Q is for Climate (?)

“Can we learn to think and feel like the climate itself?”

Q is for Climate (?), 2023, single channel video with sound, 7min38.

Q is for Climate (?), where both the video and sound have been processed by Heaney’s non-binary quantum computing code, contrasts a nuanced, quantum-based understanding of the environment with linear modes of extraction in both carbon/oil based economies and our rapidly electrifying world.

Through simulated images and AI generated sound, Q is for Climate (?) questions how the power of quantum computers will impact the climate crisis and is based on in depth academic research, interviews with quantum climate experts and Heaney’s informed creative speculations around quantum’s radical potential.

A giant tentacled creature,  based on Heaney’s watercolour paintings, haunts the scenes and is at once a self-portrait, symbolising humanity’s monstrosity, and also invites comparison to cephalopods with their delocalised brains and alternative ways of understanding and sensing the world.

Polluted waters suggestive of lithium mining sites in the global south, toxic fumes, and thick black ooze alert the viewer to Big Tech’s current line of development, which seeks to harness the power of quantum to pursue and intensify our current regime of extractive capitalism. 

Yet the video’s progression into an exploded, non-linear narrative where all possibilities exist at once, melds perspectives and suggests new ones through Heaney’s cutting-edge quantum video editing technique.  Using the pluralities and entanglements afforded by quantum computing, Heaney layered footage offers an escape from this doomed evolution by suggesting an alternative paradigm. Embodying the inherent circular and non-linear temporalities of quantum physics, Q is for Climate (?) encourages us to reimagine our systems by envisioning unexpected, entangled collaborations and asks:

What if quantum thinking and feeling could optimise for the planet and people at the same time?

What is quantum helped us to think like the climate itself?

Q is for Climate (?) was commissioned by Etopia, Zaragoza.

It has been exhibited at Etopia, Zaragoza; Real Time, NXT Museum, Amsterdam; Quantum Soup, HEK Basel; When the Star Roses Pour, HERmit Space, MAHA Art Centre, Beijing and as a public space exhibition on a media wall at Gwangju Songjung Station, Gwangju.