Doubting Conventional Reality

Erwin's puss by Lynden Stone: housed at Centre for Quantum Dynamics, Griffiths University

"Should there not be sufficient space for all sorts of curiosities which in the end the distinction between "physical" and "psychical" loses meaning?"

With this quote from physicist Wolfgang Pauli, Queensland College artist Lynden Stone begins her PhD dissertation Doubting Conventional Reality: Visual Art and Quantum Mechanics. Her
dissertation surveys other visual artists' quantum-inspired attempts to blur the distinction between objective and subjective reality as well as describing her own works on this topic which include paintings such as Erwin's puss, video installations such as Kevin wondered if the Moon existed when he didn't look, experiments with a phantom-limb simulator, the Metaphase Typewriter Revival Project, projects using the Psyleron Mind Lamp and many more. Lynden was recently honored as Artist-in Residence at Crane Gallery in Philadelphia where she participated in a joint exhibition with conceptual artist Jonathon Keats. Next month (February) Lynden exhibits a sampling of her work as one final step in the completion of her doctorate degree.

Here's Lynden's press release for her exhibit. Readers of this blog who live near Queensland, Australia, will have a rare opportunity to test their ability to "doubt conventional reality" in several imaginative quantum-physics-inspired contexts created and constructed by Lynden Stone.

Announcement for Lynden Stone's Thesis Exhibition

Two Mars Bars and the love note from Robert Smeets is the final exhibition by Lynden Stone for examination of her PhD in Fine Art at the Queensland College of Art. Based on the premise that quantum physics demands a re-evaluation of conventional reality, Stone sets out to challenge the viewers’ conventional understanding of reality that is objective, mind independent and knowable.  Viewers can test their ideas of reality by using, for example, the mechanical Mind Dispenser. This work provides random quantum events that, arguably according to quantum theory, allow a viewer to select, in a race of gobstoppers, the colored lolly of their choice by using only their consciousness. The Mind Dispenser is a collaborative piece created by Stone and final year Griffith University engineering student Anderson Tepas and Professor Steven O’Keefe.

The title piece in the exhibition, In another universe, my mother gave me the two Mars bars and the love note from Robert Smeets, 1993--2013, is a work concerning the quantum theory of parallel universes. This theory states that at every moment of choice, all possibilities manifest into multiple, branching universes. Stone presents alternate scenarios behind two doors of a kitchen cupboard. Behind one door is a representation of her parallel life where, rather than hiding the Mars bars and the love note in the kitchen cupboard, her mother did give her these things. In that life, Stone has lived as the wife of Robert Smeets in London Ontario, winning some minor painting prize for an underwhelming pastel still-life at the local show. Behind the other door is a representation of the life she has lead in this time-line.

Two Mars bars and the love note from Robert Smeets is on show in the Webb Gallery, Level 1, Webb Centre, Queensland College of Art, 226 Grey Street, South Brisbane, Queensland from 5--15 February, 2014. Gallery opening hours are Tuesday -- Saturday, 11am--4pm. The opening night event is Friday 7 February, 6--9pm.

Lynden's daughter Madeline interacts with the Psyleron Mind Lamp

Encounters With Quantum

Poster for Crane Arts Exhibit: May 10, 2012

I used to joke with my buddies in the Stanford physics department about the dangers of researching quantum reality. Look what a mess E = mc2 unleashed (atomic weapons, dangerous nuclear reactors, growing stores of radioactive waste) and that equation is essentially still classical and superficial--it doesn't really penetrate into deep reality. There are deeper mysteries than E = mc2--for instance, the quantum transition from possibility into actuality (P-to-A), which underlies everyday existence and which no physicist really understands. Messing with this process--the P-to-A transition--could lead to a "reality bomb" in which things that have already happened are simply erased as if they had never happened. Responsible governments have passed laws to keep Uranium, Plutonium (and marijuana) out of the hands of ordinary people because of the obvious dangers to civilization if these substances became widely available, but devices in which the quantum P-to-A transition is accessible are still not outlawed. At present anyone is free to mess with the fundamental process that brings this world into existence.

The Metaphase Typewriter is such a device. MT takes a fundamental P-to-A transition (radioactive decay) and turns the patterns of these decays into text and speech. MT explores the dangerous assumption that consciousness enters the phenomenal world by controlling P-to-A transitions. According to some thinkers, your brain may be such a P-to-A transition machine thru which "You" perceive and control (a part of) the world via this fundamental reality-creating process.

The Metaphase Typewriter is a P-to-A device which at present lacks a "soul" to animate it.

The Metaphase Typewriter is an open invitation for rogue consciousnesses, discarnate human spirits, alien minds billions of years superior to us in evolutionary fitness to insert themselves into our immature, childlike culture. Or human unimaginable forms of intelligence that will change our fragile culture in humanly unimaginable ways.

Construing MT as an "art project", Australian artist Lynden Stone has built and installed a Metaphase Typewriter at Crane Galleries in Philadelphia. She turned it on today. At the reception, crowds of sophisticated Americans will be sipping wine and socializing while the fundamental process that creates reality itself will be opening itself to occupation by any raw consciousness that decides to seize the day.

Congratulations, dear Lynden Stone, for accomplishing this feat before it becomes illegal.

Alternative to Marriage

"I've come to New York to introduce an alternative to marriage." --Jon Keats

With five millennia of history, and a plethora of religious and civil ceremonies, marriage is a popular means of producing families. Yet matrimony isn't the only method of uniting people, nor even is it the most effective technique. Modern science suggests a far more profound alternative, one that does not operate by religious tradition or civil mandate, but rather bonds couples by a law of nature: quantum entanglement. More here.