Semiconductor’s HALO to make its UK premiere in Brighton
Brighton-based artist duo Semiconductor, Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt, will present HALO for the first time in the UK at the Attenborough Centre as part of the Brighton Festival 2021.
Developed after their Collide residency, HALO is a large-scale immersive artwork conceived as an “experiential reworking” of the raw data from the ATLAS experiment at CERN. Reminiscent of the detector's architecture, HALO takes the form of a ten-metre-wide cylinder-shaped structure that is surrounded by vertical piano wires standing four metres tall.
The structure houses a 360-degree screen on which visitors can observe data projections generated by a series of slowed-down particle collisions that ordinarily occur almost at the speed of light at the ATLAS Detector. As they hit the screen, the animated data points also trigger small hammers to hit the surrounding vertical piano wires, producing vibrations that resonate throughout the artwork.
This multisensory experience invites us to consider the philosophical problems of our mediated understandings of science and nature while submitting ourselves completely to what Semiconductor names their "technological sublime".
The UK premiere of HALO will take place from May 19 – June 4 at the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts as part of the Brighton Festival. To book your free tickets head over to Attenborough Centre's website.
There will be a series of free online workshops and talks accompanying HALO. On Saturday 1 May (7:30 PM CEST), join Mónica Bello (Curator & Head of Arts at CERN), Semiconductor (artist duo Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt, creators of HALO) and Dr Mark Sutton (research fellow in experimental particle physics at University of Sussex and at the ATLAS detector at CERN) for a conversation exploring how artists work with data and collaborate with scientists in non-artistic contexts. Register here.
HALO is an Audemars Piguet Art Commission, curated by Mónica Bello and first presented in Art Basel in Basel in 2018. In collaboration with CERN.
HALO at Brighton Festival is supported by Arts Council England and co-produced by Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts.
HALO was fabricated by millimetre and Polyspace in collaboration with the artists.