history is developed that integrates texts, images and sounds and allows collaboration between the participants.