G24|0vßß
Single Channel, HD, Colour, Stereo24:00 min
2016
Edition of 7
G24|0vßß is an HD audio-visual composition shot with the coldest piece of matter in the observable universe — the ‘Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events’ (CUORE). BVy way of temperature, this experiment at the National Laboratory of Gran Sasso (LNGS), of the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), Italy, seeks to describe ‘why there is something rather than nothing’. The artist has allowed himself to dream with and into the coldest space in the observable universe (thereby sinking outside of it), resulting in an original musical composition and the experimental film G24|0vßß.
In physical cosmology there is a perceived imbalance of matter and anti-matter in the observable universe which this experiment (amongst others) seeks to address. Against this positivist background this a/v composition sought to resound with the many voices of spectacular objects and materials invested in creating the largest and coldest object in the known cosmos - itself only possible due to the mountain itself being rendered technological apparatus. The mountains heavy and dense granite acts as a cosmic ‘redactor’, shielding the hyper sensitive experiments beneath.
G24|0vßß is part of a series of fieldworks investigating new planetary scale sensing apparatus’ embedded in geological features such as mountains, ice shelves, or lakes. Each of these new cosmological infrastructures embedded as terrestrial feature aim to discover details of dark matter and neutrino particles, otherwise completely translucent to human senses. These apparent and elusive particles are tricky to perceive because they are uncharged, and therefore can pass through anything, unobserved - without leaving a trace. Together human technology and natural landscape merge into the landscape-laboratory, revealing a cosmopolitical environment of the radically imperceptible.
Shot in the Abruzzo region, the video diffracts and declares some of the embedded characters of the mountain, which itself has become an essential collaborator with the neutrino and dark matter experiments at the LNGS.
Quotes from Stanislaw Lem’s 1968, ‘His Master’s Voice’ punctuate this composition and help question the norm of human exceptionalism in the age of the Anthropocene. The title refers to one of the codenames of physicist Enrico Fermi while he and his team were working on the first self-sustained nuclear reaction under the Chicago University football field in 1942. Fermi also named the neutrino, after it was posited by madman Wolfgang Pauli. The rest of the code in the tile refers to the type of interaction the physicists at CUORE are searching for: 'neutrinoless double beta decay'.
G24|0vßß was the recipient of the MERU Art*Science Award, IV Edition, 2016.
Director & Cinematographer: Jol Thoms
Editor & Original Music: Jol Thoms
Colour: Martin Kohout
Aspect Ratio 16:9
Music Mastering: Louis McGuire
Soundtrack: Stereo
Produced as the MERU Art*Science Award, 4th Edition, 2016 through MERU/Medolago-Ruggeri Foundation for biomedical research, Associazione BergamoScienza, and Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (GAMeC) Bergamo, Italy.
Special Thanks to Dr. Christian Spiering and the LNGS CUORE experiment: Francesco Vissani, Carlo Bucci, Paolo Gorla, Stefano Pozzi & Dell’Oro.
Thank you: Sasha Engelmann, Tomás Saraceno, Henry Heng Lu, Dan Meththananda, Kristof Trakal, Lysander Rohringer, Merle Richter, Megan Edwards, Jakob Huber.
