This is the music created as part of a collaboration between musicians and quantum physicists at the Yale Quantum Institute. We'll be hearing about this and a new collaboration with the artist Serena Scappanini in this episode of the physics world stories podcast.
Welcome along to this episode of the podcast where we will be hearing as I say more about that music you've just been listening to and we'll hear from Serena Scapagnini the artist whose work exploring memory and quantum physics is part of this year's collaboration between art and science at the Yale Quantum Institute. That's all to come. But first, here's the man behind it all, Florian Carr. The managing director of the Yale Quantum Institute.
And when I'm not, running the institutes, I work with artists, that we bring in residence for year long residency. We teach them a lot about quantum physics. They interact with the researcher, and we create, artwork, that are quantum themes and use some of the quantum data, quantum principle, quantum metaphors, and we, make installation that we use for science outreach for the general public and for younger students to encourage them to do a career in
STEM. The Quantum Institute, is a research center that was created at Yale, in 2014. It regroups 30, research groups. We have around 350 researcher, including students, postdoc grad students, and, of course, faculty and staff researcher. And, we work on everything that is science information, quantum science information. And the the idea is to try to encourage people from different departments to work together to build quantum technology.
So we have people in the institutes that are, from applied physics, from physics, from chemistry, computer science, electrical engineer. All of these people were coming together both on the theory side and the experimental side to, to collaborate and building new machines. Of course, we have a big chunk of the institutes dedicated in building superconductive cubits machines, but, we are mostly a fundamental research group. We do a lot about quantum sensors.
We do a lot about quantum error correction, and some some quantum materials. We have a very large, scope of interest. And so the Quantum Institute is trying to be the home of everything quantum at Yale too. So so we are the the front door. So if somebody has a question about quantum or if a company wants to to work with us or, like, they have a case use problem that they want researcher to to fix.
They come in. We try to pair them with researcher, and hopefully, down the line, one or two years down the line, we have a solution for them. Okay. And are you a quantum physicist then? Is that how you ended up there? I am not. I am actually, a rocket scientist. So I was, studying, heat transfer in France, and I was working with NICNEC, which is the national center for space, in France, and the ESA, the European Space Agency.
And I was studying the evaporation of alcohol droplets in this plane, flying in parabolas instead of, flying straight in border. And, we were studying the, the effect of the Magdalene in the droplets. And so the idea was to try to understand how to increase, cooling when we don't have gravity.
And then I slowly shifted, into material science, moved to Yale to do, a post doc in material science working with, liquid metals and injecting, a bit of magnetic and, iron powders in this liquid to try to, come up with a small model for the core of Earth to have, like, a smaller scale side of things. And then after a few years, the Quantum Institute was looking for, for a manager.
And I realized that my skill set was more suited to help researcher more than doing the research myself, because I'm I'm fascinated with learning about all of these new things. But I'm I'm much more proficient in, science communication, in trying to, like, build a community of scientists to have large scale projects. So that's why I shifted to more, like, management of science side of things.
Okay. And how many times a week does somebody say to you that's not rocket science, but since you've learned more from rocket science? Quite a lot. Quite a lot. This is my favorite icebreaker. I do a lot of, I'll I do a lot of intro to quantum talks, for people outside of the field, like some sort of one hour quantum one zero one. And one of my jokes that I can only do it if the new people if there's new people in the audience, but, yeah, that's like, we're gonna do quantum physics. I showed
them a lot of equation. I was like, ah, don't worry. That's not rocket science. So best built in icebreaker on that. Yeah. Yeah. But it's it's funny because every time people, people say that, I'm like, oh, nice to say that. So you've got this, the the science background. So what what and you talked a bit about science communication. What drew you towards? I mean, is it your idea to have a a an artist in residence in this artist program at Yale?
Yeah. So I think I I need to give credits to France and growing up in France to, like, give me this idea. There's there's a lot of events, in France that are mixing art and science. I feel that a lot of, like, street arts, a lot of museum of science, a lot of proper museum that have this kind of, like there's not really a disconnect between art and science in France. And growing up there really gave me the sense of, like,
these two things belong together. And when I moved to The US, there was a really big shift of, like, the the humanities were doing their thing. The science were doing their thing. And, and despite the fact that Yale is a liberal arts school, they're trying to, like, encourage interdisciplinary. In practice, it was not done quite a lot. And so I started in 2,017. We started small. We started with a small series of talk mixing two topics, one in the humanities and one in in science.
And, the first talk was about how quantum physics democratize music. And so it it was, somebody, sir MacBury, I think, was, was giving a talk on on on, all of the application that quantum mechanics and and the fundamental research in quantum mechanics, were used for music. So, like, all of the laser, compact disc, and all of this technology was developed thanks to fundamental research in quantum mechanics. And during that talk, a lot of the audience,
was completely unknown to me. Usually, we have all scientists come to our talks, and this time we had people from outside the field coming in. And I was like, oh, there's something here. And we slowly build up having, this series of talk. Now we've done 22 talks in this series over the years. And so we we started building things, like we did physics and dance. We did mathematic and crochet. We did architecture and sounds. Lot of these things, history in quantum physics.
And and then slowly building on this, we're like, oh, it would be so nice if we could have an artist in residence and go further. And the idea was to try to bring someone in to try to visualize a complex concept in quantum mechanics, because as human, we are fundamentally anchored in the classical world. We have, like, we have big bodies that are, submitted to to gravity.
And and when you go to smaller skills, you have things like the observer effects, like the the superposition of states, and it gets really, really difficult for us to understand, to wrap our hands around it. And, by having really interesting visuals, it might be easier to, like, start the conversation. The the idea is not to not to, like, make the artwork into a museum science diorama. The idea is to do some fine arts that spark interest. And then when people come in, they have,
like, oh, this is this cool visual. We can come in. We have we we did in the past installations. We did music, videos. We did live concerts. We did, light shows. On facade, we did museums, applications, and recently with, Serena Scampagnini, we did some, on on-site installation with paper. And so we wanted people to come in, have a spark of interest, and then look at the little
pamphlets and figure out why it's quantum. And we hope that people, get interested enough that they can go on their own and, like, maybe watch a YouTube video explaining the the key concept or maybe taking the next, like, quantum one zero one class if, at the school or maybe, like, picking up a book of, like, science outreach about quantum mechanics. And then that that's basically, I I wanted with this program to to fight science phobia and the fact that, people are scared of talking about it.
There's this thing when I go to to parties and I say, oh, I work with quantum physicist. People open their eyes wide and say, oh, you must be so smart or like, oh, it's so difficult. It's not for me. And then the conversion shutdowns. But then if somebody say, like, oh, I'm a neurosurgeon. People are like, oh, that's so cool. You go into brains and do this. I'm like, I'm pretty sure they don't. But, people, people, like, engage with whatever all the very difficult jobs
are. But, like, somehow with quantum physics, it's okay to say, no. I don't wanna talk about it. And so, I wanted to give these people, like, an access ramp and say, okay. I know you don't know much about quantum physics, but, like, come see this artwork. And then if you like the artwork and that's all that you want to do, that's fine. You just go you just watch some cool art. But if you if you're interested enough, it might help you next time
somebody else talk about quantum physics. You'll be like, oh, I remember we talked about supervision of state with this installation that had, like, a webcam tracking me, and I could be in two place at once. And and that's basically what I'm trying to do, trying to give give them a lot of visuals, so, they can grasp onto the metaphor or the concept and things. Okay. Can you tell me about that webcam tracking people and being a Yeah.
So this was an installation by our first, very first artist in residence, Martha Lewis. She was very fascinating by the superconductive qubits machines because they were in this, like, really cool fridges, dilution refrigerator that runs at, almost absolute zero. And she wanted people to be able to enter these fridges. So we built this in our institute, this gigantic installation with curtains around
and people could come in. And on the ceiling of the institute, we had a webcam tracking the position of the people. And the, one of the grad students, Stephane Krabs Zaneuf was working on an algorithm to detect the parity in a system. So basically, they were entangling qubits and trying to figure out if the spin were both up or opposite. So, like, either equal or opposite.
And, and so when the the people were inside the installation, the webcam was tracking their position and the, basically, the observer effect came into play. You were basically locking where you were in the diagram locked in and then the algorithm was trying to finish the the the the patterns on on the ceiling. But the cool thing about this installation is that the only way to solve this pattern was for nobody to be inside the installation because
you could have superposition of states. And so it's picture a Sudoku where at the end of the Sudoku, you have one square left and then it it needs to be a three and a five at the same time. And so it doesn't work because you're here trying to say, like, no. It can only be three or five. But, when you're outside of the experience or outside of the installation, the superintendent of states was happy to have a three and a five, for example. And
so you could solve this this diagram. And so that was the idea of, like, you are a bit of the problem in a quantum system. So you need to, like, space on space out on this thing. So when you're doing something like that, I mean, you said that the people you know, you don't mind if people might just come and enjoy the the artwork of this. Are you what is the feedback from people?
So I was very interested in having artists that have a mature body of work because the the the the task we we are asking them is quite difficult. Come to this place you don't know, on a topic you don't know, and make some art about it. And so it was very important for me for the artist to work on their practice and have fine arts
and have something they prod off. And then on the side, my job is to bring the visitor in and develop materials, develop brochure, pamphlet explaining the key concept in a way that's easy. And so that way, when people come in, they can branch out and figure out, like, oh, I want I'm interested more in the art. I can talk to the artist. I'm interested in the science. I can talk to you to Florian. And the feedback has been really good because, we we started in 02/2017.
And, to a a few weeks ago, Syrna's company, the installation was featured at the Arts and Idea Festival, and so 2025. And we still had people who came in and say, oh, we came to this event in 2017. We didn't understand about it. And every year, we came back to more and more. And now we don't understand completely everything, but we have a better understanding. And so the feedback has been really, really
positive because I think people are curious. We just haven't find a way to give them easy enough access to our discipline. And then one of the feedback that made me so proud because there was always a bit of questioning about, like, why are we spending so much money on making art or on, like, this outreach program? And, two years ago, we had two prospective students, two girls that came in through the to the labs and through the institutes And they they came to me and they
said, like, oh, you're foreign. Oh, we picked to come to Yale because we saw your artwork project things, and it was so cool. And I don't want to be a full time engineer. I'm also interested in art. And, like, that was the reason why they picked Yale because they have they could do both. They could be a great scientist, but also a great artist in the way. And so I think it has resonated pretty well. And the the feedback has been really overwhelmingly positive.
So, and that's why I think that's why we've been continuing with, like, bigger and bigger project over the years. That's brilliant. That's really, really brilliant. I'm gonna tell you a quick story just while we're here because Please do. So I have in my, in my distant past before becoming a lecturer and just doing marking, I have made, science art shows myself in the in the distant past. And I once made one, which happened at Manchester Science Festival.
It I I don't really want to go into the detail on it, but about four year no. Six years later, I was standing at the opening ceremony thing of, the Monster Sized Festival again, and I was standing as the director of the festival.
And, somebody came up to the director, and she said, I just wanted to say to you that we came to a show at your festival, six years ago, and my daughter was then in, you know, whenever she was 12, and it completely changed her perception of science and made her want to become a scientist as she's now going to study physics at Manchester University. And I was studying there going, I wonder if it was mine. And then she said, which show was it? And she said, obviously, it was mine. And it's just
a wonderful, wonderful thing. Congrats. That's amazing. No. But that's exactly why that's the reason why I think. I I think I had this experience growing up. I went to this kind of shows and then I was like, oh, this is why I'm so interested in science. It's because, like, it it didn't seem scary. It didn't seem like it was a
class. It's if you brought up with, like, oh, this is the cool thing that happens and come experience this fun thing and come, like, get zapped by the, like, electricity display or come get the, like, see the lighting shifts with the the diagrams and you can see rainbows with light when you split the lights. Like, all of this cool thing makes it you you stop in an hour instead of of being like, oh, this is an equation.
I'm scary. And and and I think the the reason why I, I feel that my English is good enough is because I had a a theater teacher. The my English teacher was doing theater. We were playing doing Shakespeare. And she was mimicking and miming all of the words we didn't know in English, learning English as a second language. And I was fascinating with her because it was so like, the the teaching was so
good that it didn't feel like learning. And as the opposite, my Spanish teacher was really doing, like, academic settings, and I cannot speak a word of Spanish. And so, like but for almost the same amount of of teaching. And so I think it's very important to, like, spark interest because you cannot force someone to teach, like, to learn all of these
things. But you can give the spark and then if you and then let them go, and then they will grab like, if if you give them hungry for the for the knowledge, they will go on their own and then become like a brilliant scientist. Yeah. Absolutely. I I I I wonder if you have an insight on this. Don't worry if you don't. But there's there is this cultural thing of of, you know, saying, oh, physics quantum physics is really hard. But, you know, art, that's that's not difficult.
But, actually, art is quite difficult to understand for some people, but it's sort of culturally not okay to say that. But it is culturally okay to say, oh, physics is too hard for me. What do you have an idea of why that is? I think it might come from nerd culture. It was okay to, like, hate on the nerds in, like, high school to be like, oh, it's just the nerds doing their books
things. And then it's not cool. And then I think arts and being, like, cool and playing music or being in the band or, like like, I'm I'm picturing the Skittle boys, but, like, that's not really but, like, the cool kids were not doing science. The couldkills were doing sports or cool things or art. And and then I think it was okay okay to hate on the nerds that were
doing the the book thing. And it might come in from, like, the high school clicks that happens because to be a scientist, unfortunately, you have to be really good at your homework. You have to, like, put some work early on. I had a very boring childhood in in high school middle school, high school, and, like, first year of college, lot of lot of homework, lot of working. And then the
cool the coolness comes later on. And so people maybe see the, oh, the nerds are, like, reading books and then you don't you don't do the cool thing until later on. There's a delayed gratification on, like, when it becomes extremely interesting. But you need to build all of that. I don't want to say boring knowledge, but, like, the the the stepping stone to do the cool thing at the
end. And maybe that's why I I mean, I don't know if it's the reason why people are okay to say quantum physics is, is, like, it's okay to to to dismiss it. But maybe that's maybe that's one of the reason the culture said, like, yeah. That's that's fine. Maybe maybe maybe it's because, quantum physicists don't have muscles, and so they can it's okay to beat them out. When you're selecting the the artist, you're a different artist each year.
More or less. Yeah. We've we've been trying to to do, we've been trying to keep the residency a year long because it works pretty well. We match the academic year from September to June, and then it's very important for for me to leave the artist enough time to build, like, confidence, relationship, and learn about all of these things. So usually, when I select an artist, we start by doing a talk. So we just invite them for a talk to talk about their practice.
And then I look at the people in the audience, our scientists, and see if it clicks or not. And it's not a judgment of the artwork. But even if we have an amazing artist and if nobody's interested in working with them, it's like the collaborating aspect of the residency is not gonna work. So it's a very difficult process of, like, finding somebody who's talented, who's willing to learn about it. And then one criteria that's very important is that the audits the artist needs to be able to
talk about their work. And I know a lot of a lot of artists are more on the I would like to let the art work for itself and, which absolutely fair, but, like, I'm on the science outreach camp. We need to, like, be able to talk about it. And so that's also one key criteria for the artist, to talk about the artwork, what it's linked. And so, usually, the residency goes as we left the first semester in the fall is fun exploratory
things. So I have a bunch of idea based on the previous talk they gave about, like, what their preferred medium is, what work they're doing will the kind of work they're doing, what will match different topic or different, like, materials. Like, if if somebody is doing installation with metal, I will direct them closer to, like, the super community folks where they use a lot of copper, gold, like, wires everywhere.
But if people are more interested in, like, software, we we I move them towards more of the quantum error correction algorithm teams and so trying to match them. But I'm also trying to be very careful on not necessarily, like, blocking them too much. We do a lot of, like, random meetings with different people because sometimes you get a spark. One, for example, Spencer Topol, who's a sound artist, came in and give a talk about his practice.
And then two grad students came over, and I was like, you were talking about all of this sound thing. We're using frequency period. We're using the same language for machine for machine for for quantum signals. And then they just started for, like, five minutes and then realized they were all three in a band, and then we made a quantum electronic noise music album together. And so that's something that I could have never come up, like, come up with.
And so I think leaving a little bit of flexibility in the residency helps a lot. So I'm trying to guide the artist towards what I think would be the most successful collaboration, but leaving a lot of room in the first six months. And then after that, we work on a key concept and try to build something. So I I keep we we call it the artwork in a very wide sense because we never know what is gonna come. And so in the past, we've done a light show, museum installation, drawings, albums, an app.
We've done theater while we produced the play, last, last May. And so there's plenty of things to do. And then we try to, work with the International Festival of Arts and Ideas. It's a it's a big festival that, celebrated its thirtieth anniversary, last June. And so it's perfectly timed. It's in June at the end of of the residency, and so we try to do something like that. Think about think about this festival a little bit like the Fringe in in Ambarra,
like, sort of this idea. And so a lot of artists come in town for two weeks. It's great fun. And, we we've been working with them, like, I think this is our eighth time in a row working with them, and they've been an incredible partners. And that's also an excuse of forcing us to go outside of the lab, outside of the university settings, and be on the on the on the New Heaven Green, which is this big plaza where we're like, here we go. We have some quantum things happening on the green.
With Serena, we had some installation on the green at one of the, Yale libraries and at our institutes to, like, force people to walk around and interact with us. And then we also had, Stuart Smith that did, like, a big quantum error correction light installation on the green. And so we we're really trying to to bring the people from the New Haven community, with us on this journey. Of course, I wanted to know more about that album. Spencer Topol was very interested in, like, hearing
what the Dada sounded like. So, basically, we did this live show, and the album is recording of the, of the the sets, with, like, minimum editing. And so they basically sent a a query to the labs, studied the quantum computers, run a series of of tests. And then from the data, it was slowing down to be audible because the frequency are in microwave, like megahertz. And so we couldn't really hear them, and so it would slow down to
be audible. And then we started with the composition or, like, hearing the actual data noise for the first, like, ten ten minute ish. And then as we start slowly in, there's more of a composition layering. Like, the the grad students, and then and the and Spencer Topo were working with, like, three laptops from different datasets and building in layers. And so it becomes more and more, like, tonal and more and more like like a composition, as as the the track comes in.
This this program is also a good excuse for me to, like, play on my, like, what if side of things because I have a theater background. I did theater for twelve years before, like, turning into science. And I think maybe this is where the sensibility for art came from.
And, I don't think I'm talented enough as an artist to make a living out of it, but I think I'm talented enough as a producer to help the same way that I'm helping research scientists, like, thrive in the environment at the institutes. I think I'm I'm really good at helping the artists, like, thrive and create beautiful piece of work, from that experience in the residency. I wonder whether it goes the other way because clearly the the the artists are inspired by the science
to create something. But are the scientists inspired by the art as well? Yes. I think this is why this program has been lasting for so long with that interruption is because scientists got something out of it. There was, it was a bit of a question at the start in 2017. People were like, why do we need an artist? Like, nature is beautiful on its own.
Look at my plot. It's beautiful. Like, it's so weird that this data coming from nowhere does this, like, beautiful curve or, like, these these beautiful patterns. And I was like, yes. But we could sublimate and, like, your plot is beautiful, but having an artist in helps you, like, elevates this this data into, like, a really, like, breathtaking visuals,
and then it inspire you. Like, one element that was, like, really the the ground zero of this this kind of project was, like, if we do some artwork, we could have some cool visual on the wall. So when you come work in the institutes, you have this, like, beautiful mural, you have this beautiful portrait of quantum computers, you have this beautiful installation. It just makes the space welcoming and fun to live in. And then it started building
in when we had the installation. Some of the researcher came in and said like, oh, I've never thought about this diagram this way before. Like, I think a lot of the work we've been doing is blowing up something that's so small at the human scale so you can experience it. So the researcher, the students come in, enter these spaces, and get to experience quantum error correction algorithm as their body comes in and, like, trip sensors, proximity sensor.
They can come in and see the webcam tracking them and, like, making the diagram in real time. And I think it really offer them a way of, like, entering the machine and have a better understanding of this thing. The interesting about the the album, for Spencer Turpel Quantum Sound is that we took data science data from our labs, turn into a piece of art with the album Quantum Sounds. And then, the, the editor, Eduardo Miranda came in and said, like, oh,
fascinating word. Would you be interested in writing a science article about how you turn this into, like, what were your sonification process and stuff like that? And so, basically, the we went from science to art to back to science, because we had, like, a peer review chapter, and so we went full circle. And now people are using this kind of technique to do that with their own data.
So I think it does help, and and I think the reason why this program is running for so long without interruption is because everybody gained something out of it. The public is gaining interest in the science. The the young, students, first year students are gaining interest and maybe are joining courses in quantum science. The the artist gain, like, breadth of of knowledge and, like, depth into the artwork. The scientists are gaining a lot of, like,
better understanding of what they're doing. Like, they're looking at their data another way. And so I think it's it's a win across the board for everyone. Are you looking around the world going, I want that person next. I want that artist to come here. I am incredibly lucky. The first time around, it was incredibly difficult to find an artist willing to take that that challenge. I remember going around New Haven, which has a very thriving artistic scene.
They had, these, in October, they do, an art open studio where every artist in New Haven opened the doors and so people can come in. And I went around with this call for artists. I was like, hey. We want to do this. Like, we have a white wall in the institutes at YEQI. We just would like some arts, like, inspired arts. And and then that's when we, that's when I met Martha Lewis, who has been working on, like, history of science, and then human human knowledge and and and
all of these things. And so we we worked together, and she had a lot of trust in me. I had a lot of trust in her. It was basically like, okay. We jumped together off the cliff. Let's see what happens. And then since we, I get an overwhelming like, my inbox is full of of people reaching out and say, hey. I want to be part of this. And so the the challenge has changed from, how can I find someone to, like, hack how can I have enough hours in the day to bring all of these people in?
Because people reaching out are doing, like, incredible work. But the limiting factor is, like, time, money, and, like, it's, unfortunately, the arts and science part is just a small section of my job. I talk a lot more about it, but, it it must be, like, maybe 10% of my job. And so it's all of the actual managing director job takes a big, big chunk of it. But if I could, I would be delighted to have that full time. That would be great. And so if you have yeah. Yeah.
If somebody's listening to the podcast and say, like, we would like to hire you to do that full time, please let me know. That sort of probably answers the question which was buzzing in my head at that moment, which is, you know, what gives you the most pleasure in your role? Is it is it this stuff? Is it when you've, you know, without being too selfish about it, you've had a hand in some beautiful artwork being created that wouldn't exist if it wasn't for what
you're doing in that in that role? Or is it if some breakthrough happens in the science side of things? I would say both. The the main difference is that in the breakthroughs,
I don't have any hands on it. I I, like, I only have this, like, helping on, like, making your life easier as a scientist, cleaning all of the red tape for you, making sure that all your grants and all your financings are done, and then you can just do science in peace, which these days quite the quite the challenge, on our on our neck of the woods. But with the with the odds, I, like, I think I'm finding again this, like, do it, like, almost this bench science aspect
of it. I'm doing it, like, for the installation with Serena. She has these beautiful pieces of paper with metal in it engraved with the patterns that the scientists are doing. And so we had to, like, thread all of this with, like, an incredible amount of, like, very thin fishing lines and metal wires fuse, like, extremely delicate paper hanging from the ceiling, it's it's maddening. And she might tell you that it's a lot of work doing this thing. But then the the outcome is
really brilliant. And then, like, I'm proud of this because I actually put some, like, sweat and tears in in these things. The thing that's interesting is that often, the excitement about the the scientific breakthrough at the, at the institutes is something that is linked to the artwork. I remember that in 2022 oh, 2022, yeah, there was a breakthrough in quorum error correction. We could do it in real time. So it was like a big deal for scientists.
And the artist in residence, at the time, Stuart Smith, was like, this is what I want to do. This is the cool thing. This is the hot new trend. And so we use the, real time quaternary correction algorithm in our installation. And so, like, it's it was linked to this. And with Serena's company in his course, the there was this thing on, on Kirk Katz that was, like, the theory was almost
there. A grad student was publishing results. So we had a breakthrough in this, like, quantum memory, and that's the thing that we worked on. And so I think the we can feel in the artwork the excitement of the breakthrough. So we we try to match, not because we're chasing clouds, but because there's really a buzzing around the breakthrough. People are really exciting. People are giving talks, about it in group meetings, in, like, seminars.
And so I think everybody's really excited about the breakthrough, about, like, how did we how was that work? And by being in our institutes, the artists, like, suck in the energy, and I think that's what translates into it. So you cannot by looking at the art, you cannot tell directly, like, oh, this is this breakthrough. This is this breakthrough. We're like, a lot of the key concept from these things, like, lie underneath the artworks.
Florian mentioned the artist whose work is involved in this year's collaboration several times during our conversation, so it seemed only right for me to catch up with Serena Scappanini. So my, recent focus about memory that was already, strongly related to my work, after more than twelve years of work with professor Michael Higley, professor of neuroscience at Yale, brought my attention especially to the quantum memory.
And, this is one of the focus that we we use to, you know, go further, trying to develop together a new language. The first vision that I that I had, been, lucky enough to develop with the researchers, was to deepen the way, quantum information is encoded in state of light or in the state of some atoms. So what I wanted to to see and to try to see working with the researchers, was, the natural dissolution of this quantum memory within the
states of light. And, peculiarly, they developed for me a software that allows me to see the pure state of light at the moment of the, encoding information at a quantum level. So starting from this, it was very fascinating for many reason.
First of all, visually, because the patterns of the superpositions of the state of the light are already very meaningful, and their, incredible, and strong symmetry, was at the first level, inspiring to make some drawings and to and to stay on these, shapes to try to suggest, and in this case, the work was very much provoked by the by the collaboration. The encoding of the quantum information and its natural dissolution.
There is also, as you know, a very strong and meaningful aspect that, at Yale, and not only at Yale, they are focusing about, like, the duration of the memory and and and to try to get the memory longer, of course, for the building of the quantum computer, but also for the pure research.
So the the effect of the natural dissolution and visually the the correspondence to the Kerr effect, so the, natural vortex that you can see within the states of the light that are, getting into this Kerr effect. And the effect of the environment was one of the point that we focus about.
Then from that, we build also some three d models in the space, and it was, really fantastic to work with researchers close to me to develop these models playing in the double way with the superposition of the particles, so with the impossible vision of, the different position in the space that at the same time, you know, are are inhabit by the particles, and on the other side, by their natural, dissolution and the way the state of light is losing the quantum information.
But in quantum mechanics, the way that happens is also that the environment has learned the information. So if the memory has been lost, the idea that, it is still somewhere in the universe was very inspiring. And this is also translating my language that is always very much, focus on the different densities and the different dimensions of the materials, moving and escaping from one dimension to another, both physically and conceptually.
So this relationship with the environment has been very much, a strong focus and a good provocative way to go ahead within the paper, within the materials, within the copper and aluminum that we use to, represent this moment of pure perfect memory encoding and its natural dissolution, its natural exchange with the external eyes. Is there a reaction that you want from
people? Do you want them to be able to to understand more, to feel it more, to I I generally don't, trust too much the understanding in a very debulgative way. Of course, there is explanation, but I'm I prefer if the feelings comes from the vision itself and the feeling, the physical, experience of the artwork. So, for example, regarding the states of light, we choose some of them, and I, made the drawings of the path, and we engrave these drawings within, some metal plates.
I generally work a lot with copper, but for this time, I chose also other superconductors like aluminum. And then for, some of the works, the the plate is hidden within the paper. So I I like to play with this, like, hidden word, as well as quantum word is like, there are effects of the quantum world surrounding us, but they their code, their, level of understanding of behaving is mostly invisible. So I also like to express it at this level. So there are the plates within the paper.
Nevertheless, you don't see them. I'm definitely sure that you can perceive the the metal structure surrounding you because then the paper is very often, displayed in, within installation that are immersive, so you are surrounded by the artworks. You can see some of the layers, but you don't don't necessarily have to see the wall and the old layers altogether.
And this happens also with the geometric structures that are surrounding the the spectator because the final, bidimensional geometric path is visible only from a top view or a down view. And so in this sense, I like the viewer to to to perceive and to go layer by layer, but not necessarily to understand everything altogether. And this is, lovely also because everyone can experience its favorite, part of the work or the part that is more in resonance with his understanding.
And, for example, in, many of my works, I also, put, some ink drawings that are very subtle, very even then invisible, relate to memory and to their natural failure. I I try in this sense to be gentle, not to push too much my vision to the viewer, but to respect the relationship with the viewer in this sense. Quantum physics teach us that everything has a physical storage in the universe, even memory.
I'm I use for this a lot of, inks for the drawings to be very fluid, to be very, you know, like a river, untouchable, but absolutely present. And, coming also from the neuroscientific and neurobiological point of view, the way we think and we store and we remember through images, is also an aspect that I wanted to suggest.
And with the with the quantum world that is, of course, naked from images, it was even more provocative to to try to play with this idea of memory and with the with the patterns of superposition to, suggest even a more visible, insides of the quantum world. So they people can actually experience this still. Right? You say is the there's a a solo show, and it's some of it is permanently part of the Yale, exhibition space. Exactly. One of the artwork has been,
acquired. It's now part of the permanent collection at the Yale Quantum Institute that is visible by appointment with, with the director with the managing director of the institution, Flora. And, at the Haas family arts library at Yale, there is a temporary show. There is a solo show with an art installation, along the space of the atrium of the library. And, then we had some temporary installation, in the green for the festival of arts and ideas.
And, in the library in particular, we have these 10 panels where the, the play with the memory and this river of images is build upon, a sense of, vision of our reality. And beyond, there is this level of geometric patterns that maybe at the beginning you you don't understand what they are, but for some reason, they are, I think, very familiar to our eyes. And, they are done peculiarly with the cure effect of some states of light.
So with this idea to to have always a multilayered reality and a multilayer, work that suggests you to go from one frequency, we can say, to the other, to the next, and to experience this idea of gradient of, perception. You know, when you were growing up and you were thinking maybe I'm gonna be an artist, did you think maybe I'm gonna be an artist who's doing some sort of, work with quantum physicists at Yale? Is that where you thought
your art was going to go? Well, I think that you don't exactly have a moment, to imagine how it will be when I'll become an artist. You just feel, oh my god. It's happening to me. And to be honest, I always had this sort of vision of, like, the the geometry surrounding every shapes of nature was very familiar to me even in a sense of natural vision. So, I think that I always had a very close feeling with science, and this is also what I try to to
combine at the university. Even if in Italy, you have to choose if you follow a humanistic or scientific path, but I always try to combine and to follow more of this. So I think, you're right. It was already there, and, yes, I had the feeling that, these two aspect were strongly connected.
And not by chance, when I studied at the university, art history and then peculiarly, the middle age and then the Renaissance art, the feeling that science and art were totally connected was very strongly, related to my studies and to my vision. So I think, yes, for both of the sentences. Decide that there is not a moment that you decide. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, you just have to, you know, accept. Do you when you were at Yale, does what what's the
atmosphere like there? Do the scientists sort of embrace the fact that they have an artist there? Are they all fully on board with this idea? Yes. Of course, not by the whole group, but, also in the vision of, Florian Carr, the curator of the program. There is this idea to create a resonance that is more personal. So with the few of them that we have been starting the collaboration, it was very deep. And, with, Harsh Babla, we developed really, the vision.
They developed the software for me and then the models, and so I can really see together with him what kind of, okay, if they are using a state of light, I can see from the software which is the pure one and which is the combination of, like, the from a to b for combination if an error is coming. So it was really shared and in real time. And, with with some of the researchers, we went really deep in the in the research, in the relationships.
And then I I've been very honored to be followed by professor Sterling professor Steven Gervin. And, we deemed the discussion was more in a theoretical or most philosophical way to deepen the subject. That was, very important to build also the statement beyond. And, so, yes, I I found it very,
very open. That in a mysterious way, even from other people that were may maybe more suspicious or, I don't know, shy or not interested, but, I'm glad because also working there for one year, we had the chance to to become more familiar and, and especially the work to talk with its own language that is not just, made by, our human relationship, but I think it talks with, its, own, presence. And now one work has been acquired by the Institute, so it's part of their permanent collection.
Another work is, on a solo show at Yale at the Haas University Arts Library. So I hope that the work can continue to to engage, in this discussion between, art and quantum physics. Do you find that maybe you think like this anyway, but do you find that that that knowing this about quantum when you're working on this this sort of the artwork that you're working on and speaking to these these quantum physicists, does it change the way you see the world around you outside of when you're working?
Definitely. Yes. It provoked the work and, it provoked my vision. And it's nice because now I won another grant. I'll be working again at Yale but with another institute. But in these days, peculiarly, I was still, focusing and and working about the quantum experience and the quantum world. As we said, there are quantum effects in the world around
us. So once you once you see, once you perceive or once you even just have the, intuition of some of this law, I think you can't leave them or they can't leave you. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. So, you've you've got another commission. What's next then? I'll be, the artist, in residency program at the Institute that is, again, focused on neuroscience and neuro computational aspect of robotics.
A little bit, I've been working also about AI, but my will is to continue the focus on memory and and so to combine even my recent experience at the YQI because I think I'm gonna be in touch with the Yale Quantum Institute, and and some of the collaborative project could go ahead. But the involvement now is more, again, related with neuroscience. And, there is also one very intimate aspect of my work that goes, to touch the encounter with the people.
And for this, I'm gonna work with 10, Alzheimer, patients. Alzheimer, this is Wow. That sounds really interesting. But I think that there is a a peculiar common lexicon between different, aspect of this work about memory. And so this is what I'm kindly trying to develop, combining different insights. That is mostly from neuroscience and from one to word. Oh, it's amazing. It's amazing.
What a lovely, lovely thing. How if people would like to know more about your work and to follow you, how would they do that? K. Follow me on Instagram and follow my upcoming exhibitions that will be at at Yale again, next year. I'll be also I'll be most probably working in Europe next year. So I I I'll for sure update my website, cut this, but now it's not working because
of an attacker attack. Oh, no. It will be everything on next year, it will be everything on my website, and, I'm gonna have a presentation in Venice, most probably also a show in UK. And, I'll be working at Yale going back and forth from Italy to The US. So I hope that also the world will allow us to develop these, interesting projects.
Well, fingers crossed for that. And you can find links to all of Serena's work and, of course, the work with Florian and the Yale Quantum Institute on the Physics World website, physicsworld.com, where you can find this episode of the podcast. I'd like to thank Serena and Florian for talking to me, and if you're lucky enough to be near enough to Yale to experience some of this art, then I really recommend
you can get along to that. Unfortunately, I won't be able to myself, but I will be back next month with something else from this wonderful world of physics.