Inteview | Cristian Rizzuti

On October 11 and 13 as part of the Digitalive.Romaeuropa Festival, curated by Federica Patti, Collisioni was presented, a sensitive environment that, in real time and in a scientific manner, enters the dynamics of subnuclear physics, particularly complex events such as those generated by the Higgs boson (discovered in 2012). For more than a year, an artist, a scientist and a group of students have been working together to build an art project where the performative aesthetic aspect is perfectly aligned with the scientific one. Scientific data were studied by the interdisciplinary team through the use of Neural Networks by identifying events that could indicate the generation of the Higgs boson. Space becomes a performative field where bodies interact with each other like particles.

This project continues from its pilot phase carried out in 2023 thanks to a collaboration between the Academy of Fine Arts of Rome, INFN (Institute of Nuclear Physics) and the University of Roma Tre. From the Romaeuropa Festival, on October 18 Collisioni will arrive in a new context, the all-scientific one of the Futuro Remoto Festival at the Science Village in Naples. Lidia De Nuzzo talks about it with Cristian Rizzuti to get into the artistic side, but also about the research and to the dialogue with science that led to the selection of data and their translation into the sensitive environment.

Lidia De Nuzzo: How did the artistic scientific and creative dialogue with scientist Biagio Di Micco take shape and life?

Collisioni is a project that brings into dialogue two seemingly distant worlds: the scientific and the artistic, and I love working with data, particularly scientific data. It all stems from a collaboration between the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and INFN (Institute of Nuclear Physics) Roma Tre. This was an opportunity to meet the researcher and scientist Biagio Di Micco. We started a path of mutual exchange and comparison to find a common research orientation. We conducted a series of lectures and meetings within the working group in order to understand each other’s disciplines so that we could delve inside quantum and nuclear physics.

We then proceeded to search for the core of the project. Biagio has been focusing his research for several years on the Higgs boson. This particle, discovered in 2012, is extremely unstable and decays almost immediately into other particles. The boson is not directly observed, but the particles in which it decays are observed. This type of investigation requires particle detectors, such as ATLAS at CERN, huge machines designed to measure the trajectories, energies and pulses of particles produced in collisions. These detectors are able to reconstruct what happened immediately after the collision by observing the traces left by decaying particles. All of the data collected then are entered into a database that organizes them on a percentage basis that allows them to be actually observed.

After lengthy discussions, we decided to work on the improbability of the event-the improbability that, even in billions of collisions, the collisions would generate the Higgs boson.

We learned that when these event-explosions occur, four particles “position themselves” within space; we translated them into a two-dimensional plane by arranging the different solutions of their positioning within space. The audiovisual space in which they are immersed symbolically represents a section of the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva.

The idea was to involve people and their movement within the installation as part of the process, as if they were particles. It was up to them to find the combination of positions in order to trigger the event and generate the Higgs boson. Each of their movements generates both a visual and sonic response, making them the protagonists of a performative work without actors: the viewer himself becomes an actor, an integral and active part of the artistic creation.

People find themselves within an array, specifically a two-dimensional plane, although it gives a perception of three-dimensionality; their movement within this space is tracked in real time through the use of two LIDAR sensors and generates both sounds and visuals. Interconnected lines appear within the space, symbolizing the relationships that are created.

The interesting thing is that the work makes you understand the importance of collaboration: you need at least four people moving in space, simultaneously placing themselves in a certain position to generate the event, visualized in explosion of colors, of particles moving in space of which people are an active part. Once finished, people have a chance to trigger the second event in a kind of gaming. The positions that trigger the event are never the same. This proves through experience the improbability of that event happening.

What were the processes of translating the mathematical and scientific data of the Higgs boson into a sound and visual artistic creation?

In Collisioni, we used a database provided by Biagio Di Micco, containing data acquired by the ATLAS experiment between 2014 and 2018. These data concern the search for the production of the Higgs boson in association with the W boson, with subsequent decay into two W bosons. Once created, the Higgs boson has an extremely short lifetime, after which it decays into four other particles. Experiments such as ATLAS and CMS detect these decay products to reconstruct the original event.

We took this database and translated it into spatial logic, using a two-dimensional (XY) 8×8 grid representing the arrangement of particles in space. Each of the 64 quadrants into which it is divided functions as a musical instrument. The data collected from the quadrants is sent to software that processes the information to generate musical notations, based on a predetermined harmonic system.

In this case, we divided the space into eight areas to simplify participants’ interaction with the installation. Data analysis was conducted with a technique called binning, which groups continuous data into intervals (bins) to facilitate analysis and interpretation. From this database we selected six events with a probability greater than 99%, thus very close to the actual event for the formation of the Higgs boson.

For the event to be generated, people must discover four specific positions within the space. Only when four participants are simultaneously in the positions that correspond to the actual positions in which the particles were generated. At this point, an explosion occurs: the event that recreates the formation of the Higgs boson. From a visual point of view, this moment is represented with an explosion of billions of particles filling the immersive space. The participants’ bodies, symbolizing the particles, can continue to change the environment, as they have a “repulsive” property that interacts with the surrounding space.

Collisioni was presented at the Romaeuropa Festival 2024 on October 11 and 12 as part of the Digitalive review, curated by Federica Patti. How did the interactions between the audience and the work take shape? And what will change in its reformulation as part of the Futuro Remoto Festival at the Villaggio della Scienza Napoli, where it will be presented soon?

Spectators are literally an active part of the work. Collisioni is an installation that brings together the performative and theatrical aspect of the Romaeuropa Festival with the algorithmic dimension of Digitalive. The work creates a world that lies somewhere between real and virtual and represents a powerful metaphor: the viewer is immersed in a real space that simulates the experience of a three-dimensional universe, thus becoming part of a representation that transcends the boundary between physical and metaphysical. In the version we are preparing for the Futuro Remoto Festival in Naples, the installation will work with the same dynamics. What will change its nature this time will be the scientific context that hosts it and the people who will interact within it.

immagini: (cover 1-3-6-8) Cristian Rizzuti – Biagio Di Micco, DIgitalive – RomeEuropa Festival, 2024. Installation view (2) Cristian Rizzuti – Biagio Di Micco, Notte dei Ricercatori – Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma, 2023. Installation view (4) A sample particle collision from the Large Hadron Collider. Credit:CERN (5-7) Cristian Rizzuti – Biagio Di Micco. Collisioni – Preview Software