Fruitful Exhibition, and beyond
When Florence Arts put out an open call responding to the prompt “Fruitful”, I remembered a line I’d heard about quantum mechanics: that it might be the most fruitful science of the last hundred years.
I don’t remember where I heard it, but it stuck. And it fitted with what I’d already been working on.
I ended up showing several pieces in the Spring exhibition, including the first interactive work I’ve presented in public.
A starting point
The part of quantum mechanics I kept circling was the idea of measurement. In the quantum world, an object’s position isn’t always something you can know in the way we’re used to. Interaction changes what’s possible to say.
That sounds technical, but my way into it was simple: what would everyday life feel like if that kind of uncertainty held at our scale?
The work began as still-life drawings. I started fracturing the surface—first to echo the refractions I was seeing in glass, and then more deliberately, as a way to think about superposition.
Before moving on, I made some linoprints to look at refraction in glass more closely.
Quantum SVG
Next, I wrote a small app using openFrameworks. It deliberately breaks the accuracy of position in a digital drawing.
I started thinking of that strand as Quantum SVG.
At the same time, I was looking at Barnett Newman’s work. I made a colour-field generator—another diversion that ended up feeding back into the final pieces.
I then joined those ideas together.
Developing Quantum Fruit
As I worked toward the “Fruitful” open call, I pushed the project into an installation format.
I made it run on a small Raspberry Pi computer and built it to respond to nearby movement, ready for the gallery.
Drawings on paper
At that stage I wanted to expand the work in a few directions. One idea that made it into the Spring exhibition was a set of small ink drawings made with my pen plotter.
Installation at Florence Arts
At Florence, we arranged the physical work alongside the interactive work. And (surprisingly) it all ran without issues for the full six-week exhibition.
Further developments
After the show, I developed the work further. This included drypoint prints made by the pen plotter on aluminium plates.
From there, it started to branch again. One new direction was a series of portraits of key early-20th-century physicists, made in graphite on Polydraw.
