Exhibited on the largest LED screen that NGV has deployed to date, Quantum Memories is Refik Anadol Studio’s epic scale investigation of the intersection between Google AI Quantum Supremacy experiments, machine learning, and aesthetics of probability. Technological and digital advancements of the past century could as well be defined by the humanity’s eagerness to make machines go to places that humans could not go, including the spaces inside our minds and the non-spaces of our un- or sub-conscious acts.

Quantum Memories utilizes the most cutting-edge, Google AI’s publicly available quantum computation research data and algorithms to explore the possibility of a parallel world by processing approximately 200 million nature and landscape images through artificial intelligence. These algorithms allow us to speculate alternative modalities inside the most sophisticated computer available, and create new quantum noise-generated datasets as building blocks of these modalities. The 3D visual piece is accompanied by an audio experience that is also based on quantum noise–generated data, offering an immersive experience that further challenges the notion of mutual exclusivity. The project is both inspired by and a speculation of the Many-Worlds Interpretation in quantum physics – a theory that holds that there are many parallel worlds that exist at the same space and time as our own.

Tapping into the random fluctuations of quantum noise as a unique realm of possibilities and predictions, Quantum Memories provides an interactive aesthetic experience by tracking the audience’s movements in real-time and simulating how their observer positions indeed become entangled with the visible outcomes of the ever-changing artwork.

Deeply thankful to Google AI Quantum Team and their generous support especially Hartmut Neven, Alan Ho, Murphy Niu and Michael Broughton.