"Awoman in a cadmium-red dress enters a dark room. Standing in the middle of a circle some four meters across, she picks up a cable. At it's end is a large light bulb. She begins a circular movement, like  swinging a lasso in slow motion. Gradually gathering momentum. The bulb rises and and follows the rim of the circle. Soon, the woman seems to be following it's centrifugal gyrations, her body twisting in it's bright wake rather than impelling it. Matter following light, light as energy. A voice in German speaks Hamlet's famous soliloquy about being and not being. the effect is strangely lyrical, the rhythm hypnotic.

 

We could leave it there and just enjoy the grace of this work of art devised by Ken McMullen. Except that all this is taking place deep underground at CERN the European Organisation for Nuclear  Research. The circle on the floor is formed by bits of wall from an old accelerator tunnel where tiny subatomic particles were sent crashing into each other at speeds worthy of the Big Bang. and German was the language of Einstein and Schrodinger, the fathers of quantum mechanics and modern particle physics. A reminder that Science, like Hamlet, asks Big Questions..."
 Extract from PATEK PHILIPPE NUMBER NINE Spring 2001

Lumen deLumine
 (18 min loop with three variations)
Ken McMullen, 2001