Libby Heaney

Ent- (Many Paths Version), 2022

Unreal Engine 4 application with sound, variable time 6-12 min loop

Dimensions variable

Ent- (Many Paths Version) is a playable adaptation of Heaney’s immersive projection Ent- 2022 Ent- (Many Paths Version) refers to the unwritten future of non-binary quantum tech and its inherent ability to dissolve the seemingly binary systems. 

In this playable version, audience members use an Xbox controller to navigate plural landscapes, encounter entangled forms & quantum generated hybrid creatures. Heaney is interested in hybridity and monsters as they are quantum-like as they straddle categories and sit outside the ‘natural’ order of things.

The computer game adaptation of Heaney’s immersive artwork Ent- allows audiences to experience and play through the inner workings of quantum physics – the innate queerness at the heart of all matter. Deconstructing Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, this non-binary universe portrays the incredible possibilities of quantum computing to dissolve and entangle seemingly fixed identities. 

The playable artwork brings audiences closer to quantum’s materiality, to see and feel what it means to be in a superposition – in two or more states at once. These new quantum ways of being are starting points to reimagine our material existence and contemplate possible futures away from binary categorisations. 

 

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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Ent- (Many Paths Version)
Ent- (Many Paths Version)
Ent- (Many Paths Version)