Lecture: Libby Heaney on Quantum Computing
Artist talk during Berlin Science Week 2020
What are quantum computers and how do they depend on quantum physics?
Why are corporations and governments interested in quantum computing? What can quantum science teach us about the way we make sense of our world? In what way can the discipline impact how we tell stories, build meaning and create art?
In this lecture, Heaney gives insight into quantum computing and the challenges it holds for the future of making art. Her talk is followed by discussions with philosopher Professor Jenann Ismael and quantum scientist Professor Vlatko Vedral. Together, they will explore the impact quantum physics can have on our day-to-day-reality when transposed from the micro to the macro world.
This talk conveys the core subject matter of a new work being developed by the artist and commissioned by LAS, for which Heaney uses IBM’s cloud-based Q System One quantum computers. Art can acquire the tools to rupture causality by following the tenets of quantum science, which creates a space where entities – human, non-human, machine – relate, interfere and entangle.
5 November 2020, 6 pm, Artist Talk with Libby Heaney
Berlin Science Week 2020, Livestream
Libby Heaney
Dr Libby Heaney is an artist and quantum scientist, recognised as the first artist to work with quantum computing as a functioning artistic medium. Spanning both the personal and the universal, her practice draws on the shapeshifting, non-binary concepts and non-linear temporalities of quantum physics, exploring resistance to human-centred futures and combining diverse media — from installation, performance and virtual reality to video games, watercolour and glass.
Heaney engages interdisciplinarily with the promises and underlying power structures of emerging technologies. Her work challenges technologies to work against themselves in order to reveal their limitations and risks.
Heaney’s solo exhibition Ent- (commissioned by LAS Art Foundation and presented at Schering Stiftung Berlin in 2022) kicked off LAS’s engagement with quantum technologies. Other recent presentations include Shadowscapes at Orleans House Gallery, London (2025); Qlimate Tongues at ArtScience Museum, Singapore (2025); Quantum Soup at HEK, Basel (2024); Heartbreak & Magic at Somerset House, London (2024); Frieze Sculpture, London (2024); RMIT Gallery, Melbourne (2021); and the Lowry, Manchester (2017).