Cluster. Symphony of Data Between The Fine Arts Academy of Rome and the Institute of National Physics

On Friday, May 22, Cluster. Symphony of Data will be presented at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and in the spaces of the Galleria dell’Accademia. This installation of data visualization and data sonification stems from a scientific-artistic research project that began as an open laboratory bridging art and science. Complex scientific data related to the Higgs boson, derived from the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (CERN, Geneva), has been transformed into an artistic experience. The project will be on view on the evening of Saturday, May 23, during Rome’s Night of Museums.

Professors, students, and researchers from Roma Tre University, the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, and INFN have engaged in an ongoing dialogue to find a way to visually represent the data, navigating the balance between scientific precision and artistic sensibility. The data used pertains to the Higgs boson produced in association with a W boson (the particle responsible for the weak interaction, the theory of which was first formulated by Enrico Fermi), analyzed and published by the ATLAS experiment.

After an initial research period, necessary to familiarize themselves with each other’s languages and approaches, the project was formalized as an environmental installation, a combination of lasers, video, and generative sounds. The scientific data were rendered as a visual-sound choreography projected in real time onto a circular screen that ideally evokes a section of the ATLAS experiment or the LHC—the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva.

The language of particle physics and that of art converged with the common goal of creating a space for exploring and presenting data. Data that scientists interpret using an abstract mathematical, probabilistic, and statistical language are translated into forms and sounds, leaving the viewer with the sensation of being in the presence of something unique, of seeing and hearing the Higgs boson and intuitively understanding the fundamental role it plays in the construction of the cosmos.

The project now arrives at the Academy following an initial presentation at Roma Tre on March 25, 2006, as part of the public lecture series Fisica Incontra la città and stands as an important moment of dialogue in artistic research, rooted in the fields of data visualization and data sonification art, where data becomes a resource for artistic expression, combined with an analytical approach, both in the initial phase of investigation and in the moment of presentation, with all the challenges that its performative nature entails.