Nature of the Apparatus

Background: The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) experimentally probes the fundamental forces of nature. Several contemporary media artists have worked there (eg. Ryoji Ikeda) but none have developed an experimental artwork using LHC sound, video, and data in a way that engages with the history and philosophy of CERN. Contribution: Informed by the philosophies of Niels Bohr, Ian Hacking, and Karen Barad, I developed this project at CERN between 2013 and 2016. It uses UHD 50 fps video and sound I recorded in and around the LHC. It portrays the LHC’s “material culture” (Galison, 1997), ranging from obsolete experiments, to new detectors such as CMS. The work incorporates sonified LHC data I developed with the physicists, which experimentally algorithmically modulates matter and energy audiovisually. Through this, the work manifests the invisible energy in the LHC, and creatively expresses the “nature of (such) an apparatus” (Barad, 2007); the space between materiality and abstraction; and the fundamental limits of observation (i.e. the CERN Higgs Boson discovery). Significance: This project was developed at CERN (the world’s leading scientific research facility) in collaboration with CERN physicists. The work was developed for, and selected by, Christian Köberl, the Director of the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna (in the world’s top 10 museums), to be part of their exhibition “Wie Alles Begann”. The exhibition was opened by two Nobel Physics laureates, George Smoot and Peter Higgs (of the Higgs Boson), and Anton Zeilinger, Director of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. I attended the opening (with travel funded by the NHM, CERN, and RMIT). I discussed my artwork with Higgs and Zeilinger (leading to future projects). I gave an artist talk with Wolfgang Adam (and George Smoot joined in). The exhibition ran until May 2017 and had approx. 400,000 visitors, plus a catalogue.