Digital delights

Leveraging quantum-powered AI, Libby Heaney transforms Hieronymus Bosch's 15th-century masterpiece for her Berlin show

- NICK COMPTON

Plenty of artists explore science - its methods and mysteries, precision, occasional poetry, darkest prognoses. Few, if any, are as qualified for that entanglement as Libby Heaney. The author of papers with titles such as ‘Spatial entanglement from off-diagonal long-range order in a Bose-Einstein condensate', Heaney has a degree in physics, a PhD in Quantum Information Science, and held post-doc positions at the University of Oxford and the National University of Singapore.

Heaney, though, began to question how little the power, potential and application of quantum mechanics, particularly in quantum computing, was being examined in a wider context - social, political or ethical. Looking for new ways to both leverage and question quantum computing's super-charge, she completed an MA in Art and Science at Central Saint Martins. Today, her work interrogates the intersections of quantum mechanics and physics, at once mind-bending and multipurpose; technology, especially Al; and representation, identity and bias, cultural and coded.

Heaney's Elvis, 2019, is a twin-screen Aldriven deepfake that puts her head where the King's should be and vice versa, while Lady Chatterley's Tinderbot, 2016-17, sees an Alversion of DH Lawrence's lusty aristocrat navigate digital dating. Her latest and most ambitious work to date is Ent-, which opened at the Schering Stiftung in Berlin in February, before moving on to the Arebyte gallery in London in May. Commissioned by Light Art Space, a German foundation set on exploring the relationship between art, science and technology, Ent- is an immersive installation that employs quantum computing, AI and gaming technology to reimagine the phantasmagoric central panel of Hieronymus Bosch's triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights.