A work of art: Marcel Große’s “Teichenbeschleuniger”
Visitors to the campus of the german research centre DESY were treated to very special creative collisions in the autumn. Fifteen artists from all across Germany had put heads together with dark-matter hunting scientists from DESY for the research centre’s first art-meets-science event ”Dark Matter”. Their works, ranging from a walk-in dark matter expe- rience, a sound installation in the HERA tunnel, photography, instal- lations, paintings and 3-D objects to a real collision, were shown from 13 October to 9 November in test halls, shafts and on campus. They were combined with presentations about science and art and the short film programme ”Dark Matters” for the first international Dark Matter Day. The exhibition attracted over 2000 visitors from the art crowd, plus more than 20000 ob DESY’s open day.
One work of art by Hamburg sculptor Marcel Große was called “Teilchenbeschleuniger”, the German word for particle accelerator. The artist had built a wire-based linear accelerator with two colliding units equipped with eggs filled with paint. Driven by fireworks, the units collided in the sculpture, creating an event-like spray of paint in the process that was collected in plastic crates and later displayed. Here’s a video of the process.
Accelerated art leaves me nonplussed or, at least, not nonminused.