VENICE
Shapes and Colors of a Discovery
INFN Video Mapping, 2025
/ Overview
In June 2025 the facade of the Casino Palace, on the Lido of Venice, was transformed into a large light story dedicated to particle physics. The video mapping “Shapes and Colors of a Discovery”, curated by the National Institute for Nuclear Physics and created by Luca Agnani Studio, led the audience into the imagery of CERN, the Large Hadron Collider and the discovery of the Higgs boson.
/ Project Details
Name: Shapes and Colors of a Discovery
Client: INFN – National Institute for Nuclear Physics
Location: Casino Palace, Lido di Venice
Date: 21–26 June 2025
Technique: Architectural Video Mapping
Artist: Luca Agnani Studio
/ Challenge
The project comes from the need to translate a complex scientific discovery into an accessible, emotional visual narrative suitable for a monumental public space. The challenge was to tell the journey of particles, the ATLAS and CMS experiments and the role of the Higgs boson without losing scientific precision, transforming the Casino facade into an accelerator, a detector and finally an urban scene of discovery.
/ Visual Development
Scientific storytelling
The storyboard starts from the story of the discovery of the Higgs boson and the experiments that made it possible, translating physics concepts into images, trajectories, collisions and architectural transformations.
CERN, LHC, ATLAS and CMS
The facade is crossed by particles traveling inside the Large Hadron Collider, up to the high-energy collision. The building elements then transform into the large ATLAS and CMS detectors.
Architecture as detector
The Casino Palace becomes a narrative device: frames, volumes and surfaces are used as parts of a scientific machine, merging 2D animation, 3D animation and the building’s real structure.
/ Solution
The video mapping brings the emotion of scientific research out of the laboratories and into urban space, bringing together art, science, sound and architecture. From 21 to 26 June 2025, the projection animated the facade of the Casino Palace every evening, while the opening on 21 June dialogued with the Fête de la Musique and the Big Vocal Orchestra concert on the palace staircase.
/ Technique
Architectural projection mapping
The projection was developed on the geometry of the Casino Palace facade, using the building’s proportions to construct depth, scientific apparatuses, particle tracks and visual openings.
Public science event
The work was presented on the occasion of the Open Symposium for the European Strategy for Particle Physics – 2026 Update, an international event organized by CERN and INFN on the Lido of Venice.
2D/3D animation and music
2D and 3D animation techniques alternate to represent particle motion and experimental apparatuses, in a visual and musical crescendo designed to convey the tension of discovery.
/ Context
“Shapes and Colors of a Discovery” was born within the INFN path dedicated to the tenth anniversary of the discovery of the Higgs boson: after Genoa 2022 and Rome Videocittà 2023, the project arrived in 2025 at the Lido of Venice in a new urban and institutional setting. The Venice stage is connected to the update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics, which brings together the international scientific community to discuss the future of research and major experiments.