Marc Sutton, ATLAS physicist from the University of Sussex, was the mentor of the artist duo Semiconductor during and after their CERN residency. He followed all the steps of the artists project HALO, from dumping a few events on ascii files to the "making of videos".
HALO installation in Basel 2018
Making of videos on the artists web site
CERN news: Dive into the subatomic world at Art Basel
ATLAS blog on collaboration with the artists
CERN Courrier article on artists residencies at CERN : Creativity across culture
Take away quotes, taken from a Financial Times article: Art Basel installation turns particle physics into art
“She told us: ‘Science is a human invention, it’s nature that’s real.’ That was a real turning point for us,” Jarman says. “It made us start to look at the tools, as well as the language and the processes of science, in a different way — more as interpretations of nature than as facts about nature. It’s always been about the human signature; it’s about man as an observer of the work and of nature.”
And from the HALO catalogue:
"CERN seems unique in that most of what happens there was started there and was evolved over time. Most people don't realise that CERN was founded as far back as 1954. It is a hermitic environment, which hasn't been affected by the outside. It has its own rules and ways of doing things. So as a kind of human language, it is fascinating to study. It reminds me of when we went to the Galapagos Islands, where we got a sense that it was what Earth was like before man came along. Well, CERN is what science and society are like when people are striving towards the same goals and can function as a pure science rather than having other obligations. We may be seeing it through rose-tinted glasses, but we haven't been anywhere else that gives us this sense.
Scientists often don't see the outcome of our time spent with them until quite a while afterwards, when we have made the work. This requires a lot of trust. Trust can be built in many ways, but one of them is through experiencing successful artworks. which navigate science, whatever the approach is. There are still a lot pf prejudices towards artists working with science. We hope that we are contributing to the development of this as a respected artistic language and simultaneously making artworks which inspire scientists to consider engaging with artists."
Organising last minute access to the ATLAS cavern, control room and data were humble contribution in the shade, but I'm glad to have proven Ruth wrong when - tired of missed opportunities - she whispered "the place does not want us". I've been since then one of their (many) absolute fan.
