EIM 2019 / HERMAN KOLGEN / ISOTOPP
ISOTOPP is a sound and visual installation whose device 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 conceived the first version of this work broadcast as a performance in 2018 at the Festival Interstices (Caen). Presented for the first time as an installation at EIM 2019, ISOTOPP is a digital and sculptural device that “monitors” the level of radioactivity at GANIL and translates it into luminous influx. Using concrete data, the system emulates the collision of nuclei launched at very high speed, revealing a universe to which we do not normally have access. Relying on an almost infinite amount of data, which activates it and determines its behavior, the work is never the same: the flow of data being itself always changing. ISOTOPP is a connection portal to the infinitely small atom, and questions our relationship to the invisible and intangible – the very thing that links us to the world.
Photos : Herman Kolgen