Entangled Moments
photo + video manipulation
This was a group project entry for the Quantum Design Jam 2022 organised by IBM and The New School Innovation Centre.
Project Teammates: Yash Goyal, Munus Shih, Lila Feldman, Lavannya Suressh
Duration: 1 week (Oct 2021)
Recognition: Finalist team; Honorable Mention in the Creative Use of Quantum Technology in Visual Arts
Entangled Moments uses quantum bell circuit data to process videos and generate random photography art: illustrating the quantum glitch of today.
Our data input is video footage shot through windows. This is to embrace the surrealism of Quantum Mechanics. When you look out of your window, the apparently still world is constantly changing, but such subtle nuances are invisible to our working minds. The view from our window is never as it seems: Supposedly still things shift and age, supposedly fleeting moments are eternally influential.
INPUT VIDEO ⟶ OUTPUT PHOTO
Inspiration
Using precedents like Futurist painter Giacomo Balla and photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto, we could track transitions in the history of art and photography where radical works depicted condensing a series of events into a single frame. With Entangled Moments, we have worked on the same concept using quantum computing. We wanted to visualise the uncertainty and randomness of quantum in digital image processing. We found glitches common in both: digital photography and manifested as noise in quantum.
With the manipulation of pixels and colour, we also tried to show superposition in real life. All of the particles in our body are not 100% here but they are very close to. We can be 99.99% here but possibly also 0.0000000000000001% in Antarctica or in any other place. This can also be abstractly construed as how we are all physically present in a place at any given point, but tend to space/zone out for a few seconds until brought back into reality. This is like a real life glitch. Our output imagery questions the future of photography using quantum qubits to show how superposition can be visualised.
With the manipulation of pixels and colour, we also tried to show superposition in real life. All of the particles in our body are not 100% here but they are very close to. We can be 99.99% here but possibly also 0.0000000000000001% in Antarctica or in any other place. This can also be abstractly construed as how we are all physically present in a place at any given point, but tend to space/zone out for a few seconds until brought back into reality. This is like a real life glitch. Our output imagery questions the future of photography using quantum qubits to show how superposition can be visualised.
Qubit Values & Functions with the Bell Circuit
[0,0] - don’t display this frame on this pixel
[0,1] - subtract this frame by removing the colour value
[1,0] - add this frame
[1,1] - display this frame on this pixel and averages out the other [1,1]s
