At Cultural Center Art Gallery of Sherbrooke University
ISOTOPP is a sound and visual installation whose system is powered by data from GANIL, the Grand Accélérateur National d’Ions Lourds located in Caen, Normandy. Following a two-year research-creation residency (2016-2018) at GANIL, where he worked with researchers Jean-Charles Thomas and Thomas Roger, Herman Kolgen designed the first version of this work, which was presented as a performance in 2018 as part of the Interstices festival (Caen). Presented for the very first time as an installation as part of EIM 2019, ISOTOPP is a digital and sculptural device that “monitors” the level of radioactivity in GANIL to translate it into light pulses. Based on concrete data, the system emulates the collision of nucléi launched at very high speed, revealing a universe to which we do not normally have access. Based on an almost infinite amount of data, which activates it and determines its behaviour, the work is constantly changing: the data flow itself is always shifting. Acting as a connected gateway to the infinitely small atom, ISOTOPP questions our relationship to the invisible and the intangible – the very one that binds us to the world.
