Why Atlas?
Stephen Wilson, Professor Art, Conceptual Information Arts Program, SFSU

CERN, the European Physics Research Center, has initiated the Atlas project.  This project has built the world's most power particle accerlerator to study subatomic physics.  It is 10 times more powerful than other accelerators. For example, the particle beams will be spun around a 27km tunnel of electronics to be juiced up near the speed of light.  Researchers hope it will help to resolve many riddles in subatomic research and generate new questions.  The collider was scheduled to be started up in Nov 09.

The outreach department of the project ran a competition for multimedia artists to create a short digital video related to the project.   One artist would be selected to be in residence during the startup.  I created a video called Why Atlas?

Most of the promotional materials for Atlas concentrate on how big and how powerful the collider is and the details of how the various components will work, and how wonderful it all is.  I felt important elements were missing in these presentations.  Why Atlas tries to add address these elements: 

• linking advanced physics to the basic human desire to understand
• giving an overview of the scientific history that led to Atlas
• explaining why such a big, complicated project is necessary
• acknowledging questions about the project such as
  
• reservations about its science and engineering
• debates about how wise it is to devote such enormous resources to it
• potential dangers
• its diversion of funding from other worthwhile science
• the cultural accomplishment of the international community being willing to take the risks of such a project

Why Atlas was not selected.


Link to the video Why Atlas?   (quicktime h264 format, 2:39)