Name: Heartbreak and Magic
Brand: Libby Heaney
Price: 116000.0 USD
Availability: InStock

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Libby Heaney

Heartbreak and Magic, 2024

Interactive VR experience

Duration variable

Ed. of 3 + 2 AP + 1 PC

A new virtual reality artwork and physical installation by the award-winning
Somerset House Studios artist and quantum physicist Dr. Libby Heaney.

Drawing on Libby Heaney's own experience with personal grief and sudden loss, the
artwork explores the non-binary and non-local qualities of quantum physics to offer
alternative perspectives on how we think and feel about the self and existence. The
immersive installation invites you to connect deeply with emotions by exploring the
layers of self in both the physical and virtual realms.

Heartbreak and Magic will include virtual reality artwork set within a specially designed physical installation featuring mixed-media paintings, connecting to the virtual experience. You can expect a shifting, multilayered landscape that seeks to evoke themes of cyclicity, liminality, and the multiverse.

The installation continues Heaney’s explorations into the “magical” possibilities of
quantum physics – in particular the inherent plurality and interconnectedness within
concepts such as superposition and entanglement. Heaney developed the work
through an iterative, experimental process involving both physical and digital forms
of creativity, from movement practice, writing, drawing, and painting to bespoke
quantum computing code and game engine prototyping. Heartbreak and Magic brings her experimentation with quantum computing into virtual reality for the first time.

Heartbreak and Magic is commissioned by VIVE Arts in partnership with Somerset
House.

Please book here: https://bit.ly/HeartbreakandMagic

ABOUT Libby Heaney

Dr Libby Heaney is an award winning artist with a professional background in Quantum Science. She is the first artist to work with quantum computing as a functioning artistic medium. Heaney’s practice explores quantum concepts and temporalities, combining diverse media such as moving image, glass and watercolour with cutting-edge technologies. In doing so she seeks to entangle interior landscapes with the impact of the exterior realm, asking big philosophical questions while remaining intimate, human and embodied. Recent solo exhibitions include Quantum Soup, HEK, Basel (2024); Heartbreak and Magic, Somerset House, London (2024) and Ent-, LAS Art Foundation, Berlin (2022). Her first artistic monograph was recently published by Hatje Cantz. Heaney’s project Ent- won the Lumen Prize and the Falling Walls Art-Science Prize (both 2022) and she was awarded the 2022 Mozilla Foundation Creative Media Award. Heaney has been the recipient of numerous Arts Council England grants, completed a residency at Somerset House Studios, London, and is in major private collections including Zabludowicz Collection and 0xCollection. Heaney holds a PhD in Quantum Information Science and worked as a post-doctoral researcher in quantum science at the University of Oxford and the National University of Singapore. She also holds a MA in Art and Science from Central St. Martins, London.

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