The month of July was Bill Fontana’s first part of his residency at CERN. And he was not alone! He came also with his family, which included his photographer son, Michael Fontana, 18. Every week, Michael interviewed his father and his inspiration partner, CERN cosmologist Subodh Patil about what they were thinking of the week ahead to make a video diary.
What follows over the next four weeks is a series of interviews as well as photographs of Bill Fontana’s experience of the residency at the world’s largest physics laboratory. It will give you insights and glimpses in the creative interchanges between Subodh and Bill as well as the experience of the residency which is produced on site by Ariane Koek with the assistance of Julian Calo. Only by producing the residency, can access to the myriad of facilities here at CERN, as well as the scientists, can the artistic research of the CERN residency really happen. As Subodh said, even he hasn’t seen the Large Hadron Collider tunnel before. Now thanks to the Arts programme at CERN, both Bill and he have had unprecedented access to many of the detectors and unusual sites, specially selected to inspire their love of discovering the world through sound for Bill’s project for the Prix Ars Electronica Collide@CERN residency which is called Acoustic Time Travel.
Before the adventures underground began, in the first week on July 4th – the first anniversary of the Higgs Discovery – both Bill and Subodh gave the opening Prix Ars Electronica Collide@CERN lecture at The Globe of Science and Innovation at CERN. These twin lectures set out their individual areas of expertise – before the creative collisions began.
You can view edited versions of these lectures here.