When I look at that pile, I see hundreds or thousands of devices that need to be working in concert to produce a meaningful result. Devices that need to be triggered exactly when the particle bunch travels by at near speed of light. These devices then generate data that needs to be stored somewhere and in a way that is later useful to the scientists.
The complexity hiding within the pile is immense, and that is what makes it impressive to me.
I see about the same thing as you do, only I am basically also picturing Ghostbusters who also had some very specific tooling for trapping, containing, and transporting ghosts, which was all central to the plot of the original film.
I can just foresee a future asshole European mayor who swaggers into the CERN remote antimatter facility and shuts it all down, triggering Armageddon and a new rampage by the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man.
The complexity hiding within the pile is immense, and that is what makes it impressive to me.