What would have happened if the colonizers had not arrived in the Americas and ancestral technologies were still in existence? What would they be like?

Khipu: Pre-Hispanic Electrotextile Computer is an artistic research project by Constanza Piña Pardo that explores an ancient computing system used in pre-Columbian Andean cultures. In this system, information was knotted with strings and coded in numerical values, a level of abstraction in line with modern-day computation. Currently considered as pre-Hispanic ecological computers, the importance of the khipus lies in their transcendental cosmic significance and the preservation of the wisdom transmitted from Indigenous peoples in Abya Yala. Due to their level of complexity, khipus might allow for an exploration of quantum worlds.

As a large number of khipus remain locked in European museums, Piña Pardo invites audiences to sonify and embody a khipu for the quantum age through a performative offering. Subsequent to the lecture performance, the artist engages in a conversation with Studio Quantum resident Alexandra Martens Serrano to discuss the remnants of—and resistances inherent to—pre-Hispanic computation and what these ancestral forms might evoke in the contemporary scientific age.