Dissertation: The Story of June
Before I knew the word ‘Creative Computing’, I admired its unique property of mixing things, which are forcefully divided from each other, but also had a doubt of its value of ‘art’. Even after joining the course, I found myself looking into what other’s doing in their Fine Art or Illustration courses and felt jealous. They can create art without computers, and for general public, that’s the beauty of it. I seriously wanted to answer the question in this long process of deep thought. What am I doing with new technologies which as a creative medium to me? How can I present a new point of view to the audience so that the result from Creative Computing could be also received as ‘art’, not as the hype of few tech nerds. And the final one, can I call myself an artist? There’re lots of prejudice, identification and doubts going on. Because I’m living in this world not only as a student but also as a being who interacts with strangers.
What is an interaction? An interaction could be a conversation, a gaze, a phone call or a button in the mobile application. Because the world gets complicated, the more interaction are coming up onto the surface. However, now there’s only buzzwords from Silicone Valley with Tiktok, Instagram, X and even the thing called Metaverse. People interacts to the world within those services, but can we truly call it as ‘interaction’? The day was in the middle of June. I just finished the final project of Creative Making: Advanced Visualisation and Computational Environment and the class showcase was going on. Lots of people tried my VR experience. The thing is, I didn’t only include the soap bubble gun and locomotion inside of the experience. I created the climbing wall where people can climb and balls that people can throw. Like I’ve expected, people yelled at the vacant space whenever they throw the ball. They screamed and panicked when they climbed the wall. I was staring at them, and I thought: This is the true interaction which humanity truly enjoys.
Which interaction does Creative computing provide to audience? Think of them as future customers. I personally thought the modern artworks created with Creative computing skills too much relies on LEDs and screens. Imagine the world without light. Without the fancy 50-something screen with mini-LEDs. Where our artwork goes? Aren’t we too focusing on the format of the webpage, the LED strips, the abstract movements inside the screens? I would like to change this trend. The interaction should be more natural. That’s why I did an experiment in the computational environment. Of course, shooting virtual enemies might be fun. But I just wanted to focus more on our natural movement-the physical interaction.
What’s the other thing that I’ve got a huge passion? The answer is Quantum computing. Quantum computing is also built upon interaction. It’s using the world’s most tiniest, fundamental interaction to encode information. In Classical mechanics, we can precisely predict the future and study the past. But in Quantum mechanics, all things work with probability. Probability of quantum-scale beings are emerged or not. There’s a way of visualisation where researchers tried to map quantum-scale interaction to 3D. It’s called Bloch Sphere. It’s useful for mapping few qubits as a representation of a sphere. Wherever the vector points, that’s the quantum state for the qubit. It’s hard to imagine or explain the quantum state and their probabilistic nature, but at least I can imagine they’re acting inside of high-dimensional number space, not on the flat surface like we’re using when we design a quantum circuit.
That’s the common thing between humans and quantum-scale beings. We’re happy when we’re interacting spatially. We cannot live without meaningful interactions. And obviously, without quantum-scale beings, humans cannot exist. We should thank for them. And here’s my goal of this dissertation: Whatever the format of the artwork is, I will work with spatial interaction. I want to do something about Physical computing and Quantum computing. Because they’re sharing the same nature. I’ve got loads of ideas, and the thing that I really want to do is making a huge maze so that the audience can enter and get lost inside. So that they can feel the feelings of quantum when they are in the maze.
But I heard back from CCI technicians about the sad truth. The space isn’t enough for that huge physical installation. And there would be a huge cost to build such of thing. So, I also imagined the 2D maze on the floor or on the wall but that’s not enough. This shouldn’t be just a random walk. There has to be a logical reason and a result. But I don’t have time to explore the huge connection between poetry, 3D space, music, etc. Because I insist poetry is another form of 3D interaction using words. Music also interacts us with spatial interaction. And for Quantum computing as well. Everything is connected. But I need to figure out how can I accomplish that goal in this small amount of time. Like Rebecca warned me during our first meeting, it should make sense and deliver the good storytelling of What I did, Why I did and How I did.
I just finished the Summer term. I need some rest. Apart from the courseworks, I also completed IBM Quantum Challenge 2024. So, I deserve rest. While reading this book in Inner Temple Garden, imagining the enjoyable moment at Moth Quantum, which is the company that I will start working at from July⋯⋯.
