Video recordings of Nikhef’s cloud chamber play a central role in an art project by the Dutch-Ukrainian artist Alexandra Hunts. Recently the project COSMIC_RADIATION_11COBALTBLUE had its premiere in Aalborg.
On a large screen at the Kunsten Museum of arts in Aalborg, Denmark, endless close-up images of traces that are created in the mist chamber as particles move through the vapor. Last summer Hunts filmed the etheric silent process of appearing and disappearing in Nikhef’s hall in Amsterdam, which houses a demonstration model of the mist chamber.
The video presentation is located in Aalborg in the middle of a space of the museum where the work of the Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto can be seen around it. It consists of large glass mirrors in frames, some of which have been smashed, making coloured backgrounds visible.
During the presentation of the new work in the museum, Hunts held a dialogue performance with the Danish quantum physicist Charles Markus. Their mysterious conversation is about truth and reality. For example, Marcus tells us how symmetry is broken in some particle decay. A fact, not an opinion, Marcus says in the text.
A short video of the performance of Hunts and Marcus is available.
Nikhef’s nebula room is a demonstration model intended to confront visitors of the institute with the omnipresence of the particle world. Traces are created by charged particles moving through a supersaturated alcohol vapour, which condenses locally.