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Thesis Info
- LABS ID
- 00924
- Thesis Title
- The Universe is My Laboratory
- Author
- Christopher Henschke
- E-mail
- drhenschke AT protonmail.com
- 2nd Author
- 3rd Author
- Degree
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Year
- 2017
- Number of Pages
- 106
- University
- Monash University
- Thesis Supervisor
- Vince Dziekan
- Supervisor e-mail
- vince.dziekan AT monash.edu
- Other Supervisor(s)
- Mark Guglielmetti, Mark Boland
- Language(s) of Thesis
- English
- Department / Discipline
- Design
- Copyright Ownership
- © The author (2017)
- Languages Familiar to Author
- English, German
- URL where full thesis can be found
- doi.org/10.4225/03/5a4d7aebb9f32
- Keywords
- Art Physics Philosophy
- Abstract: 200-500 words
- This exegesis documents research and studio practice that conceptually and materially investigates the relationships between contemporary art and experimental particle physics. This practice-based research focuses upon my cross-disciplinary collaborations with particle physicists working at the European Organisation for Nuclear Physics (CERN) undertaken between 2013 and 2016 as part of the art@CMS collaboration program at CERN. The studio research led to the production and exhibition of a series of artworks that demonstrate critical and exploratory engagement with the philosophical, epistemological, and material aspects of particle physics, and collaboration with the physicists and the apparatuses used in their research.
The theoretical and philosophical aspects and implications of quantum physics, and how this relates to experimental particle physics, will be presented. Issues arising between theory and experimentation – in terms of observation, measurement and interpretation – are discussed, along with resultant philosophical and ontological insights and implications. This inquiry into the philosophy of particle physics has been framed largely through the epistemology of quantum physicist Niels Bohr. Based on Bohr’s insights, I present an analysis of the phenomena of entanglement, as an intersection between physics and philosophy. Complementing these investigations, I examine how other twentieth century and contemporary artists, ranging from Marcel Duchamp and Robert Rauschenberg to Joan Brassil and Ryoji Ikeda, have worked with science and technology. I critique aspects of cross-disciplinary practices and art–science residency programs, regarding the forms and durations of such programs and how this influences the artworks produced.
Based upon my research practice, I argue that I have been able to gain an understanding of conceptual and material parameters of experimental physics. Through collaboration with particle physicists at their research laboratories, I have produced six main art projects that engage with particle physics experiments, in order to explore our relationships with fundamental aspects of physical reality. Three of these projects incorporate digital audio and visual media, and data from physics experiments: Edge of the Observable, Nature of the Apparatus, and Song of the Muons. The other three are sculptural and installation projects which use particle physics apparatuses, including in situ works at CERN: Potential Objects, Activated Objects, and Song of the Phenomena. I argue that my collaboration has led to an in-depth engagement with particle physics; through which I have found shared traits between art practice and high-energy physics, namely that they are both experimental material cultures. Through my interactions with both physicists and apparatuses, I have produced artworks which are interdisciplinary epistemic things, and which express the material agency of subatomic phenomena as a form of entity realism. I argue that these works manifest and question the limits of, and relationships between, art, science, and the subatomic and macroscopic universe.