Quantum physics into insane interactive artwork thanks to Tomas Saraceno

Date
5 November 2012

However ruddy excellent your week is shaping up to be, I’d put good money on the fact that you’d change your plans if it meant a trip to Tomas Saraceno’s new creation. The ever ambitious Argentine has taken over the huge Hangar Biocca in Milan with On Space Time Foam, a series of transparent membranes suspended 24 metres in the air. It’s an extension of the Cloud Cities project which took over the roof of the Met in New York earlier this year, and once again the emphasis is very much on interaction.

You’d need a head for heights to take the leap of faith out onto the piece and you need a head for complex physics to grasp the ideas behind it, inspired as it is by “quantum and string theories that assert that the fundamental layer of existence, the subatomic Planck realm (where intriguing physical theories of wormholes and multiverses exist, where superposition, decoherence and entanglement occur) is in fact structured as a foam.”

“String theoreticians have speculated that the Big Bang, the origin of our known cosmos, emerged from two such tremendously sized membranes crashing into one another,” he goes on, “sparking the superluminal expansion of energy-matter that typifies our early inflating foamy cosmos.”

Mmmmm, foamy cosmos. Ok he lost me, but it’s still brilliant. To Milan! The show runs until February.

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Tomas Saraceno: On Space Time Foam (photo by Alessandro Cocco)

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Tomas Saraceno: On Space Time Foam (photo by Alessandro Cocco)

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Tomas Saraceno: On Space Time Foam (photo by Alessandro Cocco)

Above

Tomas Saraceno: On Space Time Foam (photo by Alessandro Cocco)

Above

Tomas Saraceno: On Space Time Foam (photo by Alessandro Cocco)

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About the Author

Rob Alderson

Rob joined It’s Nice That as Online Editor in July 2011 before becoming Editor-in-Chief and working across all editorial projects including itsnicethat.com, Printed Pages, Here and Nicer Tuesdays. Rob left It’s Nice That in June 2015.

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