Questioning reality, perceptions, and ordinary representations we have of it, are issues that motivate many artistic approaches. This data, subverted by the artistic approach, can be of different natures. It may have been brought by our senses and reflect our ordinary environment, just as it may have been historically or socially constructed. Also, the encounters between artists and scientists, by creating spaces conducive to the crossing of perspectives, appear as formidable sources of inspi-ration. By shifting our ordinary representations towards infinitely small orders of reality, quantum physics can foster such displacements.

The Fantastic Foundations of Reality12

At the quantum scale, a number of eccentric phenomena appear. Among the most surprising is the measurement problem, which suggests a reality forever “veiled”, to use the expression of physicist and philosopher Bernard d’Espagnat13, wave-particle duality, quantum superposition (a particle can be in different states at the same time), quantum entanglement (there is a correlation between two particles, even if they are separated by kilometers, as long as they were initially together), the tunnel effect (phenomenon of passing through walls), or even, depending on how the theory is interpreted, the existence of multiple worlds14.

Because it deals with objects that cannot be directly visualized, whose properties and behaviors are highly counter-intuitive, quantum physics readily lends itself to artistic interpretations. A thought through images as desired by Bohr, when he stated that “when it comes to atoms, language can only be used as it is in poetry: it is not a matter of worrying about describing facts, but of creating images and establishing mental connections”15. This thought through images can also be nour-ished by other philosophies, such as Eastern philosophies16.

But then, how can we account for infinitely small objects, whose scientific rep-resentations have themselves evolved significantly? Just think of our images of the atom, which we used to represent as a planet and its satellite, a model now abandoned in favor of an electron cloud. This latter model more accurately rep-resents the probability of electron presence around the nucleus. Quantum phys-ics assumes a world with blurred boundaries, making it even more complex to understand.

The time is long past when physicists were urged to “shut up and calculate”17. Quantum formalism raises ever-present questions of interpretation, for example concerning its descriptive scope. Do the mathematical formulas on which quan-tum physics is based describe our world, and if so, what world do they describe exactly? These philosophical questions raise stimulating challenges about the nature of reality and our knowledge of the world18.

Can artists in turn express the astonishment that the founders of quantum physics experienced, which fuels lively philosophical discussions? Provoking a “distur-bance” by opening the door to the infinitely small, at the risk of falling into Alice in Wonderland’s rabbit hole: a fantastic backstage, where the impossible becomes possible.

Quantum Plasticities19

One difficulty in collaborative approaches between artists and scientists is to avoid the double pitfall of a literal illustration of the theories used and a distortion of them. Many artists skilfully navigate these complexities to imagine works—very often, new media installations with a video component—that engage quantum physics in response to different intentions and at various levels20.