G24|0vßß

Jol Thomson (Germany)

G24|0vßß is an audiovisual composition investigating new forms of relation, degrees of sensitivity and modes of observation achieved through highly unusual means: engaging the imperceptible, intangible and entangled worlds announced through technologies in neutrino physics. The project grapples with the challenges and aesthetic adventures unfurled through these technologies and their collaborative relationships with non-human beings, matters and ecologies. The artist has developed a novel aesthetic for diffracting the entangled site of the CUORE experiment and allowed himself to dream into the coldest piece of matter in the universe, resulting in an original musical composition and the film G24|0vßß.

G24|0vßß is filmed entirely in and around one of the world’s leading neutrino and dark matter physics sites, the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) of the INFN, Italy. The experiment known as CUORE, hosts the largest, coldest object in the observable universe – a volume of matter cooled to near absolute zero, or 10 milli-Kelvin. This is an incredible and unprecedented feat. Inside the experiment’s cooling cryostat, a cubic-meter sculpture composed of Tellurium crystal and copper becomes colder than the coldest phenomena known to exist in the universe: that of the Cosmic Microwave Background (itself only 2.7 Kelvin). For the next five years, the Tellurium sculpture will communicate to scientists from beyond the thermal horizon; from outside of ‘nature’, human sense and thought.

Equally intriguing is the fact that CUORE collaborates with ancient lead retrieved from a two thousand year old shipwreck in the Mediterranean. This Roman-era lead shields the Tellurium heart of our mountains core from unnecessary radioactive decay. Crucially, the Gran Sasso mountain is itself essential to the experiment, protecting the cryostat from the abundant high energy particles in our atmosphere: the mountain has become indistinguishable from technology – and technology inseparable from mountain.