{"id":689994,"date":"2026-01-12T00:44:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T00:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/689994\/"},"modified":"2026-01-12T00:44:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T00:44:15","slug":"what-does-a-quantum-computer-sound-like-this-artist-and-scientist-are-about-to-find-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/689994\/","title":{"rendered":"What does a quantum computer sound like? This artist and scientist are about to find out"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI don\u2019t care what you say about these quantum technologies,\u201d the French conceptual artist Pierre Huyghe told Berlin-based curator Bettina Kames, \u201cI don\u2019t buy it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quantum sensors and quantum computers exploit the workings of the world at the smallest achievable scale, where, among other oddities, particles may occupy more than one position at once. They perform calculations and take measurements that are otherwise fundamentally impossible. With them we could revolutionise drug discovery, secure global communications, understand the climate and accelerate artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are usually fascinated and intrigued by this field,\u201d says Kames, co-founder of LAS Art Foundation in Berlin, a roving gallery of future-facing, interdisciplinary work. Kames was out to commission a piece on the quantum realm but found Huyghe \u2014 an artist famed for his living installations that encompass aquariums, medicinal plants and Ibizan hounds \u2014 \u201cquite critical\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cQuantum science and technology is a battlefield,\u201d Huyghe tells me from his studio in Santiago, Chile. He says this with some relish: despite his reservations, there is no denying his appetite for a field notorious for its \u201cweirdness\u201d. \u201cEverything about it gets cast as analogy and metaphor because the researchers are still having a hard time putting their achievements into words and formulas. There is some agreement, but also a lot of argument.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem, I suggest to the quantum physicist Tommaso Calarco \u2014 architect of the European Union\u2019s quantum strategy, and collaborator on Huyghe\u2019s latest artwork \u2014 is that we can\u2019t simply point to the odd things that happen at such a tiny scale. The quantum realm involves structures smaller than the wavelength of light, so there\u2019s no way we can actually experience them with our senses.<\/p>\n

Only it turns out \u2014 as Calarco explains with a grin \u2014 that we can.\u00a0<\/p>\n

An atom throws off a photon whenever one of its electrons jumps with seeming randomness from one orbit to another; the human eye is sensitive enough to detect this constant flickering. \u201cIt\u2019s the only time in your life you will ever see an effect without a cause.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in the lab, Calarco\u2019s job is to protect the parts of quantum computers from this sort of interference. He wondered how you could visualise working, not just with one atom, but with dozens arranged in a lattice, as in a quantum computer. \u201cI had no idea Bettina had Pierre Huyghe on her list of potential collaborators. When I heard, I said: \u2018I\u2019m catching the first plane to Chile.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"An\u2018Zoodram 5,\u2019 part of Huyghe\u2019s series of living ecosystems installations set in aquariums \u00a9 Courtesy of the artist\/Marian Goodman Gallery<\/p>\n

In Paris in 2013, Calarco, at a loose end, had wandered into Huyghe\u2019s retrospective at the Centre Pompidou. \u201cI was blown away by the depth of each piece, by their variety, by their overarching coherence.\u201d One piece, \u201cZoodram 4\u201d, featured a hermit crab living inside a replica of Brancusi\u2019s \u201cSleeping Muse\u201d sculpture. Rather than have a museum display his art, Huyghe\u2019s art had taken over the museum. \u201cIt was overwhelming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kames set up a Zoom call between the pair, and witnessed their instant connection. Huyghe talks now about Calarco\u2019s \u201cbeautiful mind\u201d; Calarco talks about Huyghe\u2019s \u201cgenius\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The proof will be in \u201cLiminals\u201d, a large-scale installation at Halle am Berghain, a vast industrial space adjoining the notorious Berlin nightclub, in which quantum properties are transposed into sensory information, encompassing film, sound, vibration, dust and light.\u00a0The exhibition will be dominated by a \u201cmonstrous unthinkable\u201d, Huyghe says \u2014 the faceless protagonist of an hour-long film, projected at an enormous nine metres by nine metres.<\/p>\n

\"AA still from \u2018Liminals\u2019 , a large-scale installation at Halle am Berghain in which quantum properties are transposed into sensory information, encompassing film, sound, vibration, dust and light <\/p>\n

\u201cPierre embraced the idea of using the quantum computer as an actual instrument,\u201d Calarco explains. \u201cWe pluck the machine like a string.\u201d\u00a0The \u201cstring\u201d here is the energy field between atoms. Pulling atoms away from each other yields a reverberation that can be picked up by an electrical circuit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the first time, we\u2019ll hear the sound of a quantum computer,\u201d Calarco says. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the biggest achievements of my career.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLiminals\u201d is merely the latest stop on Huyghe\u2019s magical mystery tour of a charming but indifferent cosmos. For Huyghe, fiction is often the lens through which we see reality most clearly \u2014 that idea has provided the artist with rich pickings throughout his career. Take 2002\u2019s \u201cL\u2019Exp\u00e9dition Scintillante\u201d, the fictional tale of an expedition to Antarctica, told through an epic exhibition comprising indoor fog, a melting ice ship, and a twirling ice skater.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe construct fiction to turn chaos into cosmos. Fiction is our tool to survive,\u201d Huyghe says. \u201cWithout it, we would be confronted with the reign of contingency. The world would be quite literally unthinkable. Fiction is a mask we put on everything, but at the same time it\u2019s the lens bringing the world into focus.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other pieces have been artfully daft. In 1999, Huyghe and frequent collaborator Philippe Parreno purchased the rights from a Japanese design company to AnnLee, a wide-eyed purple-haired female manga character, for a few hundred dollars. They then handed over the avatar to other artists to use in any way they wished, creating animations in which AnnLee wanders a lunar landscape, or recites Philip K Dick\u2019s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Finally, in 2002, AnnLee was \u201cterminated\u201d, buried in a coffin constructed out of parts from Ikea\u2019s Billy bookcase. <\/p>\n

Since the 2010s, Huyghe has been less interested in creating fictions; now his artworks pretty much force you to make up stories of your own.<\/p>\n

\"APierre Huyghe\u2019s \u2018Untilled\u2019 from 2012, a \u2018live construct ecosystem\u2019 that populated a compost heap with ant nests, psychotropic plants, a sculpture of a nude woman with a live beehive for a head and an albino dog roaming the installation <\/p>\n

At the 2012 Documenta 13 exhibition in Kassel, Germany, he created \u201cUntilled\u201d, a \u201clive construct ecosystem\u201d in a compost heap, populating it with ant nests, psychotropic plants, a sculpture of a nude woman with a live beehive for a head, and an albino dog with a pink leg named \u201cHuman\u201d that roamed the installation. The idea behind \u201cUntilled\u201d was to create an artwork that possessed a life of its own, separate from human attention.<\/p>\n

Huyghe has been refining this proposition ever since. For 2018\u2019s Uumwelt, at London\u2019s Serpentine Gallery, he collaborated with informatician Yukiyasu Kamitani at Kyoto University, Japan, to read our minds \u2014 volunteers were asked to think of various images while inside an MRI scanner, with the brain data then fed through AI software which reconstructed those thoughts through its own bank of pictures. Keeping up with the blizzard of disjointed, surreal images spilling from five huge screens forced viewers into a hallucinatory state. People stumbled out convinced they\u2019d seen something. No one could agree what it was.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Huyghe\u2019s 2014 film \u201cUntitled (Human Mask)\u201d features a masked monkey, dressed as a young girl and trained as a waiter, tootling about an abandoned caf\u00e9. It is Huyghe\u2019s most celebrated piece, and also the most misrepresented. Yes, it\u2019s \u201cabout\u201d being unaware of the role one plays in the world. But it\u2019s much more a trap for the viewer: you can\u2019t help but read human intentionality into what that monkey\u2019s up to. You can\u2019t help but make up stories. <\/p>\n

\"AHuyghe\u2019s 2014 film \u2018Untitled (Human Mask)\u2019 features a masked monkey, dressed as a young girl and trained as a waiter, tootling about an abandoned caf\u00e9 \u00a9 Courtesy of the artist\/Anna Lena Films<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we are deeply chimeric and deeply monstrous and we\u2019re made out of bits of mask. That is what I was trying to say,\u201d Huyghe explains. \u201cBut it\u2019s not a discovery that should be depressing! There\u2019s joy to be had in being artificial.\u201d Artifice is our species\u2019 special talent, after all. <\/p>\n

As Halle am Berghain resounds to the twanging of quantum-scale strings, Huyghe\u2019s gigantic filmic protagonist tries to know itself. This generated figure, says Huyghe, is \u201ca speculative fiction on a meaningless condition \u2014 a human-like membrane inseparable from the environment it is in.\u201d<\/p>\n

A knotty thought? Perhaps: but it\u2019s bread and butter to a physicist like Calarco. When you look into the quantum realm, you see a world that doesn\u2019t need you. So you try to understand it. You tell stories about it, come up with analogies, metaphors. \u201cAnd you feel alive. You wake to your own agency, your own consciousness,\u201d Calarco says. It\u2019s what made him such an admirer of Huyghe\u2019s art. \u201cThe work doesn\u2019t try to sell you anything. It doesn\u2019t need your attention. It interests you, and you make it yours.\u201d<\/p>\n

January 23-March 8, las-art.foundation<\/a><\/p>\n

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