Likely the first ever artwork generated by quantum computing in 2019.

Quantum computers process information very differently to standard digital computers: the computation is non-binary rather than binary 0 or 1s. The computation literally takes place across many parallel realities simultaneously.

The first frame in the animation is one of Heaney’s a watercolour painting of a cephalopod suspended in space. The painting was made on a very wet surface so the paint spread out like waves, and blended and blurred with other parts and colours. Only fixing when it dries, this painting technique partially mirrors quantum processes.

A scan of the watercolour painting was then processed by quantum computing. Through quantum entanglement between the pixels, the pixels of the original image move around the image plane in a (dis)continuous fluid way, mirroring quantum wavelike behaviour.

Cephalopods are both a symbol and metaphor for quantum computing today. Cephalopods evolved separately to mammals and are said to have an alien like intelligence as two thirds of their brain is delocalised in their arms. In human culture octopuses have often symbolized powerful and manipulative organisations as well as eroticism and desire.