Mapaway festival inspired by Einstein Telescope
At the Mapaway Festival in Vaals (Dutch Limburg), visitors discovered the secrets of the landscape. The organization drew inspiration for its themes from a variety of topics, from gravity hills to the Einstein Telescope.
The summer festival Mapaway in Vaals brought ten days of art and environmental science in Dutch Limburg. Visitors participated in workshops from Aug. 16 through Aug. 25, read and made their own treasure maps, and went on explorations through the landscape. One of the festival’s six themes took its inspiration from the Einstein Telescope.
“We are here in the middle of the search area for the Einstein Telescope and we notice that the subject is alive among people,” organizer Remy Kroese explains that choice. In the search area, geological research is taking place in several places this summer to map the subsurface and find a suitable location for the underground observatory.
Amstel Gold Race
How do you make such underground research visible on the surface of the earth? Organizer Kroese approached Belgian seismologist Thomas Lecocq (Royal Observatory of Belgium, himself not involved with the Einstein Telescope) to give substance to this. The result: a workshop on what you yourself can read from seismometry. Mapaway let its visitors discover that you can learn much from seismometry than just information about underground rock layers.
“In March this year we recorded data for several weeks with seismometers in Vaals,” says Lecocq: ‘If you learn to ’read’ those recordings in our workshop, you can, for example, detect the minute ground movements when the bus stops at the bus stop. Or you can see when the Amstel Gold race passes by!”
Art installation
In addition to the seismology workshop and a walk around Vaalserberg, Mapaway also presented an art installation inspired by the Einstein Telescope. Using a triangle of mirrors on the festival grounds halfway up Vaalserberg, Kroese and colleagues tried to bounce a laser beam around – not as easy as it looks, because above ground there are all sorts of disturbing environmental influences that interfere with the alignment of the mirrors. The real Einstein Telescope will therefore be underground, so that the soft upper layer of the area can dampen surface vibrations.
Kroese: “At Mapaway, we want to fascinate and amaze people with knowledge of the environment. Preferably by connecting different layers of knowledge: the ultimate goal of the Einstein Telescope, but made accessible with seismic information about one’s own village. It’s wonderful when all those layers come together!”
The workshop on the Einstein Telescope was also the festival’s final act. Mapaway reached 170 visitors, the accompanying map exhibition in the center of Vaals a multiple of that.
