If the €X this program will cost CERN represents CERN's best use of these €X then CERN should have its budget cut by far, far more than €X.
Many of the nations which fund CERN are facing massive debt problems. This competition is CERN effectively announcing that governments can cut CERN's budget without harming scientific research.
CERN receives funding from the United States. Someone should tell CERN about the Tea Party's influence in Congress and how the Tea Party would react to finding out about this contest.
I'm not an artist by either talent or inclination, but I'm glad this post exists and I have upvoted it. I'm looking forward to seeing some LHC-inspired art, although I agree with James Miller that CERN is wasting money.
Maybe I should not be such a grump, but I believe this post does not belong here since there are so few artists here.
(The harm of a post like this comes from wasting a little of the time of many non-artists.)
I would not mind that; art should IMHO be a part of the lives of most LWers. But was I mistaken in believing that the only people with a chance to win this prize are professional artists?
People deserve to know that the prize exists, whether they are professional artists or not.
IMHO, the stress inflicted upon artistically-inclined LWers by the implied hostility in your first comment outweighs whatever benefit you could counterfactually have gotten out of the ten seconds you "wasted" reading this post, and probably also any benefit that may have accrued from a reduction in such artist-related posts in the future in accordance with your expressed desire.
Or, in other words: indeed you should not be such a grump.
http://www.aec.at/collide/
Prix Ars Electronica Collide@CERN is the new international competition for digital artists to win a residency at CERN the world's largest particle physics laboratory in Geneva. It is the first prize to be announced as part of the new Collide@CERN artists residency programme initiated by the laboratory.
The residency is in two parts - with an initial two months at CERN, where the winning artist will have a specially dedicated science mentor from the world famous science lab to inspire him/her and his/her work. The second part will be a month with the Futurelab team and mentor at Ars Electronica Linz with whom the winner will develop and make new work inspired by the CERN residency.