At the beginning of February, students from the Institute of Music Informatics and Musicology together with students from the State Academy of Fine Arts had the opportunity to visit CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, for a week as part of the SciArt Dialogue Week @ CERN. The aim of the week was to bring together artists and physicists from all over the world to exchange ideas about science and art.
The week began with excursions to various CERN research facilities. These included the Synchro-Cyclotron, CERN's oldest particle accelerator, and the CMS, one of the largest particle detectors in the world, located 100 metres underground. Renowned physicists were also invited to introduce our students to particle physics and report on their research at CERN. The focus was on the Higgs boson, which was theorised back in the 1960s and finally experimentally proven at CERN in 2012.
Inspired by the impressions of the first few days, the students were now able to process their experiences in the form of art and music projects. The approaches were very different: while some produced a piece with sound recordings they had made themselves, others stuck to the particle concept and interpreted it in their own way in the form of pieces of music.
Many thanks to CERN and everyone involved for making this week full of inspiration and new experiences possible!