- Artist
- Suzanne Treister
- Year
- 2022-2023
- Medium
- Science-fiction plot diagrams by CERN scientists; diagrams by Suzanne Treister; science fiction stories by CERN scientists
- Artistic Residency
- Collide
Suzanne Treister used science fiction writing workshops to tap into the unconscious imagination of CERN physicists and engineers, encouraging them to envision positive futures through hypothetical scientific breakthroughs
Scientific Dreaming is a project aimed at unlocking the unconscious imagination of scientists, enabling them to envisage positive futures based on speculative scientific advances, while also considering the potential risks they might pose.
After her Collide residency at CERN in 2018, Suzanne Treister returned to the Laboratory in 2022 to lead a series of one-on-one workshops with scientists. Each session started with a blank A3 sheet, where both Treister and the scientist simultaneously created a diagram based on the scientist’s responses to her prompts.
Scientists were first asked to note four key dates—past, present, or future—at the corners of the page. They then named four real or imaginary characters, placing them inside circles at the page’s centre, followed by assigning each a profession within adjacent ovals. Next, they were asked to imagine a radical scientific breakthrough with the potential to positively impact the world, recording it in a large oval above the characters. Each character’s dream was then added below, often inspired by the scientist’s own experiences. The diagram continued as the scientists explored the potential outcomes of their breakthrough. Finally, they linked these outcomes to their characters, imagining personal consequences and recording them in new circles beneath the characters’ dreams. The session concluded with a list of locations and events in the remaining space.
Through these plot diagrams, the scientists were invited to write science fiction stories, exploring futures shaped by their imagined breakthroughs. Narratives emerged about the nature of dark matter, limitless clean energy through fusion power, and a theory of everything in physics—along with reflections on those left behind as humanity leaps forward.
Scientific Dreaming consists three components: narrative plot diagrams created by the scientists, a series of diagrams by Trester connecting the scientists’ envisaged futures, and the science fiction stories written by the scientists, which will be published by Arts at CERN.
