Making a song and dance of particle physics (Image: Michael Hoch)
Up, down, spin 鈥hat鈥檚 dancers at work at the premiere of , a contemporary dance piece inspired by particle physics. For extra drama, it was performed immediately above the, one of the two experiments running on CERN鈥檚 Large Hadron Collider to spot the Higgs boson.
Quantum will be performed at the Th猫芒tre de la Cit茅 Internationale, Paris, on 4, 5, 7, 8 November, 2013; there will be more performances in , France, and New York, in 2014.
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As befits the subject matter, six dancers sometimes whirl alone, with little apparent rhyme or reason, while at other times, they glide across the floor in graceful unison. Most of the time, though, paired dancers either vibrate on the spot or twist and contort themselves, with their limbs interlocked, gliding them over each other, yet never quite making physical contact.
鈥淭he piece is very abstract and can be counterintuitive, but so is quantum physics,鈥� says its Swiss creator, choreographer Gilles Jobin. 鈥淭he piece doesn鈥檛 tell you what to think, rather it seeks to guide you.鈥�
Jobin took inspiration from Feynman diagrams 鈥� pictorial representations of the mathematics governing the behaviour of subatomic particles 鈥� to sketch out sequences of the choreography. 鈥淚 wanted to explore physical phenomena as a way of generating movement,鈥� he explains.
Colliding sounds
The music for Quantum was created by composer and software developer using data from the LHC. Through a process known as , she mapped particle collision data from CERN鈥檚 ATLAS detector to specific sounds. The result was a sporadic soundtrack that builds, layer on layer, to a series of crescendos throughout the dance.
鈥淚 first became interested in data sonification as a teenager,鈥� says Scaletti. 鈥淚 had a teenager鈥檚 romantic notion that there were some basic patterns in the universe, and that music could express the beauty of those patterns. I guess I still have some of that romantic notion today.鈥�
Jobin says he finds Scaletti鈥檚 work fascinating: 鈥淭here is an organic nature to the music she鈥檚 produced 鈥� it鈥檚 very moving, although complex, and it has a fragmented structure. When art and science get together like this, it鈥檚 a five-sigma result every time.鈥�
He was inspired to create Quantum after a three month residency at CERN brought him face to face with physicists. This residency, part of the , was launched by the programme鈥檚 director , in 2011.
Unusual approach
Jobin was the second artist to take up a residency at CERN, following German artist Julius von Bismarck鈥榮 stay last year.
To light Quantum, Jobin used four large, suspended lamps created by von Bismarck for his installation . The lamps, swaying in a pendulum-like motion to the beat of Scaletti鈥檚 music, cast a dramatic and ever-changing light on the performers throughout the dance.
Collide@CERN is not about communicating science in the traditional outreach way, Koek says. 鈥淭he arts are not being used to explain or illustrate the science. Instead, we are putting arts and science on an equal footing, so that great scientists interact with great artists and become mutually inspired and transformed in their understanding of each other鈥檚 disciplines and processes.鈥�
Whether or not Jobin鈥檚 piece will be judged as achieving these lofty goals remains to be seen, but it is compelling and highly thought-provoking. Whatever the outcome, this quirky (quarky?) piece certainly has a strange charm.
