Art matters
Art and Quantum Social Change
Art provides unexpected, compelling and novel ways of viewing the world. Often we are able to perceive and imagine our world and ourselves differently by making or engaging creative work.
The process of making art is an inherently reflexive one: artists observe or perceive their environments and respond to them through creative expressions that in turn shape the environment. It is an intra-active process, and creative forms engage deeply with matter.
Expressions through creative means can transcend common barriers such as language, geography, and time to communicate ideas in a radically accessible manner. Abstract and complex concepts such as climate change and transformations can become more accessible when engaged through creative means.
Likewise, abstract concepts from quantum physics such as entanglement, superposition, and non-locality can be communicated by artists in ways that make these become embodied and familiar, allowing us to recognize that these processes are occurring all the time.
Artists are intimately aware of the way matter self-organizes. They are attuned to witnessing the ‘field’ of an environment and to occupying the [I/We] space. Art can help make transformative solutions, potentialities, agency, and imagined futures feel real.
Examples of quantum social change concepts in art
[I/We], Entanglement and Connection
At the heart of quantum social change is the idea that we are all connected in ways that can transcend time and space and that harnessing these interconnections can enable us to achieve truly transformative change.
Quantum Logos
The Quantum Travelers collective - media artist duo Mark Chavez and Ina Conradi, Sci-Art producer and developer Bianka Hofmann and science communicator Bob Kastner - explore ideas around entanglement and connection in their QuantumLOGOS interactive installation. Participants enter a pool of projected light designed to replicate the experience of a quantum energy field, where their presence creates ripples in the field which interact with others around them as they move. The effect of this can be seen in the short video on the right and you can find out more about the artists and their ideas at: https://ars.electronica.art/aeblog/en/2019/09/04/quantum-logos/
Olafur Eliasson
Olafur Eliasson is a Danish-Icelandic artist, known for his large-scale sculptures and exhibitions that often feature elements of nature such as light and water to create immersive environments. In this short video, he talks about his approach, saying, “The most important question is to ask myself ‘Do I even exist and does it matter that I exist?’. It is not ‘either-or’, it is something that we are responsible for and something that we do when we engage in our surroundings in art”.
He is of the view that “…if you are an artist, or think critically, you question what you see. You realise that reality is negotiable. The idea that reality can change is a very healthy one, since the notion of progress or change is rooted there.” The video also features some of his recent works, such as “The Rainbow Assembly” and “Ice Watch” which explore the idea of human beings as connected to and co-creators of our environment and our reality.
Alberto Di Fabio
The Italian artist Alberto Di Fabio has explored the subatomic world and quantum connections in his painting and photography, where he seeks to show the interconnections between the worlds of art, science and spirituality, particularly around social and ecological issues.
· “Danza Cosmica” / “Cosmic Dance”, 2012: http://www.albertodifabio.com/artworks/2018-1990/
· “Mito epico tra materia e antimateria” / “Epic myth between matter and antimatter”, 2015: http://www.albertodifabio.com/artworks/photo/
· “Interazioni” / “Interactions”, 2014: http://www.albertodifabio.com/artworks/paper/
Eric Heller
The physicist Eric Heller has used mathematical algorithms to produce images of generative patterns and quantum waves in works such as “Bessel 21”, “Quasicrystal III” and “Crystal III”. He talks about how the images illustrate the potential that each repeating unit has to regenerate the whole image. These works can be viewed on his website at: http://jalbum.net/en/browse/user/album/1696720
Frédérique Swist
The French artist Frédérique Swist explores the relationship between art and physics in his work. His 2010 piece “Good Vibrations” vividly illustrates the resonance and pulsating energy that result when individual sub-systems intertwine and oscillate with each other, and which transcend the usual binary “back and forth” oscillations we see between two separated points. http://www.fredswist.co.uk/artworks/2010.html
[Whole/Parts] and the Wave-Particle Duality
“If the world is viewed as a quantum system where individuals have characteristics of both particles and waves and are entangled through language and meaning, then we have two complementary identities; as both individuals and collectives, represented by a nondual [I/we] space.”
Antony Gormley
Over the years, the British sculptor Antony Gormley has engaged with quantum concepts such as whole/part dualities and the role of the observer in determining meaning. His “Quantum Cloud” and “Weave” series of sculptures in particular seem to invite the observer’s intentional focus in order for their expression as either a “whole” or a “part” to manifest.
· “Quantum Cloud” sculpture https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Antony_Gormley_Quantum_Cloud_2000.jpg
· “Weave”, 2014: http://www.antonygormley.com/sculpture/chronology-item-view/id/2901
In this short interview, Gormley talks about the influence of the quantum physicist David Bohm on his work, especially his “Quantum Cloud” series. “This is my clumsy way of saying well, we are just things in space, we are places of transformation and, furthermore, our relationship with others, with all phenomena is very much a question of our relative positions…[and] the participant nature of the observer in the emerging of what we call reality…”
Chuck Close
The work of the American artist Chuck Close includes several large-scale portraits made up of many smaller dots and shapes, resulting in the viewer’s gaze constantly oscillating between the “whole” of the face and the “parts” that make it up.
“Lucas II”, 1987: http://chuckclose.com/work129.html;
“Georgia”, 1996: http://chuckclose.com/work166.html
Jonathan Jones
Jonathan Jones is an indigenous Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi artist from New South Wales in Australia. His 2018 installation “Untitled (giran)” is part of a project exploring the idea of wind as carrying knowledge and ideas that connect generations. It takes the form of over 2000 examples of traditional indigenous tools, each bound with a bundle of feathers from people all over the country. Together, these objects, each with their own identity, form a related community resembling a murmuration of birds – when hundreds or thousands fly together in dynamic coordinated movements and patterns, each separate yet connected. In this short video, Jonathan speaks about his work’s connection to his community and environment.
Harriet Fraser
The idea of bird murmurations as an expression of [I/We] interrelationships is echoed in this short film of Harriet Fraser’s poem “The darkness passing”, where she speaks of how “…uncountable birds declare connection; the one, the many, inseparable…the lightness of feathers and the darkness passing.”
Uncertainty and Multiple Perspectives
The classical Newtonian approach to physics and other fields that focuses on “a purely functional connection between the parts of the ‘machinery’ that drives our systems ignores deeper questions of meaning, purpose, and what really ‘matters’” (You Matter More Than You Think, p.17).
The critical importance of including alternative perspectives that emphasise and value what is “personal, communal, and ecological” (p.73) can be seen in the work of the following artists.
Nora Bateson
In her short film “Stretching Edges”, the filmmaker, writer, and educator Nora Bateson explores the many different ways of perceiving and understanding the world that exist beyond the rational, fact-making one that dominates, demands certainty and excludes other perspectives and values. She asks “What is it in the world that has not been described, or perceived? What tenderness has been invisible that now the sense-making, the common sense is aching for...intellectually, visually, emotionally, culturally, physically?”. As she says, “It takes all aspects of you to meet the world. It takes requisite variety, sensorial versions overlapping…hiding deep below the verbal conscious world…I do not make sense alone...”
Olafur Eliasson
Eliasson’s 2020 exhibition at Die Kunsthaus in Zurich brought together several of his works on the theme of human connections to and perspectives on the world around us.
His “Algae Window” piece explores how to create an understanding of the world and guidelines for living that aren’t just human-centred, while the “Symbiotic Seeing” piece seeks to enable visitors to comprehend themselves as part of a larger system and to think about the potential to create space for other forms of coexistence based on cooperation instead of competition.
https://olafureliasson.net/archive/artwork/WEK110926/symbiotic-seeing