2008 – Liz takes a research team to CERN

The minute I walked onto the CERN campus I was reminded of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, a project we had done a long time ago where we visited repeatedly over the span of 18 months and did a week-long festival at the end. What’s the connection? First, the place is so unplanned: pathways everywhere, buildings of all shapes side-by-side, yet everywhere purposeful people moving around, heads down, thinking. Secondly, the pride that people have in the place and what it is doing and its history. Not just the person in charge, but everyone.

In fact, I wanted to do an interviewing process asking everyone I saw what they thought about it, which came to mind when I saw a young man mowing what little grass there was. I figured he too was filled with thoughts about what was going on underground. But one of my favorite moments was when our team asked physicist Fabiola Gianotti what music she imagined as the particles moved around the collider. She was delighted to be asked something she had never thought about, and her answer revealed her love of form, beauty, and history.