ART AND THE QUANTUM MOMENTDecember 4, 2014 - January 29, 2015Simons Gallery, The Simons Center for Geometry and Physics, Stony Brook University, NY

ART AND THE QUANTUM MOMENTERIC J. HELLER . FRÉDÉRIQUE SWIST . JACQUELINE THOMAS

COVER: Eric J. Heller, Caustic II, 2001, Luminage Archival Digital Print, Edition: 6/250, 48” x 36” (91.5cm x 122cm)Jacqueline Thomas, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Equations, p 11.Frédérique Swist, Good Vibrations, 2010, Archival pigment print on Somerset Velvet 330 gsm, Edition: 4 /10, 31.5” x 31.5” (80cm x 80cm)

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The quanta-inspired exhibition, Art and TheQuantum Moment, features the work of threeartists: Eric J. Heller, Frédérique Swist andJacqueline Thomas. Their art offers distinctperspectives on quantum theory. Approachesrange from illustrative visualization of scientificconcepts to artistic interpretation as influencedby science.

Inspired by the world we cannot see directly, theartist and scientist Dr. Eric Heller says he createsart “as a way to communicate the semi-knowableworld to larger groups of people than specializedresearch allows.” His quantum realm of electrons,atoms, and molecules yields forms conveying themystery of quantum physics. Heller visualizes thephysics with vivid color that activates waveformsin high-resolution digital prints. He cites the artistSol LeWitt as an important influence, whosemeticulous and often geometric and algorithmiccreations he admires.

The art of Dr. Fre derique Swist references physicsand phenomena that relate to extreme scale,distance, and mathematical abstraction. Shestates: “the visual supersedes the factual andtechnical language of science; it becomespowerful through a highly structuredcombination of forms and colors, thereby movingfrom the science toward the realm of visual art

and aesthetic experience.” Swist’s work is anamalgam of richly saturated color and griddedgeometric abstraction.

Jacqueline Thomas honors science by depictingthe fundamental laws of the universe in handbound limited edition books. Seeing the graphicbeauty in equations, she describes them as“visual masterpieces that explain the world welive in.” Thomas combines some of theseequations with images from a book onSociography, which details and draws the elegantcomplexities of shadows. On her web site, shecites astrophysicists, mathematicians andinstrument makers as her muses.

Finally, this exhibition was inspired by the bookThe Quantum Moment: How Planck, Bohr,Einstein, and Heisenberg Taught Us to LoveUncertainty, by Robert P. Crease and AlfredScharff Goldhaber. These Stony Brook Universityauthors—one a philosopher, the other aphysicist—provided the initial imagination toignite Art and The Quantum Moment.

Lorraine WalshArt Director and Curator

Heisenberg’s idea of a world of potentialities andpossibilities certainly resides at the intersection ofart and science. These two disciplines, each in theirown way, both investigate the unseen. In this spirit,the artists in the exhibition Art and The QuantumMoment take quantum matter as their subject inorder to reveal the beauty that arises when art andscience meet.

Quantum means “how much” in Latin. It’s the coreof Max Planck’s thesis describing quantized energyin quantum theory. The revolutionary part of thisidea is that energy, which appears to be emitted inwavelengths, is discharged in small quantifiablepackets (quanta). Following Planck’s theory,Werner Heisenberg introduced his UncertaintyPrinciple in 1927. Since then, scientists and non-scientists alike have embraced the concept ofquantum in their work.

Detail, Random Sphere 1, Eric J. Heller

ART AND THE QUANTUM MOMENT

The atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts. — Werner Heisenberg

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ERIC J.HELLEREric Johnson Heller is the Abbottand James Lawrence Professor ofChemistry and Professor of Physicsat Harvard University, where hereceived his PhD in 1973. Dr. Heller isan elected Fellow of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences, theAmerican Association for theAdvancement of Science, theAmerican Physical Society, TheNational Academy of Science, andthe American Academy of Arts andSciences. His research involvestheoretical investigation of wavebehavior, chaos and quantummechanics, condensed matterphysics including electron flow insemiconductors and electronicspectroscopy of crystals, includinggraphene. He lives in Plymouth, MA,and teaches at Harvard University,Cambridge, MA.

Caustics are places wherethings accumulate; in thiscase light is accumulating.We often think of focalpoints as places where lightgathers after passingthrough a lens, but moregenerally, for "random"lenses, there are manymore interesting patternsof accumulation toexamine. In Caustic II, weare seeing the flow of lightin three dimensions as it isinterrupted by the seabottom surface. Thispattern is not possible for atrue sea, because the lighthas passed through sevenconsecutive wavy refractingsurfaces.

Caustic II, 2001Luminage Archival Digital PrintEdition: 6/25048” x 36” (91.5cm x 122cm)

A quantum electron wave that was once tidy and collectedat the top of the frame was dropped onto the rough surfacein a gravitational field. Starting compactly in the sky, itaccelerated toward the mountain, wavelengths growingshorter as it sped toward the mountain below. It thenbounced elastically off the mountain, and reached its formerheight (on average) at the moment this image was recorded,i.e. after one bounce. The wave now looks disheveled. Thiswork is part of an ongoing study of scattering of quantumwaves from rough surfaces.

One Bounce, 2003Luminage Archival Digital PrintEdition: 6/25022” x 22” (56cm x 56cm)

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Random Sphere is aspherical surface with arandom wave living on it.Random waves are aparadigm for quantumchaos, the quantum analogof classical chaos. Therandomness associatedwith such a wave is as closeas quantum mechanics cancome to the extremes ofclassical chaos. Classicalchaos leads to a trajectoryor ray path heading inevery possible direction,revisiting every location(from different directions)over time. Correspondingto this, we see the randomaddition of wave setstraveling in all directions.The resulting waveadditions always lookqualitatively like the waveon Random Sphere. Darkerzones represent placeswhere the waves happenedto build up constructively;this is relevant to quantumwaves or ocean waves, forthat matter.

Random Sphere I, 2000Luminage Archival Digital PrintEdition: 12/25048” x 36” (91.5cm x 122cm)

Monolith is related toRandom Sphere; bothdepict random quantumwaves, here on a flatsurface and rendered in 3Dperspective. Randomwaves are the paradigm forquantum chaos. Classicalchaos amounts toindividual trajectoriesvisiting every place manytimes, and travelingthrough each placeheading in every possibledirection, seeminglyrandomly over time.Corresponding to this wesee the random addition ofwaves traveling in alldirections and presenteverywhere. A lumpyrandom pattern emerges;adding more waves won’tsmooth it out, althoughthe positions of the lumpswill shift.

Monolith, 2000 Luminage Archival Digital PrintEdition: 6/25022” x 22” (56cm x 56cm)

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Transport XIII reveals twokinds of chaos: a randomquantum wave on thesurface of a sphere, andchaotic electron pathslaunched over a range ofangles from a particularpoint. This too is quantummechanical in nature, andthe electron paths seenhere are a ray tracingapproximation to thequantum. The differentangles of the launch of therays were assigneddifferent colors, so that onecould more readily see themechanisms by which theelectrons spread out. Theincreasingly random pathsof the electrons as theytravel farther from thelaunching point is aclassical analog of thechaos seen on the sphere.

A quantum wave builds upin a resonant cavitybetween the straight andcurved walls, as wavesarrive from below througha small hole. Most of thewave energy, coming frombelow, is reflected backfrom the wall with a smallhole in it, but a surprisinglylarge fraction of it getsthrough the tiny hole if thewavelength is just right tomake the cavity beyond thehole resonant. ProfessorRobert Westervelt and hisresearch group at HarvardUniversity invented this"Westervelt Resonator"around 1995, for thepurpose of investigatingelectron quantum waves. Inthis picture, you see variousheralded aspects of wavesall present: reflection,diffraction, and resonance.The actual Westerveltresonator was smaller thana bacterium.

Transport XIII, 2000Luminage Archival Digital PrintEdition: 6/25031” x 22” x (56cm x 79cm)

Resonator I, 1997Luminage Archival Digital PrintEdition: 7/25031” x 22” (56cm x 79cm)

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Correspondence is a kind of Rosetta Stone; a visual translationbetween classical and quantum dynamics. The quantum standingwaves in black and the red ray traces of classical trajectories aftermany elastic, specular bounces off the walls are quite analogous. Nodallines (zeros in the wave near regions of large wave amplitudes) followa certain pattern predictable from the ray paths. There are four typesof classical motion for this lemon-shaped billiard, including the chaoticmotion seen in the lower right. The motion depends only on the initial"launch" the trajectory is given. There is a stable back and forth motionon the upper left that is a mode used for laser cavities, using circularmirrors spaced closer together than their radius of curvature. As seenin black, the standing waves (quantum wave functions) also fall intothe four classes, and closely resemble the trajectories.

Nodal Domains I is aquantum version of a massheld by springs in two-dimensions; the quantumwave seen here is a randomcombination of solutions allof the same energy. Wediscovered that the numberof nodes (lines betweenwhite and green seen in thebackground) grow as thesquare root of the energy.In Nodal Domains I, theclassically allowed region ismapped onto a sphere, andthe forbidden region(where a classical massheld by the spring couldnot go) remains in thebackground plane.

Correspondence, 1997Luminage Archival Digital PrintEdition: 6/25014” x 22” (56cm x 35.5cm)

Nodal Domains I, 2005Luminage Archival Digital PrintEdition: 5/25022” x 22” (56cm x 56cm)

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FRÉDÉRIQUESWISTFrédérique Swist is an artist, and asenior graphic designer for theacademic science publisher IOPPublishing, owned by the UK Institute ofPhysics. She recently completed apractice-based PhD at the University ofthe West of England in Bristol (UK).Swist’s work has been exhibited inBristol, York, London, St Petersburg andBudapest, and acquired by AstonUniversity and York St John University.She has received several notablecommissions including one from theCentre of Nanoscience and QuantumInformation, University of Bristol. In 2013and 2014, IOP Publishing commissionedher work for display at its Washington,Philadelphia and Beijing offices. Shelives and works in Bristol, UK.

Good Vibrations refers to individual but intertwined sub-systems, from which optical effects emerge that can bedescribed as a visual rhythm, intended to be experienced as aresonance that transcends the binarity normally associatedwith oscillation. This artwork belongs to a series published inthe multidisciplinary journal Parallax 16:3 (2010), pp. 55–59,exploring the theme of affirmation/positivity.

Good Vibrations, 2010Archival pigment print on Somerset Velvet 330 gsmEdition: 4 /1031.5” x 31.5” (80cm x 80cm)

Excitable Waves is an artistic interpretation of thedistribution of excitation functions in the study of theadhesion between biological cells and physical surfaces.This piece is inspired by a figure in an article titled“Excitable waves at the margin of the contact areabetween a cell and a substrate” by Oliver Ali, et al.(2009), Physical Biology 6 025010.

Excitable Waves, 2010/2014Edition: 4/25Archival pigment print on Somerset Velvet 330 gsm 31.5” x 31.5” (80cm x 80cm)

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JACQUELINETHOMAS Jacqueline Thomas is an artist anddesigner of handmade limited editionbooks. She studied the art ofbookmaking and binding at theUniversity of the Arts, London Collegeof Communication, where shegraduated with a degree in Art andDesign History. Thomas has beencreating handmade limited editionbooks for over a decade. She printsdigitally collaged pages, compilingthem into books that are hand-sewn,bound and trimmed in time-honoredbook arts custom. University andprivate collections in the UK andabroad, including the British LibraryContemporary Collection, ownThomas’s limited edition books. Shelives and works in London, UK.

The spread above depicted in the bookEquations is the Schrödinger equation, anequation fundamental to the study of wavemechanics, is seen here in three forms, with thetopmost equation described first:1. Equation for a solution with fixed energy(motion in one space dimension only).2. Equation for a solution that may have morethan one energy so one relates the spacedependence (on the left) to the timedependence (on the right). 3. Equation for solution (again with definiteenergy) of the motion of an electron (negativeelectric charge) around a proton (positiveelectric charge).

Constants, 2006Handmade Limited Edition BookEdition of 158.25” x 10” (25.4 cm x 21cm)

Pictured in the book Constants is Planck’sConstant and Remontoir Escapement. Planck’sconstant, symbolized h, is the fundamentalconstant of quantum mechanics. The constantrelates the ratio of energy in one quantum(photon) of electromagnetic radiation to thefrequency of that radiation. The dimension ofPlanck’s constant is the product of energymultiplied by time, a quantity called action. The constant is equal to approximately6.626176 x 10-34 joule-seconds.

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Equations, 2005Handmade Limited Edition BookEdition of 158.25” x 10” (25.4 cm x 21cm)

Pictured above from the book Equationsis Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle

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E X H I B I T I O N C H E C K L I S T . A L L W O R K C O U R T E S Y O F T H E A R T I S T S

ERIC J. HELLER

Caustic II, 2001Luminage Archival Digital PrintEdition: 6/25048” x 36” (91.5cm x 122cm)

Correspondence, 1997Luminage Archival Digital PrintEdition: 6/25014” x 22” (56cm x 35.5cm)

Monolith, 2000 Luminage Archival Digital PrintEdition: 6/25022” x 22” (56cm x 56cm)

Nodal Domains I, 2005Luminage Archival Digital PrintEdition: 5/25022” x 22” (56cm x 56cm)

One Bounce, 2003Luminage Archival Digital PrintEdition: 6/25022” x 22” (56cm x 56cm)

Random Sphere I, 2000Luminage Archival Digital PrintEdition: 12/25048” x 36” (91.5cm x 122cm)

Resonator I, 1997Luminage Archival Digital PrintEdition: 7/25031” x 22” (56cm x 79cm)

Transport XIII, 2000Luminage Archival Digital PrintEdition: 6/25031” x 22” x (56cm x 79cm)

FRÉDÉRIQUE SWIST

Excitable Waves, 2010/2014Edition: 4/25Archival pigment print onSomerset Velvet 330 gsm 31.5” x 31.5” (80cm x 80cm)

Good Vibrations, 2010Archival pigment print onSomerset Velvet 330 gsmEdition: 4 /1031.5” x 31.5” (80cm x 80cm)

JACQUELINE THOMAS

Constants, 2006Handmade Limited Edition BookEdition: 158.25” x 10” (25.4 cm x 21cm)

Equations, 2005Handmade Limited Edition Book Edition: 158.25” x 10” (25.4 cm x 21cm)

ART AND THE QUANTUM MOMENT

ART AND THE QUANTUM MOMENTDecember 4, 2014 – January 29, 2015

Eric J. Heller Frédérique Swist Jacqueline Thomas

Curated by Lorraine Walsh,with Robert Crease and Alfred Goldhaber

S C H E D U L E O F E V E N T S

PRE-EXHIBITION TALKby ARTHUR I MILLERUniversity College LondonTitle: Colliding Worlds: How Cutting-EdgeScience is Redefining Contemporary ArtWednesday November 5th, 2014Reception at 5:00pm5:30pm, SCGP Room 102

OPENING RECEPTIONThursday, December 4th, 2014 Wine and Cheese Reception: 5:00pm

DELLA PIETRA LECTUREby ERIC J. HELLERHarvard University Title: The Art of Listening. Carefully.Thursday, December 4th, 2014Lecture: 5:45pm, Simons Center Auditorium, Room 103

CLOSING RECEPTIONThursday, January 29th, 2015 Wine and Cheese Reception: 5:00pm

CLOSING TALK by ROBERT CREASE and ALFRED GOLDHABER Stony Brook UniversityTitle: Art and The Quantum MomentThursday, January 29, 20155:30 pm, SCGP Room 102

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

I’d like to express my gratitude and special thanks to Robert Crease andAlfred Goldhaber for providing the inspiration for the exhibition, theSimons Center Art Advisory Board: Tony Phillips, Stephanie Dinkins,George Hart, Christopher Herzog, John Lutterbie, Phil Palmedo, ZabetPatterson, Meg Schedel and Daniel Weymouth, and all the SCGP staffincluding Maria Froehlich, Elyce Winters and Tim Young. Finally, atremendous thanks to the artists for sharing their innovative andbeautiful quantum-inspired art with all at the Simons Center and StonyBrook University.

The exhibition coincides with the Della Pietra Lectureship Series honoringDr. Eric J. Heller, the James Lawrence Professor of Chemistry andProfessor of Physics at Harvard University. These lectures are madepossible by a generous donation from brothers Stephen and VincentDella Pietra.

- Lorraine Walsh

All lectures and receptions are free and open to the public

Simons Center GalleryGallery HoursMonday- Friday 10:00 am – 5:00 pm; Closed Saturday, Sunday, and Holidays

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