Léman/Eléments: Familiar landscapes with unfamiliar details
Artwork by Polina Demidova, created with the technique of collage, is being exhibited in the Main Building until 28 October. Visual elements for the technique are usually images and text taken from glossy magazines, and bits and pieces of the information collected from different sources. These are then transformed into something altogether different. There is something special about these works of art, as some of them feature various electronic components from the ATLAS Transition Radiation Tracker (TRT).
Electronics collect, refine and transmit information from the LHC and its detectors. Scientists then put the pieces together, reconstructing the “collage” of nature. In this respect, science, as much as art, underpins and influences modern society.
ATLAS’s TRT components have been combined with bits and pieces from glossy fashion magazines and scientific papers to create landscapes from Geneva and France with a techno-mysterious look, influenced by the high-end science of CERN.
The technique of collage in art is very similar to the way in which the LHC and its experiments are built: a large number of independent parts are combined to create something unique.
Polina Demidova's artwork was created with the stated intention "to express the feeling of admiration that the artist experiences when seeing the walls of this cathedral of science and technology called CERN". The LHC in particular and high energy physics in general has had, and continues to have, an important impact on the scientific, cultural, and technological developments of society and industry. That's international state-of-the-art science in action – when the beauty of the construction is amplified by the functionality and the very purpose of the resulting masterpiece.
The exhibition was organised by Sonia Casenove (Staff Association) and Andrey Loginov (Yale University, ATLAS TRT) -- we hope you will enjoy the artwork as much as we did!
