my role is to understand how a science
of great complexity can inform artistic expression
I don't think artists are going to
transform the way science progress but
there is something definitely important
about creating this conversation and
opening it up philosophically we want to
know why we are here and what the world
is made for
we're interested in working with scientists who work with physical
matter was really appealing about CERN
to us as its matter that's completely
invisible
you could never totally just observe
nature would always be having the hand
of man in there somewhere and so it
would be mediated through the science
and so we started asking more
philosophical questions about science
and became more interested in
questioning our place in nature and
looking at that through the lens of
science and technology
halo is thinking about the idea of placing the viewer
within the center of this scientific
experiment where you're surrounded by a
ring of light in a way you become the
source of the event the proton-proton
collisions
so we are taking individual collisions and we are slowing those down
so that you can then experience that in
a human time frame you know you get a
sense in there that there must be
something scientific going on but you
don't have to understand that to
experience the artwork
we've taken this data from this video complicated experiment and reshaped it
so that we can place the viewer inside
we like to work with the raw data partly
because it has all the the artifacts and
the noise of nature's still inherent in
there in a way it's closer to what major
is it's messy it's also more beautiful
it's it's like looking at an old
photograph and seeing more character in
there
the manipulation they've done on the data is actually more accurate than
what we see when we reconstruct the data ourselves
because they are paying
attention to the small features of the
low-energy things and looking at in a
slightly different way which is still
valid from a scientific point of view
but also from an artistic point of view
digital data has been turned into points
of light for a projection and also MIDI
data which is basically a sound score
that can be played by the mechanical instrument
 
so the mechanical part of Halo is how
the sound is all made and when you get
to watch that up close you can see the
complexity that's involved in the many layers
okay so we've got 24 strings that
we're trying to get to resonate and be
controlled in sync with the raw data
coming from service without there being
any speakers it's a mechanical linkage
just picks up the vibrations of the
string and then it's amplified through
these circuits which we control via the
computer and it goes to a resonant sound
box so what you're actually hearing is
the string itself vibrate
halo is a sculpture which transcends the
way the scientists use the data to
becoming an experience that is quite
humbling and we like to call this
technological sublime
