Art can appeal to all of us, whether it is contemporary, futuristic, or amazing works of art from the past. Beautiful women, wild nature, hard to grasp beauty or just simple things from our surrounding life have served as models. The question then arises as to why physics, and especially nuclear particle physics, which the whole world knows thanks to research at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), could not also be an inspiration for artists.
"As a scientist, I am fascinated by the global collaborative effort of many creative colleagues doing basic research, as well as the enormous complexity of the cutting-edge instruments at CERN that allow us to decode nature. And as an artist, I am fascinated by the internal geometry and the enormous scale of the scientific architecture at CERN, which creates breathtaking aesthetics and beauty," says project author Michael Hoch, an artist and physicist at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.
On 26 January, students will attend an introductory lecture on particle physics, after which individual exercises led by experts will begin - the art workshop will be led by painter Petra Buzková, a graduate of Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno, and the movement exercises will be led by choreographer and dancer Lucie Charouzová, who currently works as a teacher at the ZUŠ Libčice nad Vltavou and teaches externally at the HAMU in Prague. Michael Hoch will lead the Experiments with Colours exercise and the final 3D event display workshop. Participants will also have the opportunity to make their own fog chamber - a physical device that allows them to observe the trajectories of electrically charged particles.
"This is not just an introductory workshop, but a longer-term collaboration, the results of which will be presented at the ICHEP 2024 international conference at the Prague Congress Centre, and then the exhibition will go to other institutions involved in the project," adds Jaroslav Bielčík, expert guarantor of the Nuclear and Particle Physics study programme at the Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering of Czech Technical University in Prague (FJFI).
An additional programme of virtual tours of CERN, consultations with scientists and artists, and online group meetings will be offered during February and May. "Experiencing physics in a completely different context is a unique opportunity. I'm curious myself to see what kind of works will be created, and I'm very much looking forward to the Movement Workshop. Scientists are often thought of as nerds in white coats, and at this event we want to show that this is not the case. Participants will have a whole range of sensations and inspiring experiences," adds Jiří Hejbal from the Institute of Physics of the CAS.
The question of how to connect the worlds of science and art has been asked by many artists and physicists, and they have found the answer in joint projects, whether they are international ones, most often created in collaboration with experiments at CERN and Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), or those created domestically as part of the Center for Advanced Applied Science (CAAS) project at CTU, which, among other things, has greatly promoted the dialogue between science and art. The BeInspired project is a collaboration of four institutions - FJFI CTU in Prague, the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University, the Institute of Physics of the CAS, and ICHEP 2024.
During his academic career, Michael Hoch worked on various artistic projects, did his PhD in particle physics at CERN, where he spent three years, and then worked as a CERN employee for the next six years. In 2012, he founded the interdisciplinary science and art programme art@CMS, followed by the establishment of the ORIGIN network in 2017. Both programs, art@CMS and ORIGIN, aim to foster a global dialogue between the scientific and creative communities, with an emphasis on reaching out to educational institutions and the younger generation.