Science photography and a film under the stars

 

After the Olympic Reception, from 21:30, conference delegates are invited to an engaging late evening open-air cinema event in the gardens of the Musée de l’Elysée, one of Switzerland’s most renowned museums for photography. The museum, located right next door to the Olympic museum, will extend its opening hours (until 10pm) and welcome the WCSJ crowd with special tours on the topic of science and photography. Tour times: 18.30, 19.30, 20.00, 20.30.

As night falls, the museum will screen The Bit Player under the stars in the wonderful Elysée gardens. This new documentary by Mark Levinson (Particle Fever), who will be present, is about Claude Shannon.

 

Claude Shannon is the unknown genius who laid the foundation for the modern digital world. He also juggled, rode a unicycle, wrote the seminal paper on computer chess and built a wearable computer to beat the odds in Las Vegas.

 

In a blockbuster paper in 1948, Claude Shannon introduced the notion of a “bit” and laid the foundation for the information age. His ideas ripple through such diverse fields as communication, linguistics, genetics, computing, cryptography, neuroscience, artificial intelligence and cosmology. In later years, he constructed a mathematical theory of juggling, rode unicycles, wrote the first paper on computer chess and built a flaming trumpet! The Bit Player, directed by Mark Levinson (Particle Fever), combines interviews with leading scientists, archival film, inventive animation and compelling commentary from Shannon himself to tell the story of an overlooked genius who revolutionized the world, but never lost his childlike curiosity.

 

How to get there:

The Musée de l’Elysée is right next to the Olympic Museum, just five minutes away on foot, set in a magnificent park with great lake views. There will be signposts to guide you from the gardens of one museum to the next, and when the evening is over, the metro will take you back to the city centre and on to your hotel.

Screening in cooperation with CineGlobe Film Festival at CERN (July 3 - 7).

 

The Bit Player Trailer from IEEE Information Theory Society on Vimeo.