Tuesday 06 March, 2001
Art And Atomic Physics
Forty years ago the scientist, turned novelist, C P Snow declared that science and art were two cultures which did not understand and trust each other, a schism that has been hotly debated ever since.
Now an exhibition has opened that is the result of a collaboration between a group of artists and scientists at the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva. Toby Murcott of BBC Science has been along to see whether there really is such a gap between art and science.
Signatures Of The Invisible
In a 27 kilometre circular tunnel, straddling the border between France and Switzerland lies the world's largest machine, the CERN particle accelerator. For the last year a group of artists have spent their time mingling with the scientists learning about the work they do there and creating their artistic impression of an atom smasher. In a gallery in East London, the fruits of the artist's work are on display for the first time.
The exhibition, entitled Signatures Of The Invisible held at The Atlantis Gallery, is a collaboration between The London Institute of art and design and CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. By using visual mediums the organisers aim to bridge the gap between science and art and perhaps go some way to explaining how nature works.
Publicity for the show outlines the aim of the collection:
'The laws of physics are not going to go away. Relativity, antimatter, quantum mechanics are how nature works. Art can take us into areas of perception through visual encounters and through artists' talents to lose themselves in the interplay between concept and medium. In this programme artists will be able to do this in parts of the natural world which have previously been invisible.'
| 'The exhibition aims to “respond to the preoccupations of theoretical physics.”' | |
Maxwell's Field
Taking part in the exhibition is Swedish artist, Monica Sand. Since 1992 she has produced work inspired by and utilizing materials associated with elementary particle physics.
At the Atlantis show she presents a collection of 30 white boxes, some full of light, others empty, which collectively form a place that she calls, Maxwell's Field. The aim is to understand the concept and reality of light.
Sand explains her use of materials:
'I have used light guiding materials from CERN and there are seven different light guiding materials as fibres and so on. There are fibres, optic cables, that must be 30 or 40 centimetres high coming up to the top of the box, but not out of it, and a gentle green light coming out of them, they're really rather beautiful.'
Whilst most of the boxes are open two are closed, and a faint sound resonates throughout the exhibit. Sand explains the significance of the sound:
'In the accelerator, you can force the particles to go into a material. In this case you have millions of protons going into a copper plate and you can experience the sound that the protons make as they hit the plate.'
Culture and Nature
The exhibition also includes Patrick Hughes painted relief work called Culture and Nature. It comprises of a series of six doors, merging multiple banks of computers, gizmos and dials with images of the Swiss Alps. He explains his work:
'Look at these scientific doors as they unroll to show the nature that surrounds CERN. With my piece you're meant to, as it were, open the scientific doors onto nature.'
Inspired by the writing of physicist Werner Karl Heisenberg, Hughes comments:
'I hope my picture is an example of how we see. Heisenberg wrote: 'When we speak of the picture of nature in the exact science of our age, we do not mean a picture of nature so much as a picture of our relationship with nature.”'
Huges's work is concerned with the perceptual mind. The image is painted on triangles and pyramids, with the idea being that as you walk past you change from technology to nature. Hughes explains the aim of his work:
'The most important thing is that is moves because you move and is reciprocal. In so far as I understand the science, it's indeterminate and it depends on us. We see what we want to see.'
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| Large Electron-Positron Collider |
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The LEP machine at CERN aims to shed new light on the relationship between subatomic particles. Tiny explosions recreate on a small scale what conditions were like at the start of the universe in the big bang.
The LEP is the largest sub-atomic particle collider. It consists of a giant underground tunnel 27 km long.
Circling one way around the tunnel are streams of electrons; circling the other way are positrons which are the anti-matter equivalent of electrons. These two particle streams are brought together in detectors that analyse the debris of the collision. |
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