Fertile Void

I used to think physics was just physics, separate from people. I thought we could talk about particles without talking about people. I was wrong.
—Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, 2021[1]

Quantum science addresses the behaviour of the smallest particles that scientific theory can capture. Picture an ant, representing a microscopic object, in comparison to a six-tonne elephant, standing for a macroscopic object. The tiny ant is barely conceivable to the elephant, who remains largely unaffected by its movements, while the ant is in fact vibrating intensely. More precisely, however, a quantum particle cannot be described definitively—according to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, the act of observation may cause the particle to act completely differently from one moment to the next, meaning its qualities cannot be defined beyond the moment of measure. The perception of these particles is analogous to the cliched tree falling in the woods; if no one is there to hear it, does it really make a sound?

One of the many propositions of quantum physics is that it might be possible to understand how life originated around 3.5 billion years ago. Theoretical physicists of western modernity have been dealing with the question of the origins of life, the universe, time, and their interrelationships for nearly a century, through a range of experiments in the field that questioned the findings of Newtonian physics (concerned only with macroscopic objects), the discrepancies of which remain unresolved until this day.

A century after the first quantum experiments in western science, Fertile Void approaches quantum technology as a dynamic field of scientific, political, aesthetic, and cosmological inquiry in order to question the directionality, technological materiality, terms of embodiment, and cultural experiences it offers. Fertile Void refers to the vacuum—once imagined as empty space, quantum mechanics has enabled an understanding of how from an ostensible emptiness, matter may still emerge. In its poetics, the idea of nothing and something being inherently intertwined reverberates with the reality of cosmologies across time and space that have sought to understand the meaning and emergence of matter from a subatomic level, from the level of the spirit, or in the service of the divine. Fertile Void describes science in its theoretical and applied forms, seeking to understand how it converges with, amongst other things, ritual, worship, and cosmological questions. As such, the question of what is lost and what is gained in translations between theory and practice becomes central. Fertile Void seeks to map out synergies between sciences, cultures, and the arts, as well as long-standing cosmologies that describe the creation of living matter from seemingly ‘empty’ space. For whether the aforementioned macroscopic elephant does or does not perceive and interact with its microscopic composites, and how it is impacted by the very stuff it is made of remain open questions that take on new urgency as quantum science becomes material technology.

Worldwide, there are currently only a small number of quantum computers in existence—rudimentary processors with limited functions—that build on the theoretical and philosophical assumptions of quantum science and attempt to translate them into hypermodern technologies. Since the architecture and performance of these processors vary greatly, the results they yield may differ. Furthermore, most quantum processors are located in centres of technological power, within institutions beholden to states and industry.

Although it remains unclear exactly what they will do in terms of both their function and impact, quantum processors are already a site of expectation, hype, hope, and speculation. They also integrate a very complicated and controversial field of scientific inquiry and experimentation into machines, markets, and, sooner or later, into human lives. This is reason enough to explore the many cosmologies and politics at play within quantum science and technology. Whose knowledge is translated into the machine, and how is the machine itself a translation of that knowledge into something else? What realities are given value, if indeed, we are all made of star stuff? Do these realities even matter, if a large part of what constitutes them functions on a subatomic level?

The manifold cosmological traditions of understanding how living matter emerges from seeming nothingness reach far beyond Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg’s experiments in 1920s Europe. Indeed, aspects of quantum science such as the circularity of time, multiplicity, and superposition or the idea of entanglement are found in a myriad of settings across spacetime such as seventh-century Inca cosmology, sixteenth-century Jewish mysticism, Ifá divination systems of West Africa, or Blackfoot metaphysics in what is today known as the United States. Even in its most conservative and institutionalized form, quantum physics questions the foundations of how we experience spacetime—with paradoxes, connections, and superposition becoming concepts that delve into the very matters of the living and are thereby implicated in political realities. Quantum science questions the boundaries of individualism and separability, and thus offers a framework that might serve to reconfigure political ontologies of identity and belonging, and trespasses the certainties upheld by hegemonic frameworks.

Fertile Void looks at the promises and narratives of quantum technologies through the lens of culturally situated, more-than-human, and counter-hegemonic epistemologies and the arts. Examining the fundamental relationship between matter and energy (or ‘life force’), a theme central to many cosmologies across time and space and inherent to how quantum mechanics understands the very composition of the world, the event seeks to broaden our understanding of the technologies in development and the philosophical conceptions they entail. The theory underlying quantum technologies, quantum physics, or quantum field theory, offers a rich conceptual universe that foregrounds paradoxes of translocality, superposition, multiplicity and entanglement—paradigms that invite the conception and practice of more communal ways of inhabiting the earth. Fertile Void explores the notions of sociality that quantum physics proposes, asking how these different epistemologies can be parsed and how quantum technologies might actualize these lines of inquiry.

[1] Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred (New York: Bold Type Books, 2021), 6.