PI Room At Palais de la Découverte

Walking into the Palais de la découverte, I was expecting to find science distilled into exhibits, but not quite in the graphic, almost Pop-art punch delivered by this wall installation. Bold, oversized foam digits leap from a sterile white surface, forming the endlessly irrational sequence of π. The visual rhythm is broken strategically with occasional black numerals, pulling the eye into brief moments of disruption. Below the digits, the names — EUCLIDE, EULER, FERMAT, FOURIER — provide a calm intellectual gravity against the visual chaos above.

This shot was as much about the tension between mathematics and design as it was about light and form. I framed it head-on to respect the alignment and symmetry of the installation. The strong ambient light worked in my favour, allowing me to avoid flash and preserve the subtle shadows that give depth to the numbers. Though it seems like a sterile setting, there was a surprising dynamism in the way light struck the foam, casting sharp micro-shadows that added texture and materiality.

Technically, the challenge was balancing exposure to avoid overblowing the whites while keeping the rich red pigment saturated. Slight underexposure helped maintain fidelity, and I deliberately left a tight depth of field to flatten the dimensionality, emphasising the graphic nature of the subject.

Conceptually, I was thinking of type as structure — the mathematical sublime rendered not through abstract formulas but in the heft of Helvetica. It’s not a particularly ‘photographic’ scene in the traditional sense, but in its clarity, rhythm, and function, it’s deeply photographic nonetheless.