Emergence: An Artistic Exploration of Quantum Science

Visit Emergence—an exhibition showcasing the entries to the 2022 EQUS Quantum Art Competition—to explore quantum science through an artistic lens.

When: The exhibition is open to the public daily from 29 June to 3 July

• 29 June: 10:00 am–4:30 pm
• 30 June to 3 July: 10:00 am–5:30 pm

Where: m² Gallery, 450 Elizabeth St, Surry Hills 2010 NSW

Cost: Entry to the exhibition is free; tickets for the opening night are $10 per person (see below for more information)

The exhibition includes 35 of the artworks submitted to the 2022 EQUS Quantum Art Competition, including the winner, runner-up and finalists.  

EQUS scientists and science communicators will be present throughout the exhibition to answer any questions you may have.  If you’d like to chat to some of the artists, make sure you grab a ticket to the opening night!

So, come along—enjoy the artworks, learn about quantum science, and vote for your favourite artwork for the People’s Choice Prize!

Explore the exhibition

Opening night

Join us for the opening night of Emergence to meet the artists and chat to scientists over drinks and canapés!

Date: Thursday 29 June 2023
Time: 6:30–9:00 pm
Location: m² gallery, 450 Elizabeth St, Surry Hills 2010
Cost: $10 per person (sold out)

Get my ticket

About the Quantum Art Competition

Emergence showcases the entries to the 2022 EQUS Quantum Art Competition.

Run by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems (EQUS), the 2022 Quantum Art Competition invited artists to explore quantum science through their medium of choice, drawing inspiration from the competition theme: ‘emergence’.

Quantum physics tells us that our world, at the fundamental level, is alien to our intuitive reality in many ways.

The world with which we are familiar is governed by the rules of classical physics.  These rules allow us to predict precisely the behaviour of large objects like grains of sand, soccer balls, and even planets.

But on very small scales (such as the scales of electrons, photons and atoms) the Universe obeys different rules—the rules of quantum physics.  In the quantum regime, the world is inherently fuzzy and probabilistic. There are many phenomena (such as superposition and entanglement) that challenge our classical intuitions.

Somewhere between these two scales, our intuitive world emerges from the strange quantum world. We know that the underlying physics is quantum, but it appears classical at large scales. Exactly how this happens is one of the biggest mysteries of modern physics.

Put another way: emergence is a phenomenon whereby the apparent behaviour of a system on a large scale appears vastly different from the true, underlying nature on a small scale.

About the winners

The winning artwork, ‘EMERGENCE’, is by Western Australian artist Bori Benko.  EMERGENCE explores and celebrates the fascinating phenomenon of the moiré interference pattern.  The patterns are created whenever one semitransparent object with a repetitive pattern is placed over another.  The inspiration for Bori’s artwork came from how the phenomenon of moiré interference relates to the overlapping of human mental, emotional and physical vibrational patterns.

“Art and quantum physics are two very complex realms and approaches to human inquiry about the world.  When done successfully, they can influence us to see the world in a different light; can change our fundamental truths.”
—Bori Benko

The runner-up prize went to ‘Demon in the Machine’, a watercolour on paper by Brisbane-based artist Sandy Lidgett.  Demon in the Machine experiments with the emergence of shapes dictated by other shapes around them.  Sandy’s approach to the competition theme of ‘emergence’ was based on her background in biochemistry.

“I’m interested in how the concept of emergent complexity relates to living systems that defy the second law of thermodynamics.  Studying biochemistry humbled me into realising that the reductive way we have of looking at living systems is limiting, especially in terms of tertiary and quaternary protein conformation and membrane function.”
—Sandy Lidgett

Find out more about the other shortlisted artworks

EMERGENCE, by Bori Benko (winner)

Kinetic installation
Materials: Printed acrylic glass, polyethylene threads
Size: 150 cm x 150 cm x 150 cm

Art and quantum physics are two very complex realms and approaches to human inquiry about the world. Each is driven by discovery, curiosity, and a profound longing to know oneself and the surrounding world. When done successfully they can influence us to see the world in a different light; can change our fundamental truths.

Scientists do this through repeated experiments that attempt to reveal a novel aspect of reality. By contrast, artists often start with a new vision of reality, yet from that foundation, we also work through exploration and experimentation.

The kinetic installation I have created for the EQUS Quantum Art Competition 2022, 'Emergence', explores and celebrates the fascinating phenomenon of the moiré interference pattern.

The transparent acrylic glass objects, printed with very similar curved line patterns and hung at particular angles, gently rotate in response to air movement; when overlapping each other new sinuous moving patterns emerge that seem to shimmer and flow.

The stunningly beautiful and suggestive accelerations of these patterns are not illusory.  The emergence of the moving patterns occurs not based on the properties of the individual patterns but on the luminance modulations resulting from their superposition.  In the moiré, small differences between spatial frequencies of the component patterns are magnified.

‘Emergence’ relates to quantum physics and technology in a significant way.  Scientists developing new materials are actively studying moiré patterns in overlapping atomically thin materials, producing intriguing electronic phenomena that include unconventional superconductivity and ferromagnetism.

“When a layer of graphene, a sheet of carbon crystal with atoms arranged in a hexagonal one-atom-thick lattice, is dropped on another one and rotated to just the correct angle of about 1.1 degrees, the graphene magically acquires the ability to become superconductive when the requisite number of electrons are added.  This concordance between the visual and the electrical in graphene almost seems to be an example of life imitating art right down to the quantum level.”*

Besides the correlations with quantum physics, the artwork also inquires how the phenomenon of moiré interference relates to the overlapping of human mental, emotional, and physical vibrational patterns.

*https://www.quantamagazine.org/when-magic-is-seen-in-twisted-graphene-th...

Demon in the Machine, by Sandy Lidgett (runner-up)

Materials: W&N watercolours on Arches 300gsm paper
Size: 560 mm x 760 mm

This work is an experiment in emergence using a 000 Cotman brush and Windsor & Newton watercolours which grew out of shapes dictated by those around them as the work began to form.

I’m interested how the concept of emergent complexity relates to living systems that defy the second law of thermodynamics.  Trained in biochemistry and molecular biology in the 1990s I am surprised how mysterious life continues to be.  I’m intrigued by the research Paul Davies is doing at the Beyond Centre in Arizona on the concepts of emergence, as outlined in his recent book, The Demon in the Machine.  James Clerk Maxwell seems to me to be too little spoken of, and I like how Davies relates Maxwell to his own search for a physical law of information.  I like Davies’ discussions about how laws change as the playing field changes - as complexity emerges, new rules emerge.  Studying biochemistry humbled me into realising that the reductive way we have of looking at living systems is limiting, especially in terms of tertiary and quaternary protein conformation and membrane function.

In terms of this work, I thought of myself as a wet, room-temperature quantum computer, making decisions in a semi-meditative state at the mercy, as it were, of my Maxwell Demons.  The choice of colour has a mammalian connection, perhaps, some sort of fleshy shadow of an a priori somatic abstract that exists below our consciousness.

I’m also influenced by Roger Penrose’s ideas on emergent complexity and feedback loops that have to do with pattern and scale.  He recalls working, as a boy, with his father on the tribar design they sent to MC Escher, which Escher then used in various works.  Penrose often comes back to the Angels and Demons (more demons!) work by Escher as an example of what might be happening at the edges of the very big and the very small, and how scale (or even entropy/enthalpy) might flip, where there are slow, bored photons at the end of the universe.  Anyway, I don’t pretend to understand all this, which is why I like to muse on these ideas while I paint, and it seems they often inform the way I make work.

In the making of this painting, patterns and shapes emerged as it progressed.  The supporting (white) space began to take on its own character as the work developed, and it was interesting to notice how difficult it was to see the white as a form in itself, especially where it was a thinly interlaced lattice in the mostly-red areas.  The feedback idea was imposed by the edges of the paper, where the shapes no longer had the freedom to expand indefinitely and began to grow the entire form back inwards.  It could also allude to enclosed systems reaching a point of equilibrium, or passing beyond the tipping point, whereupon the red (flesh) begins to exhaust the white substrate.