Visitors to the exhibition of works created during the inaugural January workshop of the BeInspired project for lower and upper secondary school students, which aims to bridge the worlds of science and art, will find themselves in an artistic world inspired by elementary particle physics. The opening of the exhibition took place in the SOLID building on Thursday 14 March and proves that bringing together scientists, physics teachers and students helps to better understand the field, as well as to uncover the often hidden visual beauty of physics.
"The exhibition is part of the BeInspired project and also the largest conference for particle physics ICHEP 2024, which will be held in July in Prague," said Jiří Hejbal at the opening and continued: "I am very pleased to be able to welcome here not only the co-organizers of this conference, Alexander Kupč, Vojtěch Pleskot and Jiří Chýla, but also the Director of the Institute of Physics, Michael Prouza, who has lent us these beautiful premises in the SOLID building."
More than 90 students were inspired by particle physics at the inaugural workshop of the BeInspired project. After a lecture on particle physics, they could engage in several activities led by either artists or scientists themselves.
A collage of abstract paintings, created during the art part of the workshop with painter and graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno Petra Buzkova, forms the central installation of the exhibition. It is complemented by two paintings from Michael Hoch's workshop. Under his guidance, the students created a giant sculpture that depicts, on a realistic scale, information about the collision of two bunches of accelerated particles, similar to those observed by scientists in the detectors at the particle accelerator at CERN.
„V částicové fyzice také nevidíme, co se tam děje, ale sbíráme data a informace a snažíme se domyslet, jaké ty částice jsou, a tím je můžeme zviditelnit. Kombinace vědy a umění ve vzdělávání je důležitá, aby děti fyziku pochopily,“ uvedl nedávno Michael Hoch v Českém rozhlasu.
Výtvarná díla doplňují fotografie z pohybové dílny vedené choreografkou a tanečnicí Lucií Charouzovou, která externě učí na pražské HAMU a ve FZU povede navazující pohybový workshop, který se uskuteční 26. 4. opět v budově SOLID21.
Na umělecko-vědeckém projektu BeInspired se podílí společně s umělci Akademie věd, Univerzita Karlova a České vysoké učení technické v Praze. Tvorba děl pokračuje ve školách až do léta a výsledné práce budou vystaveny v pražském Kongresovém centru na konferenci ICHEP 2024, která se koná od 18. do 24. července.
Autorem celého projektu je Michael Hoch z Technologického institutu v Karlsruhe, zakladatel popularizačních programů art@CMS, ORIGIN a Cultural Collisions. V rámci projektu byla možnost diskuzí s předními částicovými fyziky v ČR.
During his academic career, Michael Hoch worked on various artistic projects, did his PhD in particle physics at CERN, where he spent three years, and then worked as a CERN employee for the next six years. In 2012, he founded the interdisciplinary science and art programme art@CMS, followed by the establishment of the ORIGIN network in 2017. Both programs, art@CMS and ORIGIN, aim to foster a global dialogue between the scientific and creative communities, with an emphasis on reaching out to educational institutions and the younger generation.