Science and art are the two most powerful and complementary ways to get insights into the world around us, both of which rely in one way or another on exploration and research. This should never be underestimated! Even at the core location where fundamental science moves forward - the very very famous European Council for Nuclear Research (aka **CERN**) - art and their creators are more than welcome. CERN even has a full program of resident artists, exhibitions and cultural events, as testified on this dedicated webpage. To paraphrase: artists from all horizons are welcome to CERN to experience how the big questions about our universe are addressed.

Also here at STEMsocial we have long understood that art and science (and STEM in general) cannot live in isolation from one another. However, this has never really been emphasized in our project since the very beginning - more than half a decade ago (yes we are that old). So, we decided to fix that. To this aim, we are organising a special event in collaboration with the LMAC community, which hosts an art contest on Hive every single week for over 100 consecutive weeks. #### But before digging into the details of the contest, let's introduce our partners in this artistic adventure. The acronym LMAC stands for Let's Make A Collage, which is kind of a giveaway regarding what they do. In each round, a photography provides a photo. Artists may then manipulate and transform it however they please! The only limits being those of imagination (just like a scientist). And that's it! Of course, copyrights and original works are in order, two important features that are also important for us here at STEMsocial. In addition, any entry to the contest is by default warmly offered to the public domain. Feel free to connect anytime with the LMAC community on Discord and learn more about all their fun and creative offerings. So, what is this special LMAC/STEMsocial collaboration all about? Well, it's... an art contest, but with a topic chosen by STEMsocial. **Dark Matter**

The LMAC contest #111 - Dark Matter

The contest will be run according to LMAC rules, which we briefly explain below. For more information, please wait an extra day and check out @shaka's acccount. Perhaps the most important question to unleash your creativity is about what you see (or don't see) in the picture below. We would answer: dark matter. We are however sure that your imagination can probably take it a *lot* further. Please make us dream, and show us what is truly hiding in the cosmos.

^{[Credits: Jeremy Thomas (public domain)]} Concerning the rules, please keep in mind that:

The above photography needs to be the starting point for any further modification. It can be used without any copyright protection as part of the public domain.
Entries need to set the @lmac account as a 20% beneficiary to receive support from their trail and to be eligible to receive contest prizes.
Entries need to be posted to the LMAC community before the 7th February at midnight UTC.
Submissions need to be linked as a comment to the LMAC contest post.
Any graphical element that is added to the template either needs to be your own original work, or derive from the LIL or belong to the public domain. Note that for each LIL-asset used, the corresponding LIL-contributors are expected to be added as 2% beneficiary each in the respective LMAC entry!
Sources for all used materials need to be provided in the entry post.
By submitting your contribution you warrant that your artwork is in your sole ownership and that is free of any copyrighted material. Every participant further agrees to hand over their artwork into the public domain and that it can be copied, modified and distributed by others, even for commercial purposes, without requiring further permission.

A selection of the 15 best entries will be made by the usual LMAC jury. Those finalists will be elligible to share the LMAC prize pool, and will be ranked through a community poll (as usual). In addition, a STEMsocial jury made of @gentleshaid, @lemouth and @mobbs will select the best entry according to STEMsocial. This entry will be used in various upcoming STEMsocial posts, and its author will be set as a 5% to 10% beneficiary for all these posts. In the meantime, if you want to get more insight about dark matter and how we humans try to find it, please check @lemouth's blog of yesterday.

The famous last words

Please have fun with this contest, and do not hesitate to use the comment section of this post to ask questions or suggest anything. You can also reach us out on Discord. If you like what we do, please consider joining our community on Hive and delegating to or trailing the @stemsocial account (85% of the curation rewards are returned). We wish all of you a happy dark artistic week!