Gravitational waves at the Venice Biennale 2024

On Saturday 14 September, gravitational waves will be among the protagonists of the Public Program dialogues of the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale 2024. An unprecedented reflection between art and science, with Massimo Carpinelli (director of EGO) and Vincenzo Napolano, science communicator, starting with the story of how Virgo and LIGO capture the most imperceptible cosmic whispers.

The European Gravitational Observatory (EGO) in Cascina, which hosts the Virgo interferometer, will participate this year in the Public Program of the Italian Pavilion at the 2024 Art Biennale in Venice. On Saturday 14 September at 4.30 p.m. Massimo Carpinelli (professor at the University of Milan Bicocca and director of EGO) and Vincenzo Napolano (scientific communicator at EGO) will be the protagonists of a dialogue titled “In search of cosmic silence”.

Starting with an account of how the Virgo and LIGO gravitational antennas pick up the most imperceptible cosmic whispers, the dialogue will ask how this new cosmic horizon of humanity influences other areas of human knowledge. Gravitational antennas, such as LIGO in the United States and Virgo in Europe, are in fact great listening machines, aiming to come as close as possible to a kind of absolute silence and thus projecting us into a new dimension of ‘listening’.

In an unprecedented reflection between art and science, the dialogue will explore how the careful definition of what is signal and what is noise lies at the heart of the production of knowledge, as well as of our existence. In this sense, recent developments in physics and astronomy explore the very physical and technological limits of our listening capabilities.

Inspired by the famous phrase of musician and theorist John Cage “Music is everywhere, if we only had ears”, the Public programme, promoted by the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture and curated by Luca Cerizza in collaboration with Gaia Martino, will focus on some central themes for the project of the Italian Pavilion at the 2024 Art Biennale and the work of Massimo Bartolini. The programme gives word, voice and sound to the human, social, spiritual and ecological perspective that the exhibition project suggests, starting from listening as a relationship and understanding of self and other human and non-human subjects.

In the Giardino delle Vergini annexed to the Padiglione Italia, a series of different events will take place in a schedule of four appointments of two days each (Friday and Saturday). Introduced and moderated by Luca Cerizza and Gaia Martino, lectures, conversations, musical performances, with the participation of international and Italian guests, will be accompanied by workshop moments dedicated to the Visual Arts classes of NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti and Università Iuav di Venezia – protagonists of a research and didactic collaboration with the Padiglione Italia.

To access the meetings of the IF ONLY WE HAD EARS programme it is necessary to have an entrance ticket to La Biennale di Venezia.

Massimo Carpinelli, physicist, is currently Full Professor at the Department of Physics ‘G. Occhialini’ of the University of Milan Bicocca. He was Rector of the University of Sassari and member of the Council of the Conference of Italian University Rectors. He graduated and obtained his doctorate from the University of Pisa, where he was Associate Professor until 2006. He devoted himself to research in elementary particle physics, in particular contributing to the ALEPH experiments at CERN in Geneva, BaBar at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California. His research interests include the technological impact and interdisciplinary applications of fundamental physics, for which he was chairman of the Scientific Commission of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics dedicated to this field.

Vincenzo Napolano, physicist, is a science communicator at the European Gravitational Observatory (Pisa), where he is in charge of national and international communication and public events related to the Virgo gravitational wave antenna. He is dedicated to the use of new technologies and experimentation with artistic languages in the field of science communication. With the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (National Institute of Nuclear Physics) he has curated popularisation initiatives for the general public and exhibitions with private foundations, art and science museums and cultural festivals in Italy and abroad, including Astri e Particelle, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (2009), Balle di Scienza, Palazzo Blu, Pisa (2014), MateinItaly, Triennale di Milano (2015), Gravity, Museo MAXXI, Rome (2017), Cyborn, Salone degli Incanti, Trieste (2020), Incertezza, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (2021).