Arts at CERN

Zurich-based artists Andrea Anner and Thibault Brevet begin their residency at CERN as the selected for the first edition of Connect

AATB, the collaborative practice of artists Andrea Anner and Thibault Brevet, have embarked on their residency at CERN as part of the inaugural edition of Connect, a fully-funded programme dedicated to Swiss or Switzerland-based artists interested in developing their practice in dialogue with the Laboratory’s research and community.

AATB’s work is anchored in human-machine interaction, focusing on the choreography of kinetic and interactive situations using industrial robotic arms. Although robots are capable of executing precise, vectorised movements, they remain subject to the inherent conditions of the physical world. Mechanical constraints, flexure, thermal expansion, sensor inaccuracies, electronic limitations, and numerical rounding introduce variations and distortions that disrupt the expected precision of these machines. As the artists put it, ‘Robots are fascinating devices because they allow us to physically represent digital geometrical information, locate things in space, describe figures and shapes, and trace abstract data into tangible motion.’

Their residency project, entitled 5 Sigma, seeks to investigate representations of space and time using industrial robotic arms. From the ancient crude maps to today’s intricate technological capabilities, the human endeavour to interact with and understand our environment has been central to modelling and measuring it. As we zoom in, the abstract shapes and surfaces used in these representations have hindered the uncertain details that lie beyond these depicting forms. Through their residency, AATB aims to investigate this further, using robots as a medium to question the reliability of the very systems that appear to deliver precision.

Having grown up with scientist parents deeply involved in research, both Andrea and Thibault bring a distinctive perspective to their artistic practice by incorporating scientific methodologies into their robotics research. This residency provides them with a significant opportunity to continue their collaborations with physicists and engineers. Through these exchanges, AATB aims to develop an interactive and kinetic artwork with their four industrial robotic arms, bridging the gap between atomic and cosmological events and bringing them to a human scale.

Launched in 2021, Connect is a collaboration framework between Arts at CERN and the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia that serves as a platform for dialogue between artists and scientists within the Laboratory’s context.