PROBABLY/POSSIBLY? by JoAnn Kuchera-Morin, Luca Peliti, Lance Putnam

Title:

PROBABLY/POSSIBLY?

Artist(s) and People Involved:

Exhibiting Artist(s):

Symposium:

ISEA2017: 23rd International Symposium on Electronic Art
More artworks from ISEA2017:

Medium:

INSTALLATION

Artist Statement:

An immersive interactive media composition and visual/aural quantum synthesizer that splits a hydrogen-like atom’s electron into superposition combining various orbital shells.

PROBABLY/POSSIBLY? is an immersive, visual, aural, interactive, composition/installation that tracks the probability currents and gradients of a hydrogen-like atom’s electron while in superposition, combining two to three different probability wave functions according to the time dependent Schrodinger equation. Spin on the x-axis of the electron is displayed through different hue-color combinations that show spin-up and spin-down of the electron, resulting in a possibility of up to 6 spin relationships on the x-axis alone, among the three wave function combinations.
We present our studies in composing elementary wavefunctions of the hydrogen-like atom and identify several relationships between the physical phenomena and musical composition that has helped the process. The hydrogen-like atom accurately describes some of the fundamental quantum mechanical phenomena of nature and supplies the composer with a set of well-defined mathematical constraints that can create a variety of complex spatiotemporal patterns. PROBABLY/POSSIBILY? explores the visual/aural appearance of these various combinations of two and three wavefunctions of an electron with spin in a hydrogen-like atom, highlighting the resulting symmetries and symmetry changes as visual/aural narrative.