Tim O'Riley

The work of this young London-based artist reflects his interest in the relationship between the way in which we look at the world and the means we use to represent it. He is intrigued by the relationship between real and visual space and his work takes various forms, often incorporating computer technology and optical imaging devices. In O'Riley's work the spectator is free to make connections, to piece together 'clues'. Since he graduated from Chelsea College of Art and Design he has exhibited widely in UK and Europe

Tim O'Riley's work.

Given that the particle beams in the big accelerator are travelling at close to the speed of light and make a complete circuit (27 km) about 11,000 times per second, you start to get an idea of the relative scales involved by walking along the main accelerator tunnel. This is situated deep underground and curves endlessly out of sight in both directions.

Above ground, many of the compound buildings seem anonymous and have an air of impenetrability, whilst the roads that criss-cross the site bear the names of illustrious predecessors (Planck, Einstein, Schrodinger, for example) reminding you that those at CERN routinely use these names - and all that they represent - to navigate.

Inside the experimental spaces, there is a different sense of the outside world and the scale which defines it. Attention is focused inwards, towards a horizon at which everything whatsoever is more than gaseous, a swarm of energy or quantum 'foam'. It seems easy enough to say that matter and energy at this level are interchangeable but more difficult to comprehend when you look at something apparently solid and reassuring like a table, a brick or, for that matter, a mountain range.

Trying to fathom ideas like these, I often found myself looking up at the expanse of sky above CERN. This was frequently streaked with vapour trails left by long haul jets and made me wonder about the behaviour and whereabouts of all those particles speeding around the accelerator far beneath my feet. Back in London, I continued to watch the sky and noticed on one occasion, that the heat from a jet's engines had burnt a kind of negative vapour trail through the clouds, as if someone had cut them with a blunt knife. It seemed strangely relevant and I spent a lot of time waiting with my camera for it to happen again.

Ernst Mach, (after whom the Mach numbers in supersonic flight are named), said: 'Time is an abstraction at which we arrive by means of the changes of things'. * I remember thinking about this whilst waiting for a train in Geneva station, looking at the clock and trying to see the minute hand move. Patience and probability are embedded within the work that happens at CERN. And what we see is dependent on how we look at things in the first place.

*Ernst Mach The Science of Mechanics 1883"

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