NCCR SPIN art & science installation is displayed at the Festival della Scienza in Genoa, Italy
The NCCR SPIN contributed to the program of the 22nd edition of the Festival della Scienza in Genoa, Italy, with a science-inspired installation.
Since 2003, the Festival della Scienza (Science Festival in Italian) has become an international reference point and one of the leading event for the dissemination of scientific culture. Under this year’s red thread “challenges”, scientists, popularizers, artists, authors, as well as scientific institutions, met the public so that science can be touched, seen and understood without boundaries.
NCCR SPIN’s art installation remained accessible to the public on the weekend of October 26-27th, giving plenty of time for interested audiences to interact with it. The artpiece was displayed at the entrance floor of the beautiful Palazzo Ducale, one of the main attractions of Genoa!
The installation presented at the festival had been first introduced to the public at the Berlin Science Week in November 2023. The artwork, called “Hidden Variables”, is a 3D structure in the shape of an hourglass. Beads are falling from the top part of it, and six panels designed with lost scientific data compose its bottom part. The piece discusses the time and effort invested into producing huge amount of scientific data which may or may not lead to valuable scientific results. The structure was created by a team of six young quantum computing researchers – Miguel Carballido, Pierre Chevalier Kwon, Pierre Fromholz, Simon Geyer, Akash Gupta and Jung-Ching Liu – guided by Marie Le Dantec and Marilena Longobardi. Each of the young researchers transformed their own lost data – notes, lab samples and elements, failed measurements – into stories composing the hourglass panels.
The piece was displayed in Genoa in its version 2.0, with more gold, more uniform presentation and improved mounting practicality. Researchers Arianna Nigro and Aldo Tarascio (University of Basel), SPIN managing director Marilena Longobardi and SPIN outreach officer Marie Le Dantec were enthusiastically discussing the piece with children and adults, but also science in general and their research endeavors. The public showed enthusiasm and great interest in the science behind the installation. Many were emotionally engaged with the display, proving once again that art is a great entrance door to peak curiosity about scientific topics: “It’s a great way to cultivate curiosity! Big up for the crossover between art and science! It was even more surprising to discover that the starting point of the installation is the real mathematics of laboratory/study/work. Understanding that we proceed by mistakes, is not only a process in science, but also in life itself. A mistake is not a failure but is useful to discover that you are on a wrong path: sometimes essential to find the correct path.”
The 22nd edition of the Science Festival recorded a total of 200,000 admissions over 11 days, making it a very successful edition! The weekend brought many families and interested individuals as the four scientists were talking almost continuously throughout the days! The NCCR SPIN would like to thank the Festival della Scienza for selecting this project as part of their program, as well as Arianna Nigro and Aldo Tarascio for transmitting their positive energy and research knowledge to the public!
