2022 / 2025
MATERIALS: brass hemisphere (Ø:250mm), scintillator detector, custom electronic circuitry, audio amplifier, transducer, wire. (49 / 120x)
MEASUREMENTS: site specific
EXHIBITION HISTORY: Bloom. Søndermarken, Copenhagen, Denmark 2022 ; Ars Electronica Festival 2022, Linz, Austria ; MOMENTUM 13 Biennale. Gallery F 15, Moss, Norway 2025.

µ uses advanced experimental particle detector technology to extend and explore human sensory and cognitive capacities, conducting a sensory exploration of a ubiquitous cosmic phenomenon. Cosmic rays, high-energy particles originating from space, constantly bombard the Earth. Although the atmosphere blocks most of them, the few that make it through create showers of secondary particles (among them muons) that reach the planet’s surface. This shower produces an invisible flow that continuously surrounds and bathes us and our environment. The artwork μ can therefore be seen as a live cosmic listening station, inviting us to enter a grid that hints at hidden worlds far beyond the boundaries of the world we inhabit.

The installation consists of a grid of specially designed particle detectors, amplifying the energy of muons, resulting in audible impulses. The detectors are all autonomous, and the impulses are emitted live and according to the particle's intensity and truly random presence. Thus µ functions as a cosmic listening station, inviting us to enter the grid and experience the everpresent cosmic rays.

Commissioned by Bloom (2022) / MOMENTUM (2025).

Created in collaboration with the Niels Bohr Institute of Copenhagen University.

Special thanks to Steffen Krejberg Knudsen, Julie Thaning Mikines and everyone at Bloom, Jørgen Beck Hansen, Troels Christian Petersen, and Peter Laursen at the Niels Bohr Institute, Maria Jedryszek, Kristian Rasmussen, Søren Løkkegaard, Søren Lyngsø Knudsen, Peer K. and Paul Schotanus (SCIONIX). Additional thanks (2025) to Maria Have, Morten Søndergaard, Lise Pennington, Eivind Karlsen and everyone at Gallery F 15 and MOMENTUM.

Realized with kind support from the Danish Composers’ Society / KODA Culture (2022) and the Danish Arts Foundation (2025)

µ, Christian Skjødt Hasselstrøm, MOMENTUM, biennale, Gallery F 15, Moss, Norway

Bloom. Søndermarken, Copenhagen, Denmark 2022. Photo: Malthe Ivarsson

Ars Electronica Festival 2022, Kepler's Gardens at Johannes Kepler University. Linz, Austria. Photo: Studio Skjødt Hasselstrøm