Founded in 2019, the LAS ART Foundation centres on exploring the relationship between art, science and the latest technologies. Whether it’s ecology and interspecies relationships, AI, biotechnologies or quantum physics, the Foundation’s aim is to allow artists and their audiences to question and explore some of our many possible futures. So when the U.N. declared 2025 the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, they knew they had to honour the occasion.
The result is Sensing Quantum, which explores quantum technologies in the arts. Installations, a public symposium and a dedicated publication are all part of the programme of works. And to kick off the celebrations, the Foundation is presenting Turner Prize winner Laure Prouvost’s installation We Felt A Star Dying, at Kraftwerk Berlin. Created after two years of research with philosopher Tobias Rees and scientist Hartmut Neven at Google Quantum AI, the piece uses video, sculpture, sound and scent to evoke how multiple different perspectives and timelines could exist all at once, a key characteristic of quantum physics.
We caught up with LAS Art Foundation Senior Curator, Carly Whitefield, to talk about the programme and delve further into the inspiration behind it.
KE: How did you choose the artist you wanted to kick off LAS Art Foundation’s newly founded Sensing Quantum programme with?
CW: We felt like Laure Prouvost’s work creates these beautiful multisensory environments in which you, as a visitor, float along as you slowly open yourself up to different ways of feeling and sensing the world.
That is precisely what quantum needs – a new language and an openness to build and create that language, so we started a conversation with Laure Prouvost and learned that she’s always had an intuitive sense that the world works in these unpredictable ways.
She’s had these intuitive senses of quantum principles without ever having been presented with science. And you feel it, you really feel it in her works.
KE: So it’s about feeling rather than knowing…
CW: Exactly! That’s why we’ve created a journey where you come in and things might be more fluid or unfragile than you expect them to be. You start feeling these different rhythms, you smell something, and become very curious. You have to lie down and look at a film in a very different way than you have before, and open your mind and your senses in a quantum way. But then, you can also learn, which always goes hand in hand with this approach. We really want to lower all of the barriers for people to feel like they can come into this, but also provide all of these different entry points where they can learn about quantum physics or the technologies built upon them in our learning space, through workshops, or talks that we organise.
KE: How does Kraftwerk, the physical context in which the exhibition exists, play into the experience of it?
CW: It was the perfect site for us because as you come in, you feel the heaviness. It was a site built for specific machinery, and in our minds, this is just a perfect example of the classical mechanism. You enter a space like this and you already have a feeling of the type of machine you would encounter here – big, heavy, and probably reliable in some way, hopefully reliable – and generally that’s exactly that classical mechanical problem.
As a very sharp contrast, we have semi-transparent, very light wall materials as well as scents that just enter your body in an invisible way. Things operate in a completely different way than you would expect, and for us, that was a nice way to trace an arc of technology towards increasingly sensitive machines, not only to what’s immediately around them, but to cosmic phenomena that are millions of miles away.
KE: How was working with and around quantum computers for Laure Prouvost? You told me she flew to Santa Barbara, but the quantum computer did not work.
CW: That was where the project title We Felt A Start Dying came from. When she visited the quantum computer in Santa Barbara, it wasn’t functioning properly because there had been a solar flare. Nothing else seemed to be affected, only the quantum computer. It’s one of the effects of cosmic radiation: only the most sensitive quantum states are disrupted by it. She found that completely fascinating.
We started asking ourselves what it means for our technologies to become increasingly sensitive to planetary and cosmic forces. It was so beautiful and incredibly poetic that we carved out space to ask philosophical questions about what quantum means as a paradigm.
KE: How was it working with an anthropological component in the form of the philosopher Tobias Rees, while also working with a technological component manifested in a quantum device?
It was all one conversation. We made no divide or binary between them. Tobias is very knowledgeable about quantum and is heavily engaged in thinking about how different technological structures are changing society. He was looking at the model of reality that has prevailed primarily to date through classical physics and a lot of the distinctions we tend to make based on classical physics of what we can measure and know in the world. These distinctions, of course, give rise to some fundamental binaries like science and technology on one side and nature, the weather and more unpredictable living systems on the other. He helped us unravel some of the beliefs we’re so wired to hold and come to this openness that happens at the quantum level.
KE: How do the contrasting ideas of form and function relate to this exhibition?
I think it’s successful where they merge. Where approaching something as a tool is embedded into something larger. Looking underneath the surface rather than experiencing the sheer form.
With this exhibition, it was about feeling the textures of the sounds or the very abstract visuals that were produced with this quantum AI hybrid tool that we’ve created to enable quantum fluctuations to shape image and sound. That was part of a larger look at what quantum fluctuations mean – what they unite in our world.
KE: What sort of feedback have you received from visitors to the show?
It’s been really beautiful. I’ve been really touched by quite an immense response we’ve had from all different ages, which is to me a success. We didn’t design this exhibition for children, but it’s been a hit with a lot of children, and I think it’s precisely because it sparks an openness to thinking about things that it acts on your body in so many different ways that it just lends itself to anyone willing to open their imagination.
We Felt A Star Dying is on show at Kraftwerk in Berlin until May 4, 2025
