“I’m a physicist. I work on the particle accelerator in CERN. I invent new experiments so that a material called Niobium can be tested. It’s a metal used to make the cavities where the particles are accelerated. I tend to spread my interest in a broad rather than focused way, so I also like to pay attention to art too.

My sense of aesthetics in art stems from scientific concepts. I’ve been quite into avant-garde art. I like the future, I like modernity, I like minimalism in every aspect of art and life. I like abstract stuff, and I don’t like things that are not abstract. This is actually the link between art and science in my life: abstraction. Of course, if I’m in love, I will listen to a lot of love songs, and I become cheesy and all. But really, I value abstraction. This is what moves me. I like ideal shapes, very clean, very clinical, in a way. If you see modernist buildings, they are full of ideal shapes, analytical shapes. This idea of perfectionism, or lack of details, or rationalism.

In a way, I’m motivated to transcend what is the usual daily stuff, like these things that make us human. I dislike the sentimental part of our nature. It’s as if I don’t like being a human, and it’s a pursuit of overcoming being human. Let’s put it easily: I hate naivety. Naïve ideas about how nature works, you can say. Everything related to that is very repelling. It’s like bad music. For instance, that building over there, these ornaments on the top, a lot of details, a lot of columns. And this serves a very specific purpose of fulfilling the person’s need to show off, or something. And I’m repelled by that.

I enjoy the manifestation of human creativity in things which are not immediately inspired by nature, like the wheel. Nature doesn’t tend to have, as far as I know, wheels. It’s, in a way, the pinnacle of creation. More pure, more independent of nature. This is really exciting for me.”

(Plaine de Plainpalais | original English)