From 11 to 18 January 2026, the SciArtDialogue Week brought 36 students, researchers, artists and educators to CERN’s IdeaSquare for a week of joint scientific and artistic work, marking the centenary of the quantum wave function. Organised by art@CMS/ORIGIN, an art-and-science education programme rooted in the CMS collaboration, the event drew support from institutions across Austria, Germany, the US and Australia.
The wave function entered physics in the first half of 1926, when Erwin Schrödinger reformulated quantum theory as a form of wave mechanics. Its meaning, though, was disputed from the beginning. Schrödinger himself took it to be a real wave of matter propagating through space. Within months, Max Born linked its squared modulus to the probabilities of measurement outcomes, and this settled the matter for all practical purposes. Yet whether the wave function describes the world itself or only our knowledge of it is still debated, and the week set scientists and artists to explore this tension together.
A comprehensive visit programme immersed participants in CERN’s unique scientific infrastructure. Based at IdeaSquare, they encountered large-scale experiments, gained insights into how data is collected and processed, reflected on the technological ingenuity behind particle physics and gathered important personal connections with the CERN scientific community. These experiences were complemented by in-depth contributions on quantum mechanics, the historical significance of Schrödinger’s work and the broader evolution of contemporary scientific paradigms.
ORF Ö1 journalist Susanna Niedermayr accompanied the whole workshop, documenting discussions among professors of fine arts, musicology and religious studies, and tracing how scientific concepts migrate into artistic practice. For the Austrian students, the week doubled as the start of a semester-long university course, in which they will further develop their projects. The resulting works, spanning sound, performance, visual media and conceptual installations, will be shown at the ORF festival in Graz, from 8 to 11 October. Whether art can bring an advanced scientific idea to a wider public is the question the initiative exists to test, and the answer will be on display there. The SciArtDialogue Week will return to CERN IdeaSquare in February 2027 to mark the centenary of the fifth Solvay Conference.
