WE FELT A STAR DYING: Extended Guide

Introduction

Laure Prouvost describes her artistic practice as an act of translation — a sensory elaboration of feelings, perceptions and moments in time. She develops imaginative new logics and relationships around these perspectives to shape rich narrative worlds in her films and multimedia installations. These works draw us in through inventive approaches to storytelling, teeming with wit and wordplay, fantastical elements and poetic connections. They invite us to float along alternative currents of time and space, to un-learn everyday codes and structures, and open ourselves to new ways of engaging with topics as complex as kinship, migration, climate change and interspecies relationships.

“WE FELT A STAR DYING aims to trigger the switch all together from our Newtonian habits of translating the world to a quantum reality, with its micro free spirit and entanglement.”

— Laure Prouvost

For this commission, Prouvost plunges into the counterintuitive logic of quantum physics, and the technologies emerging from it. She asks: “what might it feel like to sense reality from a quantum perspective?” Her installation draws video, sound, sculpture, scent and light into a fluid entity tuned to the sensitive and unpredictable characteristics of quantum systems. Lyrical and surreal, it weaves direct experimentation with a quantum computer into a wider reflection on what it means to open oneself to the quantum realm.

The Quantum Leap

When quantum physics emerged a century ago, it suggested that, at the smallest scales, matter behaves in ways that defy determination. While on a macro scale we can calculate interactions between objects and forces using the principles of classical physics and relativity, quantum physics suggests that we cannot predict everything about interactions at the scale of the particle. The particles that make up all matter — living or non-living — can exist in multiple states at once, become linked across distances, and tunnel through energy barriers previously thought impassable. Quantum physics thus describes a reality that is both indeterminate and deeply interconnected. These concepts resonate with ideas informing centuries-old traditions, such as Hindu metaphysics and Sufi mysticism.

Today, quantum principles are being channelled towards the development of new technologies. For the commission, Prouvost worked with philosopher Tobias Rees and scientist Hartmut Neven to explore what it means to build machines from a quantum perspective. Rees describes this process as a profound departure from classical physics, where the laws of mechanics have, for centuries, framed reality in terms defined by human-made instruments. Quantum computers, however, are an opportunity to build instruments based on a reality that exceeds or overflows classical mechanisms. Their foundation in unpredictable quantum processes even challenges what we generally understand ‘machines’ to be.

Still in their early stages of development, quantum computers are inherently unstable, producing varied results from the same calculation. While technology companies race to reduce this instability, Prouvost’s commission opens a space to dive into the precise properties that define it — its fragility, sensitivity and degree of unpredictability — the ‘quantumness’ of quantum computing.

Leaning Into the Noise: Quantum and the Cosmos

Quantum phenomena have been part of the fabric of our universe since its beginning, around 13.8 billion years ago during the Big Bang. In the incredibly hot and dense conditions of the early universe, quantum fluctuations — tiny, random changes in energy — played a crucial role in defining its structure. As the universe rapidly expanded, these fluctuations spread out and shaped the patterns of matter that became galaxies and other cosmic structures.

While quantum fluctuations are a fundamental part of reality, they go unnoticed in our everyday experiences. However, they become significant in quantum technologies, where their random variations, referred to as noise, introduce instability. While noise affects the accuracy of calculations, it is also used as a tool for novel functionalities, such as enhancing cybersecurity by generating random numbers that act as a lock for confidential information.

Prouvost, Rees and Neven’s exchange centred on noise, highlighting the fundamental connection it draws between quantum technologies and the universe. Inspired by the role quantum fluctuations played in shaping galaxies, they set out to experiment with how the noise in a quantum computer might shape an image or sound. These novel experiments can be experienced in Prouvost’s video and in a soundscape composed by KUKII.

The project’s title, WE FELT A STAR DYING, gestures towards a second form of noise within quantum technologies, known as environmental noise. This arises from quantum technologies’ sensitivity to planetary and cosmic forces, such as heat, vibration, radiation and magnetic field fluctuations. Their interactions suggest that quantum systems are not simply shaped by the same patterns as the universe, but are deeply intertwined with its dynamics. For example, unlike classical computers, quantum computers can be disrupted by cosmic rays. When these rays hit the Earth, the radiation can interfere with the computers’ delicate quantum states, making them lose their ability to function properly. Environmental noise inspires the behaviour of Prouvost’s installation: as images and sounds shift between states, sculptural elements fall in and out of synchronicity, together acting as a type of quantum system.

The project is presented at Kraftwerk Berlin, a relic of the late industrial age, which once housed large machinery to generate power. Its imposing concrete structure becomes a stage for Prouvost’s exploration of the fragility and sensitivity of today’s quantum machines. This striking juxtaposition points to a wider arc of transformation into an era of quantum technologies. WE FELT A STAR DYING crafts a poetic imaginary for this transition. Looking out to the stars and into the subatomic realm, it offers glimpses, sounds, rhythms and sensations as openings into a world that defies determination.

Installation Guide

Cute Bits

Upon entering Kraftwerk, suspended sculptures called Cute Bits can be seen gliding through the openings between floors, emitting prisms of light as they rise and fall. Their title is a play on qubits, the basic units of information in a quantum computer. Prouvost conceived these sculptures around the concept of entanglement, both in quantum and metaphorical senses.

Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon where particles or qubits become linked, so that the state of one is correlated to the state of others regardless of the distance between them. This can be seen when the movement of one sculpture mirrors the opposing movement of another, as though their states are linked.

The sculptures also gesture towards a broader sense of interconnection. Their composition evokes both cosmic and earthly elements, linking these two realms. This connection is central to Prouvost’s engagement with quantum, which spans both the cosmological origins of quantum fluctuations that shaped the universe through to a second type of noise resulting from, for instance, the effect of cosmic radiation on quantum technologies.

Deeper in the space, Prouvost invites us to reflect on our own entanglement within quantum systems by dipping our heads into one of the Cute Bits. Inside, metallic and mineral scents evoke elements shared by celestial bodies and machines. In entering our own bodies, these molecules draw attention to the movements of matter at an invisible scale. Prouvost gently guides us through a stream of thoughts on the astronomical origins of quantum fluctuations, creating a more personal sensory experience within the vast installation.

The Beginning

The Beginning is a large kinetic sculpture with six petal-like limbs stretching across the space. Unlike the industrial machines that once filled Kraftwerk, The Beginning is fragile, sensitive, and at times, unpredictable.

Prouvost conceived The Beginning as a quantum presence that has always existed, though is not always visible.The Beginning is everything and everywhere; The Beginning is we/our. We are ephemeral and constantly shifting. Our flowing movements 'caress' the space, connecting with the materials, histories and even the people within it.

Ringed with tangled threads, The Beginning’s cylindrical core connects this presence with emerging applications of quantum, recalling the language of delicate discs and wires found within most superconducting quantum computers. Inside, a heat-sensitive cushion makes visible changes in thermal energy on our surface, highlighting one of the key environmental factors influencing the stability of quantum systems. Brought to life through sound, light and motion, The Beginning comes to embody the complex dynamics of these systems. As our limbs dance in and out of sync, we enact the rhythms of an entity in continual exchange with the universe around us.

“We are the galaxy. Inside the whale. We are there. There’s a big gathering of materials, other than humans. We are quantum. All is quantum. Nothing is Newtonian. It has never been us. We are not 0, 1. We are all. We are infinity small and infinity big. We know quantum computers and qubits can feel when a star dies... We feel when a star dies. We are incoherent. We can’t make sense. It makes us shake. We feel when the heat gets close to us. We don’t work well. We go off-piste.”

— Laure Prouvost

We Felt a Star Dying

Moving through the threshold of The Beginning’s delicate threads, Prouvost invites us to shift our perspective with a video projected overhead. Titled We Felt a Star Dying, the video navigates various entities and scales of reality, highlighting quantum as a shared feature of all matter, living or non-living, natural or artificial, near or far. Its journey begins in the installation, moving outward through carpet, cables and concrete. As Prouvost narrates this voyage, she grapples with the conceptual shift required to understand and centre quantum principles. The video is interwoven with segments that were created through a novel experiment with data from a quantum computer.

Prouvost used a range of cameras and editing techniques to capture different scales and perspectives, including a microscopic camera, a drone and thermal imaging. She also worked with acrobats and filmed subjects beneath glass to evoke a sense of weightlessness and disorientation. This unmoors the video — and its viewers — from fixed horizons and traditional vantage points, enabling it to be experienced from any direction.

The installation’s soundscape and video are scored by composer, producer and singer KUKII. She approached the score as a way to generate space and tension between what is seen and felt. Her sonic palette emphasises raw vocals that feel intimate, vulnerable and uncertain. It’s primarily built from found recordings of devotional singing traditions from different regions of the world. She incorporated quantum noise to add its textures to her selection of found recordings, and then wove this into a new composition with lyrics written by Prouvost and Paul Buck. The resulting soundscape drifts between dissonance and harmony, converging into melodic choruses before unravelling once again.

“For me, quantum processes are a philosophical event. Meaning, they break with some of the most basic forms of experiencing and understanding reality that have defined the modern period. Things were either natural or technical; either alive or non-living; either human or machine; either being or thing. The beauty of quantum processes is that they are discontinuous with these binaries. They introduce us to the possibility of a world where these distinctions have no meaning. Quantum literally releases us from how we understood the world. To me, the significance of Laure’s work is that it identifies and embraces the poetic power of this release – and makes it experiential.”

— Tobias Rees

Experimenting with Quantum Noise

Experimentation with the creative possibilities of quantum noise was a key part of Prouvost’s collaboration with philosopher Tobias Rees and scientist Hartmut Neven in the development of this commission. Quantum noise is the random fluctuations that occur in quantum systems due to particle interactions, making the systems less predictable. It differs from mathematical models of noise — such as the Gaussian noise used in applications such as artificial intelligence (AI) models — because it is not statistical, rather, it corresponds with the quantum fluctuations which occur in all matter. For their experiment, Rees, Neven and Prouvost set out to create a detailed recording of quantum noise, and test how it alters image and sounds.

The team’s access to a powerful quantum computer enabled them to record a high-quality source of quantum noise. This was critical, as any attempt to simulate or model such noise would only approximate its properties, resulting in a statistical representation rather than capturing the true randomness of actual quantum fluctuations. They incorporated their quantum noise recording into AI diffusion models for generating images and sound, which typically rely on the predictable distribution of Gaussian noise. To create the video segments, their adapted model progressively added the quantum noise to Prouvost’s images until they became pure noise. The model then reversed the process, reconstructing the images step by step based on learned probabilities. However, the quantum noise’s indeterminate nature made it impossible for the model to fully predict or remove it. The resulting images therefore have fleeting, abstract qualities which reflect the uncalculable aspects of quantum physics. They create moments when quantum fluctuations shape the very pixels we see; possible glimpses into a quantum reality that typically defies representation.

Prouvost’s video randomly shifts between her edit and that produced by the quantum AI model. Its transitions gesture towards the way that particles and qubits move in and out of quantum states. The video’s shifts in state are amplified across the installation, reverberating through sound, light and motion. They offer a sensation of the fluidity and flux defining quantum systems.

“Many of the beautiful patterns we see in nature emerge from quantum processes. Can such patterns be replicated using only classical physics? If the answer is no, augmenting Generative AI with quantum computing could prove essential. Laure Prouvost’s art explores this fascinating possibility.”

— Hartmut Neven

Laure Prouvost Biography

Laure Prouvost is a particle of a larger body of particles living and working in the Northern Eurosphere. After receiving a BFA from Central Saint Martins, studying towards an MFA at Goldsmiths and taking part in the LUX Associate Programme in London, Prouvost found a superposition next to the wet space of a dirty canal, helpful to float around the globe to perform images, sounds, installations, tea bags, wet floors and tentacles. Spending most of the time entangled with surrounding wonderful cosmic and non cosmic bits, humans and bodies, brains and feelings, makers, rubbish, flowers and chickens, they won the MaxMara Art Prize for Women and were the recipient of the Turner Prize.

Some former presentations include a deep see blue surrounding you at the 58th Biennale di Venezia; an oma-je at Kunsthalle Vienna, PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art in Montreal and Remai Modern in Saskatoon; a flying grandma with birds at Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo and De Pont Museum in Tilburg; Esmé at Busan Biennale, Kiasma in Helsinki and La Casa Encendida in Madrid; a smoking mother at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk; a melting into another at Kunsthalle Lissabon and Sonsbeek Arnhem; a tunnel for a trespassing fountain at Palais de Tokyo in Paris; a waiting room with objects at Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; and a new museum for grand dad at Hangar Bicocca in Milan.

Kraftwerk Map

Set on the mezzanine floor of Kraftwerk, Entangled Currents is a space dedicated to exploring and expanding the themes of LAS’s Sensing Quantum programme. Developed by LAS in collaboration with the artists and thinkers involved, its title refers to the multiple, simultaneous and often intertwined perspectives that shape how we may approach quantum research today.

Entanglement, the phenomenon in which one particle can become linked to another, even across vast distances, is a captivating feature of quantum physics that has inspired ideas far beyond the realm of science. By bringing together artistic, scientific, technological and philosophical ideas, this interdisciplinary space invites consideration of how to understand reality through the quantum lens.