Steve Giovinco

Seeing Science is a transnational collaborative project tracing scientific activity in and around CERN. The aim is to create a normally unseen portrait of the lab and its experiments, highlighting scientific inquiry through mysterious and beautiful photographs.

Informed by science and culture, I will create long exposure photographs–in darkness, shadow or twilight–in CERN, the Collider, and environs while collaborating with scientists on their specific projects. The goal is to document the literal source that helps measure crucial calculations of the changing earth, hoping to bring a more robust understanding to essential scientific research and capture a feeling of the lab itself.

Since physics’ science often seems abstract and difficult to comprehend, exhibitions, live streaming, a book, and presentations will be shared to document the institution’s notable projects. A portfolio of prints will be donated back to CERN or related groups. As a visual artist, the Residency offers an unparalleled collaborative opportunity to work with international scientists, experts, and professionals in new ways. The project is related to all my previous work, and I feel it is urgent to complete it before planetary changes metamorphose further.

Photographs will be made at the edge of unpeopled places at night. Revealed through long-exposure photographs, I will document the poetic beauty of the labs where there are remnants of artificial light, blurred images showing mechanical movement, observation of evidence of experiments, and the massive scale of the operations.

Much of the project will be guided by CERN’s past, present, and future scientific inquiries. Acting as a loose metaphorical blueprint and a real-world destination, I’ll make images along with the particle accelerators. Additional photographs will be made in Barcelona-related facilities: editing and printing will occur at the Hangar Centre. Talks and presentations will be given throughout the Residency (and later). Of particular interest is climate change and geologic analysis, which, accompanied with my night photographs in Greenland, France, and Wyoming tracing global warming, presents a complete view of climate change. I am extremely interested in World Wide Web development.