Back at the Australian Synchrotron, and my ‘post-Synapse’ installation collaboration with accelerator physicist Mark Boland. It is a particle accelerator, and it is energetically activated by subatomic particles emitted from fruit, and it works! The installation premiered at ‘Morbis Artis: Diseases of the Arts’, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, November 2016 – February 2017. Thanks to Mark Boland, Tom Lucas, Troy and Lindon Davey-Milne, and Suzanne Davies.
The next and possibly final version is currently being wired up in-situ at the Australian Synchrotron – stay tuned…
Song of the Muons is a project I developed with CMS physicist Wolfgang Adam through the ‘art@CMS’ collaboration at CERN, between 2014 and 2016.
The installation sonically spatializes high-energy collisions between subatomic particles in the Large Hadron Collider, recorded by the Compact Muon Solenoid. The detector data is tuned into a format that is manifested acoustically, and presented as an 8-channel sound installation. By using precise mathematical processes known as “relativistic Lorentz transforms” the near-light-speed events are slowed down to amplify and enhance the expressive qualities present within specific particle collisions, in a way that maintains a consistency with the initial physical events, so that ultimately nature is the source of the composition.
‘Song of the Muons’ premiered at the 2016 SUSY conference on supersymmetry in particle physics, as part of the ‘Symmetries’ art@CMS exhibition, 4 July 2016, at the University of Melbourne Sidney Myer Asia Centre, and has since been exhibited at the Palais de la Musique, Strasbourg, 2016, and the Sophia Science festival, Bulgaria, 2017. The composition is 10 minutes in three sections : hadronic excitations; muon events; and supersymmetric speculations.
Thanks to Wolfgang Adam and Michael Hoch @ CMS, Raymond Volkas @ Unimelb, Matthew Gingold for the speakers, and Lindon Davey-Milne for the towers.
Following on from where the walk in the LHC tunnel (see post below) led to, literally later that day, I was invited to participate in the “art@CMS”collaboration, part of the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at CERN (which is why I have lots of images of CERN hallways). See http://cms.web.cern.ch/content/artcms
Below are some previews of projects I developed with art@CMS between 2014 and 2016.
Why is the “Acceleration experiments” a video of the video?
To see the real thing, in 4k 50fps, come to the show! Natural History Museum Vienna
Going back to 2013, this is a slightly manipulated video of a group of artists and scientists walking down the LHC tunnel, talking about art and science. The company / voices include Chris Henschke, Mark Boland, Donna Kendrigan, Roger Rassool, Ralph Steinhagen, Bill Fontana, Ariane Koek. It is interesting to see where this journey led me… essentially to CMS.
From the post-lightbridge archives, a truly analogue data experiment, acoustically manifesting the synchrotron tune in-situ, punctuated by detection of stray particles of cosmic and other origins.
A model, or ‘machine study’, of the accelerating structures in the Australian Synchrotron Light Source, developed during my 2010 “Synapse” residency. The piece is essentially an accelerating video of a physical model, with “harmonic” points where the speed of the rotation appears to becomes stable, or stationary, at other points, complex stroboscope-like forms and seemingly impossible motions emerge. Such effects are based upon events I witnessed at the Australian Synchrotron, where the individual electrons in the accelerator ring were literally moving forwards and backwards at the same time. In essence the work explores the relationship between the observer and observed, and how phenomena can be counter-intuitive in particle physics experiments. The title of the work is a play upon Einstein’s edict that light itself cannot accelerate – its velocity is constant, it is the ultimate speed limit of the universe, and everything else accelerates towards it.
‘Lightbridge / machine study no. 4’. This is another variation of the works created during the Synapse residency, a kind of model of the synchrotron itself in two forms, digital and physical. The installation uses a rotating 3D print sculpture of the synchrotron, which modulates light passing through it which is audiovisually fed back into itself. In other words, a video projector plays feedback onto the spinning sculpture from a video camera focused on the sculpture. To start the piece up, a light had to be shone into the camera, akin to how the synchrotron itself is fed source energy. Photodiodes turn the light into sound. On the wall behind the physical model is a digital animated model of the synchrotron, which uses scientific modelling and beam simulation software, tweaked to provide dynamic and impossible energetic events.
‘Lightbridge’ was exhibited at the UNSW College of Fine Arts’ Kudos Gallery, as part of ISEA 2013.
‘Lightcurve’ is one of several projects developed during the synapse residency. It is a visualization of the heart of the Australian Synchrotron, created with light captured from the synchrotron, and using processes analogous to those employed by the scientists. However, it does not seek to illustrate or define exact properties, it is more an expression of my perceived feel the physics. The work also expresses the subjective and personal tension of being in an ultimately unknowable realm – moving along a path but knowing you will never get to the destination.
‘Lightcurve’ was exhibited at the ‘Synapse: a selection’ group exhibition, at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, 2013, as part of ISEA 2013.
