Semiconductor HALO

Data Driven Audiovisual Instrument for Semiconductor with Audemars Piquet

Art Basel, Switzerland

June 2018

HALO is a large scale immersive audiovisual artwork conceived by the artist duo Semiconductor for Art Basel 2018, sponsored by watchmaker Audemars Piguet.

It aims to make accessible to a viewer a slowed down audiovisual representation of particle collisions from experiments within the ATLAS particle detector at the Large Hadron Collidor at CERN.

The cylindrical form of HALO emulates the ATLAS detector at the same time as giving the impression of being inside a large timepiece.

millimetre were approached by Semiconductor to provide research and development, protoyping, technical design and fabrication of the piece, alongside installation at Art Basel 2018.

HALO itself is an experimental 10m diameter by 3.5m high modular self supporting steel framed instrument containing 384 vertical piano strings. Synchronised visuals are projected onto a 360° projection from 6 edge blended high definition projectors mounted on the upper ring of the artwork. The projection is generated from the scientific data that is also used to hit the strings to produce the sound.

Special consideration was taken to the requirements for shipping, installation and storage and HALO has been one of the more challenging projects millimetre have completed to date. millimetre designed and developed custom circuits, software and audio hardware to allow for synchronised mecahnised hammer hits to resonate through custom soundboxes within the structure.

millimetre are proud to have worked with Semiconductor to produce HALO and it has been a long journey involving thousands of components and man hours to make the artwork a reality. Many thanks to Mazarine for their fine work on production to make this installation happen.

Materials: 16 networked steel sound modules; 384 vertical piano strings; 256 hammered strings; 64 custom circuit boards; 56 bespoke resonators; 1000’s of electrical components; 100’s of handmade components; lot’s of grey hair