On the last hours of the last day I returned to where it all began, the CMS detector, which some of the scientists have called “my precious”, and this time “my princess”, which reminds me of a quote from experimentalist anthropologist Sharon Traweek: ‘Physicist and nature meet in the detector, where knowledge and passion are one.’

In a way this has been the best visit / experiment yet, and it’s not over by any measure, Dr Hoch has many plans, so stay tuned…
I even got to do a final 1 second intervention, to complement my 1 second assemblage from the last night of my last visit!! As observed by collaborator Andrew Hustwaite, “this is my art school”.

It is my final day here on this particularly high energy sojourn to CERN. As is difficult yet necessary in such relentless environments, I found a bit of time for reflection, usually in the CERN Library (which could be the world’s best, especially their philosophy section (if you’re into this kind of thing)). Here are some books that really spoke to me, theories and philosophies that I can apply to my life!

Speaking of reflections, I realised my blackboard is a mirror (i.e. every morning I have scribbled dream images and words on the bathroom mirror!)

(and as they are dream-direct I can’t quite decipher them either! “Squaring the circle / Circling the square”…?)

Like a dream come true with a dream come true, I was in Zürich at the Paul Scherrer Institute, with my long-term collaborator Thomas Lucas. PSI has a plethora of accelerators, including a very old-school Cockcroft Walton proton generator, which still works, shiny and new, even though it was built around 1962!

There’s also a 200 meter wide “compact” synchrotron about to take off. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen, with tiny powerful magnets that can fit in the palm of one’s hand. There’s also the SwissFEL, a free electron laser about a kilometre long … With my EM field microphone / detector, I was able to feel the fields and literally pick up the “songs” of the Klystrons that drive the electrons through this. But what does one call a group of such high energy pulse devices, a “Symphony of Klystrons”? This experience and experiment has opened up a dimension of sound and composition possibilities – soon to be made into actualities in the Technisce Gallerie!

And for supper, a visit to Cabaret Voltaire, just to put things back into context Yama la lLakuta la Ola Nana dream come true who yu!

This rock and tree, in an quiet corner of the CERN complex, is one of my favourite contemplative spots, and the other night, after another very deep discussion on the nature of Nature, I put my hand on the rock. In that moment, which felt like a marriage between Barad, Michelangelo and Merleau Ponty, I realised why I keep returning to CERN: it provides the closest point of connection between humanity and the Universe on a fundamental physical level. That’s why, in its own special way, this is one of the most beautiful places in the world.

…

CERN on Saturday is quietly inspiring; in addition to exploring the normally off-limits areas, you get to meet physicists when they are most open and expressive, and delve into all sorts of normally guarded topics such as philosophy, creativity and even their dreams.

Today I did a quantum computer simulation workshop  with my “analogue laptop”, in collaboration with Sergei, CERN’s pioneering quantum computing expert. I learned a lot, and it kind of worked, in spontaneous and unpredictable ways! This is step 1 in a new project, building a lo-fi yet functional “quantum laptop” as a creative proof of concept. It’s possible, and why not?
We must dissolve the boundaries!

And speaking of which, today was the final day of the Science Art Dialogue Week, which upon reflection was a complete success, an amazing and humbling experience, and a kind of redemption. So to celebrate, there’s nothing more Swiss than feasting upon a giant pot of Quark Fondue Plasma on Lake Geneva!

Today the Science Art Dialogue week went into class mode, at the CERN IdeaSquare, a dynamic innovation and research centre, where I gave a workshop on particle physics and data sonification, using my “analogue laptop” to shape particle collision data into expressive audio compositions. See https://ideasquare.cern/

The real highlights were Paul Thomas’ “Quantum Drawing” class, which was delivered live online, and a completely crazy tech interruption / disruption…

There was a typical zoom audio problem, but the completely crazy part was that the “tech support” came from none other than Robert Cailliau, the person who literally built the World Wide Web!!!
Never mind Tim Berners-Lee (who just came up with  the “vague but exciting” idea), Robert made this thing we call the internet. And he was quite interested in my “analogue laptop” as he used analogue computers in the 1970’s to calculate complex nonlinear systems such as global resources and population growth and decline…

I later was part of an interview with Robert, conducted by the amazing Susanna Niedermayr from Radio Orf Austria, and we talked big big picture stuff, from the Big Bang to AI (and back:)
Stay tuned for the interview link…

On an icy Geneva morning there’s nothing that warms you up like a visit to the Antimatter Factory. Using proton decellerators, CERN is the world’s biggest source of anti-hydrogen, which can last up to a year in their magnetic traps. It is most expensive substance on Earth.

And on the way, stop by the ‘G-Bar’, which looks a bit like a bad and hazardous nightclub (some CERN scientists have a “special” logo design style). There’s even remnants of signs I put up a decade ago…

A picture tells a thousand words; we explored a thousand worlds!

ALICE : https://www.home.cern/science/experiments/alice

CMS & LHCB : https://home.cern/science/experiments/lhcb

And this poster hints at something very deep!
More info to follow…

*2.0 is an in-joke referring to the concept of “Quantum 2.0”

Black Hole Descending A Staircase, C. Henschke, 2004, digital print, 200cm x 200cm, National Gallery of Australia.

It’s Day One, again! Somehow I have returned to CERN, drawn back into its universe. 2026 is the Centenary of the Schrödinger wave function, another celebratory milestone of quantum physics. After 2025, the year of quantum uncertainty and collapse, I fell through a black hole, came out the other side, and somehow survived, like the phoenix particle. I have come back to CERN to function in the “Science Art Dialogue Week”, in part to creatively interrogate quantum states such as superposition. Wandering down the dark hallways, and discovering obscure experiments with Schrödinger’s cats, I already feel welcomed back. And again big questions shimmer in the ice-cold Geneva air, and on the CERN blackboards, such as “What are we?”

The “Science Art Dialogue Week”, set up by Dr Michael Hoch from the art@cms / Origins program, features a very inspiring collection of people from the Kunstuniversität Graz, Radio ORF, Florida State University, University of Alabama, and RMIT. I will be posting more about this over the coming week. But also I will engage with a more personal question – why am I here (at CERN:) or, more fundamentally, what keeps drawing me back?