FEDERICA ZAMBELETTI / KOOZ More Heat Than Light references the title of Philip Mirowski’s homonymous book. What prompted this titular appropriation, and how does it frame your solo exhibition at Stroom Den Haag?

AGUSTINA WOODGATE To note something before we go on: Stroom also means current in Dutch, as in electric current. That became important for me — not that I had redirected my entire exhibition around that note, but my practice is always site specific. The fact that stroom means current, while the exhibition actually begins by remodeling the electrical power grid of the building — it sets the ground for what happens inside.

I had been making work with a specific focus on circulation, as a way to explore the built environment — the dynamics that govern circulation and the politics of its design. Firstly, my main interest has been the circulation of natural or ‘common’ resources. In order to understand the dynamics of circulation, I study the materiality of the infrastructure that makes it possible. This leads me to intersect with the language of urban design and architecture. When I was invited to have an exhibition at Stroom, three years ago, I was prompted to think of projects from a “wish list” — the gallery was keen to act as a platform and springboard for a new chapter; for me this meant looking at the circulation of a local resource.

I had been researching the circulation of water and capital, and also practicing a form of circulation of information through radioee.net, a radio project which I co-founded with Stephanie Sherman fifteen years ago. Together we wrote a thesis pointing at the electromagnetic spectrum and its capacity; inquiring on what regulates the flow of information. It was necessary to understand exactly what electromagnetic spectrum is in order to think of its alternative potentialities. The starting point was the spectrum allocation map, which looks like a kind of cartography in which the air is divided up in squares. It's quite provocative to see that the air is actually divided into a grid — it led me to understand ideas behind standardisation and protocols, besides the physics of how things actually work. This really led to the realisation that the regulation of communications starts in the factory, the frequency and mode of communication is already designed and decisively set at the factory level; the device will transmit information at that frequency and no other.

I then asked myself how we could communicate across long distances without the need of devices? The response was telepathy. So then I really looked seriously into telepathy — as seriously as possible, because telepathy has been exiled as a pseudoscience; that is to say, experiments have never yielded, in a scientific manner, results that were always the same. Those who tried to explain telepathy in the most scientific sense were pointing towards quantum physics; that’s where I decided to pause, thinking that I'll get back to it when I'm ready. When the invitation came from Stroom, I picked up that dream of understanding the potentiality of quantum physics in communication infrastructures. Luckily, in looking at what was happening in the Netherlands around quantum research, I came across Kian and Mariagrazia’s team at QuTech, which was setting up a really important experiment on the teleportation of particles, also known as entanglement, at a metropolitan scale. It has been done before at a very short distance but never before over such a large scale, 23 kilometres. This was happening between Delft, where Kian and Mariagrazia’s lab is located and The Hague, where the Stroom Den Haag art center is. So this was an obvious condition, precisely framing the specificity for this project as the location where this experiment was taking place. The Netherlands is a leading country in such experiments, where I could access this knowledge directly from the people that are actually working with it. Within my short, initial meeting with Mariagrazia and Kian, they already dropped some interesting content; they described some experiments made with imperfect diamonds and things that look like photographic lenses. Can you imagine how this sounds to an artist? I was absolutely excited to see these imperfect diamonds and everything unfolded from there.

Coming back to the name of the show, Philip Mirowski’s book actually has a subtitle that is quite interesting. To quote it precisely, the title of the book is More Heat Than Light: Economics as Social Physics and Physics as Nature's Economy, which sums up the book quite well. Mirowski’s thesis is about the foundations of all economic models that we have present today, which are actually modeled after the laws of physics and their formulas have their history in labs. Now, the laws of physics are invariable — that's how they become laws. Things always behave in the same way; you can run experiments and always find the same results, for scientific method. When these same laws were taken away from the lab and implemented in economic models, within a structure that actually is flexible and malleable — as our society is — they don't quite behave or respond in the same way. This could help to explain certain economic imbalances and tensions that we experience daily. So this was a really important book for my practice in the study of circulations: to understand the formulas regulating circulation at large and also to learn the history of the mathematical formulas itself. These ideas are fundamental for so many things in development right now, especially in technology.

There is also the linguistic pun — the English idiomatic phrase, in which “more heat than light” implies a level of hype or noise, as distinct from the reality of what is communicated. I found that to be the case around quantum physics; when researching popular science, every other paper seems to be professing the evolution of quantum science, geared towards an audience that doesn't necessarily understand what that is. Speaking with the QuTech team, you learn that these ideas are experimental rather than applicable. So there's also some confusion around what quantum principles actually are and how they might be applied to systems today. I felt immersed in this noisy confusion myself, questioning reality. That adds the linguistic element to the topic. Then too, the title of the show refers to what occurs in the space: the exhibition produces more heat than light, quite literally.

KOOZ Before we hear from Kian and Mariagrazia, a quick question on how your art practice imbricated itself within a highly scientific context. How can art help to decode that context for a wider public? Do you think art can offer insight into a field that is maybe inaccessible for most viewers?

AWI think that the question and the possibility of access is the main key. I've experienced, together with Kian and Mariagrazia, the shared space of experimentation; it was really inspiring to see the scientists walking into my exhibition and wanting to run experiments inside it — just as I was motivated to run an experiment in their laboratories. So the curiosity of the “what if” is a shared space.

This is not the first time that I collaborate with disciplines that are far from my own. In fact, my practice is rooted in these collaborations. I see art as a space for provocation, a place to open up a gap in which we could try something that makes sense, but maybe it also doesn't, right? A place for that slight displacement. My first proposition for Kian and Mariagrazia was for them to run the entanglement experiment with a camera lens recording it. Of course, at first I was a bit scared: would this even make sense? Am I asking a dumb question? But they were so excited. That was great, to realise we’re on the same page.

Of course, I was only able to propose this idea after talking for two years and actually understanding what was happening and what I wanted it to create. Most importantly, being assertive that the core intention was not to explain quantum physics, nor to bring the lab into an exhibition space, but actually to model an experiment with the same restrictions that they have in the lab. How can I model a communication system inspired by quantum principles? This would not be quantum communication but rather inspired by the same principles or challenges that scientists face in that field.

It took a moment to get there, to ask the right questions in order to find my design method. I even took quantum algebra classes to be able to speak their language, to get closer to those questions. I guess it also took a moment for them to understand where I was going and how to share their knowledge in the best way; perhaps they could speak to that. It seemed to me that scientists have normalised many things that, when taken outside of the lab, are impossibly poetic or even ridiculous. As an artist, I occupy a space of translation, or even an experimental journalist. For instance, the fact that they work with imperfect diamonds: there is so much politics and poetry behind this material. The value of diamonds, as we know it today, was largely constructed over time through cultural, economic, and marketing factors, rather than stemming from inherent scarcity or intrinsic value. But also, the unavoidable relations between Diamonds and the Dutch colonial project as well as the romantic symbolism of gifting a diamond ring. These kinds of connections are immediate when researching the politics of materiality. For me, the power of collaboration is the way in which we look at exactly the same thing from our different points of view — and to share these views. To arrive at that enrichment that is equally important for both sides; for me, that is always the goal.

KOOZ It's quite beautiful to see how you immersed yourself in the language of quantum physics; I’m keen to hear from Kian and Mariagrazia on the ways that the collaboration with Agustina help you view the experiments from a different perspective?

MARIAGRAZIA IULIANO I will address the end of your question — Kian can tell you more about the experiment itself, as he actually executed that — and the perception we have of our experiments in our lab. I visited the exhibition at a quiet time, with freedom to enjoy the details. As soon as I entered the space, I must admit that I immediately recognised the sounds from our lab. On a normal day, hearing that sound can be very annoying. Yet in the exhibition space, for the first time, I heard the sound as being really beautiful. For the first time, I really enjoyed that sound. Walking in the space, the sound changes based on the interactions of visitors with the exhibition itself. From then on, the actual purpose of the exhibition unfolds. I would say it’s a social purpose because, as Agustina was saying, we read and hear about quantum physics in daily life, but probably few people understand what it actually is. Behind all these ideas, there’s a lot of work. This is work that I do every day, but sometimes I don't see the beauty in it. For instance, I might be looking at a bunch of lenses with samples of diamonds. Most of the time, I just notice the defects and flaws that a sample might have. But when I saw the picture of my sample in the exhibition, I found it to be really beautiful. At the same time, it also helps people that don't belong to this field to understand that there's much more beyond what you read in the newspaper; there's actual work, there are people behind it.

KIAN VAN DER ENDEN Thank you for bringing the hourglasses into the conversation. They don't look like what they use in the lab, but they do contain raw diamond chips; the structure of their materiality — of the carbon atoms — is exactly the same structure as the diamonds available on the market, in the exchange. That translation is, I think, the moment in which the audience understands that the image of a diamond that we all carry shares the same materiality, it's just a different shape.

There are two hourglasses that point to the hourly wage of diamond workers; in the other room, there are three more hourglasses representing the value of the temperature needed to run these experiments. For me, it was incredibly alarming to see these differences too; not the amount of diamond chips representing the temperature, but rather the energy cost in relation to the labour cost of the researcher, that is actually making the experiment happen. Obviously, the researcher is worth just a few carats, while the value of the temperature is like over 200 diamond carats. This also brings forward the difference in values and costs.

KOOZ The fact that such an experiment relies on diamonds — Agustina already alluded to the Netherlands’ colonial past — and the way that that connects to labour is very poignant. The nature of the scientific experiment itself remains elusive; could you attempt to explain it?

KVDEOf course. Firstly, the whole ethos of Qutech and the advancement of quantum technology is specifically geared around engineering new types of computers. We want to build a new type of computer that follows the laws of quantum physics; we know that if we can build those types of computers, that they can solve very specific but complex computational problems, that current computers — which we call classical computers — cannot manage efficiently. Usually issues lie in large optimisation problems, where you need to figure out one answer from a whole bunch of variables. This could include logistical questions, weather predictions, situations where you have too much information for a classical computer to process in a reasonable time. Working with the laws of quantum physics, we know that a quantum computer could do these tasks; that’s the basis from which we start.

Twenty or thirty years ago, the technology of nanofabrication — that is, the bolts and chips in all of our computers right now — became good enough that we could start thinking about making nano-structures, so small that we could start to make and control quantum conditions at the lowest level. That was a paradigm shift, where we were accurately able to control and test theoretical physics that we have known about for 100 years. This meant that, finally, the construction of a potential quantum computer was on horizon — still twenty years ago. Now, if we fast forward to the present day, we have a wide range of different quantum bits, or qubits. We are at the very early stages of figuring out the type of technology that can build such a large quantum computer; one example we’re interested in is a specific qubit in diamond; in fact a defect inside diamonds, where two carbon atoms are replaced with one nitrogen and one void. In molecular terms, this combination forms a kind of hole, that we call a defect center or a colour center; when illuminated, it reflects light of a certain colour. In other words, there is a method of communicating with it; if I send light to it, it will send light back in a particular way. That’s literally a level of communication we can have with an atomic defect.

Within our group, led by Ronald Hansen for the past fifteen years, this qubit is being researched from a fundamental point of view. A few years ago, our research around these imperfect diamond qubits meant that we were able to not only have one small quantum computer, but three. Two were in one lab and one was in another; all three could communicate with each other. From our group's point of view, we're building quantum computers as independent things; that's amazing, but they're much stronger if we can connect multiple units together, effectively building a large quantum computer or what we might call quantum networking. Currently, we have optical fibres that guide light particles; such fibres go through the entire country, right? We can do that using these optical qubits, because they provide an interface through which light can be steered.

That history helps us to arrive at the point where now we’re able to connect different quantum computers together, using what we call quantum entanglement. We have successfully performed this in the lab, but no one had attempted to take it outside of that context. A lot of things inside a lab allow you to maintain a very controlled environment: machines, temperature, environmental conditions and many other things are very well controlled. But if you want to take an experiment outside of the lab, that's a different story. In this case, we took it to the Hague. One beautiful thing about the quantum network that we built — with one quantum computer in Delft and one in the Hague — was that we were able to reuse fibres in the ground that had previously been used for the classical internet. We can't reuse the classical internet to build a quantum internet, but we can reuse certain components, like the optical fibres. Agustina, you also biked that whole trip, so you know how far it is. It's really cool to imagine that light is traveling all this way through the entire track.

AWJust one thing that I want to add, the kind of communication that Kian is talking about is not the kind that we understand, in which you are listening to me and then you will respond, right? Traditionally, when a computer sends a message to another computer, there's a moment in which a message travels to this other. The kind of communication that Kian is referring to is not one where the message has to travel. The nature of entanglement means that if they communicate, the message is already there. There is no relay.

KVDEAlmost, indeed. You're right that through the entanglement between different quantum computers, the things that happen on one side can happen instantaneously on the other side. This is correct, but unfortunately doesn't mean that the information contained in whatever you potentially want to communicate can be transferred instantaneously. That still requires what we call classical feedback; you still have to send an additional message to basically recreate the information from one side to the other. And it's actually really important that that feedback mechanism is there, as information distribution is still limited by the speed of light, which is our hard limit. So entanglement mediates instantaneous changes, but any information exchange between two parties is still limited by the speed of light.

KOOZ I'm really curious to hear how the collaboration gave rise to the kind of elements which constitute the exhibition. We’ve talked about the diamonds and the explorations of associated labour — but there are elements to unpack in the exhibition which go beyond the translation of that experiment.

AWOne of the most important elements in the exhibition is temperature. The exhibition is a communication circuit regulated and coordinated by temperature, which is an experiment in itself. I think that certain things, as Mariagrazia shared, are about perception and experience. The exhibition is really an experience, which is very hard to convey through photos. There are numerous thermometers constantly reading the climate outside and inside the space, and they affect the flow and the content of information being transmitted. The moment one enters the space, you understand that your presence is affecting the communication system operating there. Perhaps you don't understand exactly what is actually happening, but you will recognise that there are shifts, whether you're a scientist or not. Things happen; things start lighting up or shutting down; information is concealed or revealed. This only happens when a temperature difference is registered.

KOOZ What are the similarities between the experiment staged within the exhibition, and the actual experiment that you run scientifically?

KVDE On the experimental side, we kind of have extremely strict control from sort of the atomic level all the way to the kilometer scale. For instance, such a piece of diamond has to be cooled down to about minus 269 degrees celsius, so the local temperature (which, at those atomic levels, implies movement and vibration) is very calm. If we have to do this to be able to control it atomically, this type of control really goes all the way up to the kilometer scale. This means that we can't have too many temperature fluctuations in the lab, for example, because the lenses might change ever so slightly. We're really on the edge of what's possible.

For example, fibre connections that are tens of kilometers long are usually buried several metres beneath the ground — but they are still affected, to quite a large degree, by the temperature outside. There’s an interesting offset; the heat from the day reaches the fibre at night and then, during the day, it cools down again. Even so, this temperature change expands or contracts the fibre slightly, you can almost see it with your eyes; over ten kilometers, that’s quite a lot. These types of variation are things that we already notice in the experiments, in terms of maintaining a stability that would enable this quantum entanglement. It's still bizarre to me that the level of control needs to be understood at the starting point, all the way to the end — from atomic to kilometer scale. We really have to think of everything.

Referring to the presence of people: one thing is that we all give off actual heat, right? If you pack five people in a room, each of us emits about 100 to 200 watts of energy — that’s almost a space heater, right? So you can’t just allow a number of people in the space, because it really messes with the temperature in the room, which could interfere with the experiment. Not only that, we also emit infrared light — that’s why you can see whatever my body does through an infrared camera. This can also change the readings that we get; particles from any external light source can interrupt the measurement of light particles that we need. Any type of unplanned interaction could influence the outcome of experiments like this. We don't necessarily focus on trying to eliminate those things completely, but we try to make sure that any outside influence doesn't interact with whatever is important. You have to make sure that you engineer an experiment that can take 99.99% of unknown factors and still function. Those are really the hard things to get right.

I also wanted to tie in something parallel to Mariagrazia’s experience; I was very taken by the things that Agustina would see in our work, that indeed we look at so professionally. These things are just a part of my work — then all of a sudden, Agustina comes with a question like, what is an observation? It is a bit strange when you have to start thinking about it again and explaining it to yourself. We've had that several times with Agustina; with certain words like interference or coherence — things that really speak to her, but for us, are somewhat dry in their relation to our work.

AW Thank you for bringing that up. Some of the works actually have text on them, which is literally taken from research papers by both Kian and Mariagrazia — I harvested several words from them, for example there's a measure that is called ‘time after heartbeat’; just that alone becomes quite a poetic terminology. There are others, like supremacy — in terms of quantum supremacy — which can be quite provocative; it also prompts a critical view on how these things are named, and what we preempt with such vocabularies. Perhaps it is our lack of vocabulary that causes us to use a word such as supremacy, which has such a political connotation outside of the quantum world — but in the lab, it refers to the demonstration of quantum computation that solves a problem that cannot be solved classically in any realistic timeframe. It’s the same case with terms such as fidelity or uncertainty. There are moments in which vocabulary steered the design of the exhibition quite a lot; these were among the most interesting conversations that we had. The discussions between us became quite philosophical at points, perhaps because we interrogated terms that are not even questions in this field.

MIThere is actually an open debate in our community as to whether it's legitimate to use the term quantum supremacy to describe the fact that quantum technology, at a certain point, will be better than classical technologies — as Kian explained before. The debate usually vacillates between supremacy and a more moderate term, like ‘advantage’. There are different opinions and points of view. This also has an impact when you’re publishing a paper, for instance; it can affect a referee’s decision as to whether that paper may be published or not. One might be told that supremacy is not an inclusive word, that it might be better to change it and of course opens another discussion in the community. The appropriation of vocabulary in our field is something we debate.

AWIn terms of the similitude between the experiment in the exhibition and in the lab, it is demonstrated by the temperature, and how much this is of essence; merely a fraction of a degree could derail the experiment in the lab. In the exhibition, temperature is what regulates and even stimulates the communication system. The entire circuit of the exhibition is based on temperature measurements; this builds on the point Kian was making, whereby every factor that we can control and also what we cannot control needs to be on the table.

There are four thermometers in the circuit on the exhibition; two inside the space and two outside. The positioning of two of them outside brings the uncontrollable element, registering a temperature that is unknown, that will vary depending on night and day for the duration of the show. The information that will be transmitted through the circuit will depend on the temperature reading. The circuit contains a certain amount of information; the temperature measurement will condition and determine the output that the visitor is able to see: if the temperature is X, you see this image, but if it is Y, you would see another.

This circuit mechanism is used to live-edit a two-channel video projection. There are two video projections, connected or routed to two computers — called Alice and Bob. Alice holds 100 videos and Bob holds 100 videos; none of these videos are the same — but for one video, shared across both computers. This particular shared video is only visible when the temperature is at a very specific degree (when a temperature of six degrees is reached in all four thermometers, at the exact same time). The potential for Alice and Bob to actually show the same video at the same time are dependent on this temperature being the same — it’s a very low possibility. In fact, a human will never see it, because the moment a human enters the exhibition, the infrared and heat sensors will ignite and the space will respond; resulting in a human never being able to see the two videos synchronise. The moment of the two videos synchronising, in fact, would be the reference to that quantum moment in which entanglement takes place. The moment a human observes this, the entanglement is broken.

One of the inspirations for that temperature challenge or parameter was the absurdity of being able to achieve a temperature that doesn't exist anywhere in the Universe, that is minus 269 degrees, almost absolute zero. This temperature does not exist outside the lab; to me, it was the starting point of thinking through the experiment. Besides the fact that the lab is growing its own diamonds; the takes two or three billion years to grow naturally, while the lab is growing diamonds within weeks. The potential of our technology to achieve this level of artificiality — in which geological time is defied and unknown temperatures are achieved — speaks to the way in which we are terraforming the planet, the potentialities that we know exist. These examples are in quantum physics, but it’s about potential.

KOOZ Feeding off this last point, on the artificial environments that nurture such experiments: what are the opportunities and potential harms presented by the technologies that enable such conditions? There must be repercussions, right?

MIIt's indeed a very good point, because normally we talk about what advantage our research or our field can bring to society. At the moment, to enable these technologies we need very extreme conditions that can only be achieved in the lab. In the long term, this means two scenarios. In one, such technology can only be used in these conditions, which would become very impractical. You would need researchers or scientists. At the same time, you need many resources; it incurs high energy consumption because you need to run these setups full time, 24/7 — which is not really sustainable. On the other hand, all these disadvantages could push research towards something better — that would be the second scenario. This extension of research means that other fields besides quantum can benefit from these research efforts, such that the technology and everything that has been developed can be used outside the lab and even in other fields. One needs to look at both sides. At the moment, maybe the disadvantages of these technologies could outweigh the advantages in terms of usage, but research can open the path to better conditions.

AWI would add one — perhaps spicy — note, regarding the application of such technologies as weapons — which is quite a threat. As with almost any new technology, behind its development is the Department of Defence, and so it is in the case of quantum research. That’s one reason why opening up the conversation really matters. Scientists are also blown away by what they are discovering — it's really mind-blowing when you start looking at the universe in such miniscule detail and learning how things work. But perhaps we lose sight of the question: do we need to know everything? We might be uncovering a can of worms; such was the case with the atomic bomb.

KVDEPerhaps, to hook into this, a month ago, I presented a paper that I've written myself titled ‘Advancing a future responsible quantum internet’ that really goes further, on a meta level, into these types of questions. From the ethical, legal, societal and policy aspects on new technology development, how are we doing on the quantum internet side? This is quite different from what the ethics are around quantum computing. There are a lot more questions that arise about what happens when data is sent, privacy around data, about communication networks that perhaps cannot be hacked. There are all sorts of legal questions that come in on the quantum internet discussion. Hopefully, the paper is also out. So you can just give that a glance, because it's written quite accessibly, on these what we call dual-use applications — applications for good and for bad.

Indeed this is one of the topics within the quantum internet space that requires more attention, and yet it is somehow not really discussed. Maybe through these types of exhibitions, we can think about how to expand that conversation, now that this technology might become very real. What are the consequences if such technologies are implemented in the world? Would our legal framework even support it? Do we have some ethical considerations if a corporation owns a quantum network — should it be a government, or should it be neither? I think it's very good to kickstart these discussions; they can only help to bring light to the issues that are becoming very real.

KOOZ I think that's a fantastic way to end the conversation. Thank you all so much for your time.

Bios

Agustina Woodgate lives and works in the Netherlands and Argentina. Her sculptural and conceptual practice includes spatial interventions, objects, and installations. She explores how information technologies condition the social fabric and, consequently, society, determining its accessibility. She investigates systems, associated value theories, and design logics operating in urban environments. Woodgate has exhibited at the 12th MediaCity Biennial, Seoul; 2019 Whitney Biennial, New York; IX Berlin Biennial; IV Istanbul Design Biennial; Kulturpark, Berlin; and KW Institute for Contemporary Art.

Mariagrazia Iuliano has a master’s degree in Condensed Matter Physics from Sapienza University of Rome. She is currently pursuing a PhD degree at QuTech, which is part of Delft University of Technology. Her research is focused on experimental quantum networks and applications. Recent works include: the benchmark of an interface between heterogeneous elements of such quantum networks, enabling long-distance quantum communication, and the demonstration of the first quantum operating system, which paves the way for the development of software and hardware-software interfaces that can bring quantum network technology to society.

Kian van der Enden obtained his Master's degree in Applied Physics at the Delft University of Technology. During his studies he co-founded the Delft Hyperloop team where he designed and built its signature magnetic levitation system, leading it to a championship victory in Elon Musk's ‘SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition‘ in 2017. Following this, he worked at Microsoft's Quantum Architecture department before starting his PhD at QuTech. There, he built the world's first metropolitan-scale quantum network deployed between quantum computers, making national and international headlines. As science communicator, he is awarded to be the national 'Face of Science' by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is now a renowned keynote speaker on quantum technologies and consults industry and governments about quantum internet initiatives.

Federica Zambeletti is the founder and managing director of KoozArch. She is an architect, researcher and storyteller whose interests lie at the intersection between art, architecture and regenerative practices. In 2022 Federica founded KoozArch with the ambition of creating a space where to research, explore and discuss architecture beyond the limits of its built form. Prior to dedicating her full attention to KoozArch, Federica collaborated with the architecture studio and non-profit agency for change UNA/UNLESS working on numerous cultural projects and the research of "Antarctic Resolution". Federica is an Architectural Association School of Architecture in London alumni.