Art & Science 24: Higgs’ Steel Wool

by the AMVA4NewPhysics press office

Perhaps one of the most original creations of the whole set of artworks presented for the “Arte e Scienza” contest in Venice is the work shown here, which was produced by Jacopo Zanetti, Matteo Nucci, and Tommaso Talamo from Liceo “Benedetti”. Along with three videos their work is a veritable “performance art” of the set, in fact. It is unfortunate that they did not take a video to document their production process, which is even more interesting from an artistic point of view than the photographic result.

The students went to a dark place at night, and put some steel wool inside a cooking whisk. They set the wool on fire, and rotated the whisk in front of a camera set with long exposure, creating images that resemble their interpretation of a Higgs production event. I must say I like a lot the idea, but again, a video would maybe have been even more attractive. Anyway, the pictures are shown below. Judge for yourself (and apologies for the lousy pictures – I could not avoid the lights from reflecting on the photo surface).