“We are interested in the unknown and finding out about who we are as humans through what we don’t know. Science just happens to be the medium through which we do that,” say Semiconductor, the British artist-duo Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
Their large-scale, site-specific and immersive experience artwork titled HALO, conceived in collaboration with guest curator Mónica Bello, head of Arts at CERN, will be exhibited during Art Basel in Basel, Switzerland, from 13-17 June 2018.
By presenting visitors with an artistic interpretation of the ATLAS experiment at CERN, HALO will allow viewers to better understand subatomic nature and the complex phenomena taking place at the CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
Standing four metres tall, HALO consists of a ten-metre-wide cylinder-shaped structure whose interior is encircled by a 360-degree screen and by vertical piano wires. Projections appear on the screen that graphically illustrate a series of slowed-down subatomic particle collisions that ordinarily occur almost at the speed of light. The predictions also trigger small hammers to hit the surrounding piano wires, emitting an all-encompassing vibration. This combination creates the immersive audio-visual experience.
HALO is Audemars Piguet’s 4th Art Commission which selects an artist-curator duo every year to realise an artwork that explores complexity and precision while utilising contemporary creative practice, complex mechanics, technology, and science to forge a link between the traditions of Haute Horlogerie and Art.
Audemars Piguet provides full financial support to the selected commission, in addition to the specialised expertise required to realise an artwork.
“It amazes and excites me to see how Semiconductor explore how we see and experience the natural world. They help us to see things differently. And they bring to life the precision and complexity of particle physics and art.” – Olivier Audemars, Vice President of the Board of Directors, Audemars Piguet.
