The Universe is my Laboratory

Background: Leonardo journal editor Roger Malina argues for art-science programs, as ways of fostering new forms of knowledge (2006). Putting artists within a scientific laboratory raises, as has been increasing over the last decade, raises issues as to how deeply could and should art engage with science, and what affect art produced in such environments can have upon science. I have been involved in interdisciplinary art/science research and practices since the 1990’s, working across audio and visual media and utilizing experimental particle physics technologies. Contribution: This time-based media project is a distillation of my interdisciplinary art/science practices namely at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). Implicit in the project (and in my discussion about the work), although a form of “transdisciplinarity” was sought, achieving such a state in such as setting as CERN, even through collaboration with physicists, was a virtually impossible leap across the disciplinary gap. The video expresses the potential and the problematics regarding placement and practice within the realm of the physics laboratory. Instead, as my video suggests, the practice and creations of art forms at best syncretic symbiosis that can only have an indetectable effect upon the science. But, in the creation of new worlds, whether in an artist studio or scientific laboratory, there is the potential for energetic transdisciplinary moments to occur. Such tension and release is expressed in this work using digital media processes to manipulate footage I took of CERN, manifesting the energies present within both science and art experiments. Significance: I was asked by the SPECTRA exhibition curators to create this project, the first time such works have been combined and presented as a single project. The work was part of the MACHINES LIKE US, CELLS LIKE THEM online video exhibition, alongside new works by Helen Pynor, STELARC, and other pioneering interdisciplinary art/science practitioners.