Libby Heaney

touch is a response-ability (Edition 3/3), 2020

Ed. 3/3 + 1 AP

Mixed media piece: 200 stills that are activated through code and displayed on a touchscreen (not included), NFT and physical print

Dimensions variable

Participation is vital in touch is response-ability as participants’ touch controls the artwork frames in this interactive touch-screen animation. The work exposes Libby Heaney's extensive research into representations of the body in computer vision and artificial intelligence and parallels in art history, highlighting which bodies are seen and which are neglected in both. 

Heaney uses her self-written quantum computing code to abstract the literal representation of the bodies, enabling us to see them from alternative, multiple perspectives – boundary-less and form-less. The stills are watched with a computer vision algorithm – Open-Pose – which loses track of the body as it becomes increasingly plural and quantum.

The title refers to concepts from Karen Barad's essay On Touching: the Inhuman That Therefore I Am.

ABOUT Libby Heaney

Dr Libby Heaney is an award winning artist with a professional background in Quantum Science. She is the first artist to work with quantum computing as a functioning artistic medium. Heaney’s practice explores quantum concepts and temporalities, combining diverse media such as moving image, glass and watercolour with cutting-edge technologies. In doing so she seeks to entangle interior landscapes with the impact of the exterior realm, asking big philosophical questions while remaining intimate, human and embodied. Recent solo exhibitions include Quantum Soup, HEK, Basel (2024); Heartbreak and Magic, Somerset House, London (2024) and Ent-, LAS Art Foundation, Berlin (2022). Her first artistic monograph was recently published by Hatje Cantz. Heaney’s project Ent- won the Lumen Prize and the Falling Walls Art-Science Prize (both 2022) and she was awarded the 2022 Mozilla Foundation Creative Media Award. Heaney has been the recipient of numerous Arts Council England grants, completed a residency at Somerset House Studios, London, and is in major private collections including Zabludowicz Collection and 0xCollection. Heaney holds a PhD in Quantum Information Science and worked as a post-doctoral researcher in quantum science at the University of Oxford and the National University of Singapore. She also holds a MA in Art and Science from Central St. Martins, London.

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touch is a response-ability (Edition 3/3)
touch is a response-ability (Edition 3/3)