What happens when you mix art with science? Whatever the result, it probably looks a lot like this preview for a new film called Symmetry, an elaborate opera, dance and CGI film set inside CERN's Large Hadron Collider.
Symmetry combines opera, choreography, digital art and physics and seeks to highlight the mission of the Large Hadron Collider in a way we haven't seen before. The film, which often feels a lot like Interstellar, tells the story of a researcher working on the theory of everything at the Large Hadron Collider. He gets transported back in time to the moment of the Big Bang, "when everything was symmetrical and before the existence of time."
And now, you can watch a preview of the film, which manages to cover both weird and cool at the same time.
SYMMETRY - dance & opera film inside CERN from TRUTH.IO on Vimeo.
The film sought to visualize CERN's data by using dancers in front of Kinect cameras and then transforming them into 3D data clouds. In addition to the Large Hadron Collider, the film also uses Salar de Uyuni, a massive salt flat in Bolivia, for several scenes.
The heart of Symmetry's story relates to time, seeking to link the past and "primal arts" such as music and dance, with a scientific future.
"Maybe time is just a memory," says director Ruben van Leer. "And stories set the mental clock," he says.
In case you're curious, you can also watch a video that shows some fascinating behind the scenes footage of how the movie was made.
"I didn't want to make a documentary to explain or understand modern physics in general, but rather interpret the complex material this institution is presenting," says van Leer. "And this is also what for me an opera film could do; give space for the audience to make up their own story, with their own imagination and make a journey like [the main character] within themselves: a tiny, personal, world changing quantum-story."
Symmetry premieres on March 14 at the EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam as part of the city's Cinedans Film Festival. A showing at the NewScientist CERN Festival follows later that week.
[Photo: Symmetry | The Creators Project]
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