HISTORY OF GENERATIVE ART - Quantum Art

David Young, Quantum Drawings, 2021

In this History of Generative Art series, we explore the fascinating emergence of quantum generative art. While generative art has long been powered by classical computing, quantum computing offers entirely new possibilities, opening a new chapter in the evolution of generative art, where the principles of quantum mechanics become both a tool and an inspiration for artists.

Quantum computing is a revolutionary paradigm in computation that uses quantum mechanics to process information in fundamentally different ways from classical computers. It started in the 1980s, when Richard Feynman and Yuri Manin proposed the idea of using quantum mechanical principles to build more powerful computational models.

Interior of an IBM Quantum Computer, Source: IBM

Unlike classical computers, which use bits (0 or 1), quantum computers use qubits, which can exist in a state of 0, 1, or both simultaneously due to superposition. They also exploit entanglement, where qubits become interconnected, allowing changes in one qubit to instantly affect another, regardless of distance. These properties enable quantum computers to solve complex problems at speeds far beyond classical computers.

Antony Gormley, Quantum Clouds, 1999, Source: wikipedia.org

Jonathon Keats, Quantum Entanglements, 2011 © Jonathon Keats

Since the 1980s, major tech companies and research institutions such as IBM Quantum and Google’s Sycamore have been working on building and improving quantum computing technology. Even though these machines are still in the early stages, many artists are exploring how quantum principles can be applied to create innovative artworks.

Artists first focused on visualizing quantum physics concepts rather than directly using quantum mechanisms. Works such as “Quantum Man” (2007) and the “Buckyball Series” (2009) by Julian Voss-Andreae explored ideas like wave-particle duality, entanglement, and the ephemeral nature of matter. Other important examples include Antony Gormley’s “Quantum Clouds” (1999) and Jonathon Keats’s “Quantum Entanglements” (2011), both of which draw inspiration from quantum mechanics and translate these concepts into physical forms.

Libby Heaney, Ent-, 2022, Source: libbyheaney.com

Libby Heaney is among the first artists to directly incorporate quantum computing into her art since 2019. Her Lumen Prize winning piece “Ent-“ (2022) is a 360-degree immersive installation where she reinterprets the central panel of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights by animating her scanned watercolor paintings using her custom quantum code.

Another early adopter is David Young, who began exploring the field of quantum computing in 2021, focusing on understanding how this technology works. He started the project using quantum computers from IBM Quantum to produce outputs that were processed through his custom code, presented as “Quantum Drawings” (2021).

David Young, Q 7, 2021 (From Quantum Drawings series)

Pindar Van Arman collaborated with quantum computing researcher Russell Huffman on “Quantum Skull” (2022), combining AI-generated art with a quantum computing technique. The process involved mapping qubits to pixels, encoding color values via qubit rotations, and recycling qubits across circuits due to hardware limitations. 

Quantum computers are still in their early stages of development, and access to them is limited. Creating quantum algorithms for artistic purposes requires a deep understanding of both quantum mechanics and programming, making this a highly specialized field.

Pindar Van Arman and Russell Huffman, Quantum Skull, 2022, Source: vanarman.com