Sounding Qubits

FILE 2024 | Quantico
International Electronic Language Festival
Eduardo Reck Miranda – Sounding Qubits – Brazil

Although he has learned classical musical instruments since childhood, Eduardo Miranda’s favorite tool for composing is the computer. The researcher has been delving into artificial intelligence and innovative computing methods for compositing for some time, as they offer fresh insights and ideas beyond his own.

A quantum computer deals with information encoded as qubits. A qubit is to a quantum computer what a bit is to a digital one: a basic unit of information. In hardware, qubits exist in the subatomic world. They are subject to the laws of quantum mechanics.

Quantum computers are like super-powered versions of classical digital computers. While a digital computer processes data in a linear, step-by-step fashion, a quantum computer can explore many possibilities at once.

Operating a quantum computer requires different ways of thinking about encoding and processing information. This is where composers can benefit greatly. This technology is destined to facilitate the development of unprecedented ways of creating music.

Bio

Composer who works at the intersection of music, science and new technologies. His background as an artificial intelligence scientist and classical composer with early involvement in avant-garde pop music informs his distinctive music. He has composed for BBC Radio 3, BBC Concert Orchestra, BBC Singers and Scottish Chamber Orchestra. He is a professor at the University of Plymouth and a research associate at Quantinuum, where he explores music composition with quantum computers.

ad/ab Atom

Kurokawa then analyses, filters and distorts this data into an artistic rendering of an atomic space in which the laws of quantum mechanics would theoretically be visible. “The term ‘ad’ in the title means ‘to/toward’ etymologically as a prefix in words of Latin origin and ‘ab’ means ‘away from'”. he explains. “It is recombinant of neologism ‘adatom/abatom’ which means ‘to atom/from atom’, where the laws governing nature blur“.

YOUARENOWHERE
Conjuring a futuristic sort of shamanism, Andrew Schneider’s YOUARENOWHERE experiments with the virtues of sensory overload via quantum mechanics, parallel universes, and the “Missed Connections” board on Craigslist. Battling glitchy transmissions, crackling microphones, and lighting instruments falling from the sky, one guy on a mission and a tricked-out interactive new-media landscape merge to transform physical space, warp linear time, and short-circuit preconceived notions of what it means to be here now.

池田亮司
이케다 료지
РЕДЗИ ИКЕДА
superposition
superposition is a project about the way we understand the reality of nature on an atomic scale and is inspired by the mathematical notions of quantum mechanics. Performers will appear in his piece for the first time, performing as operator/conductor/observer/examiners. All the components on stage will be in a state of superposition; sound, visuals, physical phenomena, mathematical concepts, human behaviour and randomness – these will be constantly orchestrated and de-orchestrated simultaneously in a single performance piece.

transmutation
In the weird and wonderful world of humanoidquantum mechanics, dimensional transmutation describes a phenomena which changes the state of a parameter by adding dimensions to its dimensionless condition. This experimental film applies this principle to visualize the complex interactions between atmosphere and climate. It utilizes a six-dimensional framework, comprised of regular space-time augmented with climate data collected between 1993 and 2011. Changes in global tropospheric temperature, mean sea level, and atmospherical co2 concentration are mapped onto the color palette, shape, and stereoscopic depth of a video clip, depicting a low-lying shoreline in Indonesia, threatened by rising sea levels. The film begins ‘flat’, but over time, with increasing co2 concentration in the atmosphere, its stereoscopic depth expands, and the landscape opens up to the observer, while temperature and sea-level changes modify color and shape.