Laura De Decker
I'm a visual artist using computer programming as an artistic tool to create large-format abstract prints, video sequences, or interactive multimedia environments. My artistic interests intersect with concerns of quantum information because both are engaged with the dualistic properties of our world including: object and subject, theory and practice, art and science, modernism and post-modernism, classical and quantum, wave and particle, psychological and physical, and digital and analogue; these are at the heart of fundamental physics and my creative explorations using colour and geometry. This work resulted from my artist residency, and collaboration with Raymond Laflamme, at the Institute for Quantum Computing at University of Waterloo.
This image uses form and colour in relation to the Bloch sphere to artistically represent the probability distribution over time of the position and spin states of a quantum random walk. Triangles with a positive slope represent up spins, and a reflection around the horizontal axis represents a minus sign (right angle up). In quantum mechanics there are potential superposition states between two extremes such as up and down spin. In contrast to classical random walks, over time the highest probabilities shift left or right, away from the centre start position. The rows, starting from the bottom of the image, represent the passage of time.