Arts at CERN

The artist reflects on the challenges of data collection, quantum uncertainty and probability, unexpected exchanges with theorists over which reality data belongs to, and how reconstruction relates to memory, identity and her ‘network of selves’.

In the summer of 2025, artist Amanda E. Metzger was in residence at CERN as part of Connect, the collaboration framework between Arts at CERN and the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

Amanda E. Metzger’s practice focuses on network theory, authorship and seemingly unquantifiable forms of data collection. Working with memories – specifically, how they are made, measured, shared and generated – she describes her practice as rooted in the possibility of generating a multi-bodied common consciousness. Her work spans multiple mediums, including installations, videos, objects and photography.

Her initial proposal explored the challenges and approaches involved in data collection, making use of CERN’s experiments and facilities as a unique opportunity to engage closely with the measurement, tracking and reconstruction of data at the smallest scales.

I have been reflecting on authorship and property for quite a while in my work. Also working with this is adding another aspect to this whole story of figuring out where does information come from and how does it sort of get created and how much does communication inform knowledge.

In this interview, the artist reflects on the superimposition of her multiple selves in relation to the observed behaviours of particles, and on her deeper understanding of the facilities and collaborations involved in the algorithmic reconstruction of data from particle events. She considers how the idea of circularity, experienced through the repeating sounds of data centres and experiments, will return in the work she is developing through the use of rhythmic sounds, as well as the information that remains unaccounted for and, consequently, the gap between an event in spacetime and our perception of reality. She also discusses conversations with theorists around the question of which reality collected data actually belongs to.

How exactly can we reconstruct an event that has taken place in the past – how much can we reconstruct that in the present?

Her research at CERN, together with her sustained investigation into the notion of existing as a decentralised, multi-bodymind that relies on information sharing and the reconstruction of memories, led to the development of 𝚫 (delta). The work takes the form of a website, accessible on mobile phones at https://delta.metzger.love/, and exists as a soundscape that can be collectively experienced anywhere, unfolding when more than four people gather together in a large space. The work is accompanied by a musical composition created in collaboration with Lucien Guy Montandon.

𝚫 (delta) emerges from Metzger’s research at CERN and her ongoing exploration of memory, identity, collective experience and the possibility of a decentralised, multi-bodied consciousness. The work extends these questions beyond the Laboratory, inviting participants to experience reconstruction not as a fixed record of the past, but as something continuously generated through shared presence and exchange.