A Glimpse of the Infinite

The Shenzhen International Museum of Art (SIMoA) opened its doors to the public on May 30. Located in Guangming Science City, the new venue joins nearby science and cultural spaces to form the ‘one park, four centres’ creative hubs. SIMoA opens with seven exhibitions that span history, contemporary art and technology, one of them is the Shenzhen Art & Technology Biennale (SATB) — A Glimpse of the Infinite.

AATB’s A Particular Score III is part of the biennale.

Cosmic rays are high-energy particles from the Milky Way and beyond. Trillions hit the Earth every day, mostly blocked by the atmosphere; those that get through create showers of secondary particles that reach the surface — an invisible flux continuously bathing all of our surroundings.

A Particular Score makes this cosmic stream tangible through real-time sound. When the sculpture detects a particle, it strikes one of 16 quartz crystal tubes, generating an unpredictable sequence of tones. The score evolves irregularly with each impact — a glimpse of a phenomenon that surrounds us and yet goes beyond us.

Originally commissioned by Bienal da Maia, PT, 2019, curated by Vera Sacchetti – reworked for Cosmos at Grand Hornu, BE, 2021, curated by Marie Pok – and shown at Mudac Lausanne, curated by Jolanthe Kugler and Scott Longfellow in 2023 – following AATB’s residency with Arts at CERN.

This large-scale iteration was developed for the Beijing Art and Technology Biennale curated by Naiyi Wang and later shown at the Hong Kong AI Art Festival in 2025.