Artist Stewart Smith has designed a human-scaled light installation, in collaboration with Yale Quantum Institute researchers and students, that investigates the latest in quantum error correction research—an essential tool in the pursuit of fault-tolerant quantum computing. Visitors are invited to circulate through this interactive forest of vertical illuminated beacons; their bodies acting as proxies for the destructive quantum noise and decoherence that arises within a quantum device as it operates. In response, the illuminated beacons recognize these “quantum errors” and attempt to mitigate them in real-time, illustrated through patterns of light that ripple across the collective. This attempt to resolve observer-induced “error” is driven by actual quantum error correcting algorithms researched and developed at Yale University.
The crowning lights atop each beacon gently allude to the New Haven Green’s spooky history as a temporary respite for souls en route to a rapturous beyond; metaphorically drawing energy from beneath the grassy surface and transmitting it heavenward—like a photon traversing an impossible barrier in the cold, dark, and isolated environment of a quantum device’s dilution refrigeration tank. And just as the beach hides beneath the paving stones, perhaps a united future of students and workers can grow from this soil of uncertainty, seeded by the momentum of generative artificial intelligence and new forms of computation that promise to redefine what it is to labor, produce, and consume.
We invite you to traverse our small forest of light, weaving your own path of human error—as we all do—through the spaces between. And don’t fret. Our algorithms can tidy up.
CREDITS
Artist: Stewart Smith
Scientific Consultant: Yue Wu
Producer: Florian Carle
VIEW THE INSTALLATION
Beneath the Green, The Quantum
Stewart Smith
Prior to Unity, Stewart Smith worked with renowned hybrid studios like Google’s Creative Lab and Data Arts Team, and founded Moar—a technology and strategy consultancy. Together with his amazing colleagues, they’ve won industry awards like the Cannes Gold Lion. What really makes him happy is partnering with smart friends to take on the impossible—or ridiculous.
As a kid, Stewart taught himself to code, but in college he chose to study art rather than computer science. He received an MFA in graphic design from Yale, worked in London for a few years, then made a permanent home of Brooklyn, New York where he occasionally writes small things.
Smith's artwork has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, ZKM in Germany, the SFMOMA in San Francisco, and is in the permanent collection of the Fondation Cartier in Paris. He has also appeared in publications such as Domus, Esquire, and Creative Review where he taught graduate courses that mix code with graphic design and has been on various judging panels including the TED “Ads Worth Spreading” competition.
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