Libby Heaney

Sneaky Feelers, 2024

Hard-glass sculpture

Left : 45.5 x 11.5 x 6 cm / Right : 29 x 14 x 6 cm

Sneaky Feelers focuses on the quantum qualities of glass.

Perhaps surprisingly, glass and quantum particles like the electron have uncanny similarities. They both melt and become fluid at certain temperatures. Glass melts when it is around 1500 degrees Celsius, and quantum particles become wave-like when they are at absolute zero (-273 degrees Celsius).

Whereas both glass and quantum particles become fixed and rigid in our everyday Newtonian world.

This sculpture explores this apparent state of in-between, where the glass assumes a slimy quality, becoming a tactile, ever-changing intervention in the gallery space.

Slime is a recurring motif in Heaney’s practice, symbolising the unstable nature of reality and the monstrous nature of self. It is also an entangling substance between all life forms. As Susanne Wedlich notes in her book The Natural History of Slime, there is no form of multicellular life that does not contain some sort of slime, mucus, or viscous gel.

In combination with the surrounding projected video works, Heaney sees the clear sculpture as a petri dish for entangling images of the environment.

By working with glass and testing the physical limitations of the medium, Heaney is proposing a new interpretation of Lewis Carroll’s iconic Through the Looking-Glass (1871). What if the fantastic world described by Carroll, where everything is upside down—even logic—instead describes the quantum world?

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.

Details

Contract address:
Token Standard: ERC-721
Blockchain: Ethereum
Metadata: Frozen and decentralized
COA: Verisart Certified

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Sneaky Feelers
Sneaky Feelers
Sneaky Feelers
Sneaky Feelers