Quantum Collage
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I was sitting at my desk the other day, chopping up bits of paper as I am known to do, when my brain decided to take a sharp detour into the realm of quantum physics. This happens sometimes. One moment I’m cutting around the outline of a 1980s businessman, and the next I’m wondering why particles apparently can’t make up their minds until someone pokes them. I don’t choose these thoughts. They just show up uninvited and pour themselves a drink.
Anyway, one idea I kept coming back to is superposition. In quantum physics, that’s when something exists in multiple possible states at the same time. And how exactly does that relate to a scrap of paper sitting on my table waiting to be used in a collage? While that piece of paper is sitting there, before I decide on anything, it could serve multiple purposes. It could be the focal element of the work, it could just be wallpaper, or it could be quietly disintegrating in the bin by the end of the afternoon. All of those possible futures are there at once. Nothing is fixed. It is pure potential.
Then there is entanglement which, from what I understand, is what happens when two particles interact and suddenly their fates are linked. If one changes, the other feels it. That is basically what happens when I put two pieces next to each other and something sparks. They stop behaving like individual scraps and start behaving like a pair. A duo. A weird little alliance. One looks different because the other is there. Together they form a new meaning that neither of them had on their own. Sometimes this happens by accident. Sometimes it is the only thing holding an entire piece together.
And then, just when I am pleased with this neat little relationship between the two scraps, I drop them into the larger composition and they disappear into the crowd. This is decoherence. In quantum physics it is the moment when all the fancy quantum behaviour collapses because the particle has to deal with the world around it. In collage, this is when my perfect little pairing gets swallowed by the rest of the image. They still matter, but they are no longer a private duo. They are part of the bigger structure whether they like it or not.
The part I am thinking about most though is the role of the observer. Physics loves to confuse people with this one, but the basic idea is that things only settle into a definite state when something interacts with them. The observer is not a passive bystander. It is whatever bumps into the system and forces it to choose. Which sounds a lot like what I am doing when I am making a collage. I am forcing these individual pieces, with their potential superposition, to make up their mind where they fit and where they belong. I am not just watching scraps behave in strange ways. I am the one making them behave in strange ways. Every time I move a piece, or line up two things that probably should not go together, I am collapsing one possibility and revealing another.
I doubt any physicist would endorse this comparison, but I keep coming back to it. Maybe because collage is one long experiment in how potential gets narrowed down into form. Maybe because everything stays fluid until I commit to something. Or maybe because when you spend long enough gluing borrowed images together, your mind starts wandering into odd corners of the universe just to keep things interesting.
Either way, the scraps do not decide who they are. They just sit there buzzing with possibilities until I start pushing them around the table, exhausting each option one by one, until all that potential settles into a single, definite conclusion.
Digital Decay 3.0
I’m starting to roll out some of the Midjourney images that I made during the quiet travel time on our recent holiday to Japan. Once again these images are based on the photographs of ripped and torn advertising posters that I have taken over the almost 20 years of my Accidental Archaeology series of works.
The last series of Digital Decay images I made were created using Midjourney v4, but these ones have been generated using v7, and the new engine certainly makes a big difference to the final outcome.
Studio Sounds
YMO Trans Atlantic Tour Paris 10/18/1979 - Yellow Magic Orchestra
I had just got home from travelling across Japan, listening to a lot of instrumental electronic music along the way, when this showed up in my feed. It’s like the algorithm has been listening or something…
Kingdom Come - Normal Bias
This is great. These days my absolute favourite genre in music is songs that sound like they were made in the 1980s, but with modern equipment and production. Trust me, it is a bigger genre than you would think. This one fits in that category, flipping between 80s pop and industrial, kind of like Depeche Mode meets Cabaret Voltaire.
Micrographia - Bug Teeth
I know absolutely nothing about this artist. What I do know is that the vocal delivery sometimes reminds me of Alison Shaw from Cranes, sometimes reminds me of Hope Sandoval from Mazzy Star, and sometimes Harriet Wheeler of The Sundays. And that is one hell of a palette to be mixing your paints on.
Affenstunde - Popol Vuh
The Void Observance League played this album in full on their radio program this week, and I really enjoyed it. Seventies Krautrock, alternating between ambient synths and tribal drums.
Nincs Szennyezetlen Szép - The Devil’s Trade
Slow & a little sludgy, but not too brutal. Maybe like a slightly heavier version of The Tea Party.