Should art respond to science? On this evidence, the answer is simple: no way

Japanese artist Ryoji Ikeda’s installation Supersymmetry is inspired by his residency at Cern – but signifies little more than that physics is weird. Isn’t it time we stopped expecting artists to understand the complexities of science?

Physics – it really does your head in. That seems to be the less than enlightening message the Japanese visual artist and composer Ryoji Ikeda – creator of the massive light beam Spectra that took over the sky in London last year to commemorate the first world war – took from a residency at Cern in Geneva.

Ikeda’s installation Supersymmetry, staged in the darkened uppermost level of a multistorey car park, is apparently what you get when you introduce an artist to the world’s most advanced particle research insitute and its renowned Large Hadron Collider. A lot of sound and light, signifying nothing.

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