TechArt
How does technology inspire artists? In this feature, an artist explains.
Andrija Pavlovic
Kavli Artist in Residence
Text Jos Wassink
His career, and that of his pianist partner Sonja Lončar, has had numerous highlights. They include a performance at Carnegie Hall and being named one of the best eight piano duos in the world. After ten years of working together, they had reached the top. But something was missing. “We’d performed everywhere, playing the whole classical repertoire. But the challenge began to fade”, says Pavlovic. Their sound technician brought them into contact with his school friend Vlatko Vedral, professor of Quantum Physics at Oxford University. Concepts such as discrete energy states, quantum uncertainty and entanglement blew Pavlovic’s mind.
This year, Pavlovic is the Kavli Artist in Residence – a three-month contract for a leading artist who spends time with researchers and in laboratories tasked with creating an artwork from their impressions. Pavlovic has not come unprepared, since he has been working on the musical interpretation of quantum physics for about ten years. He and his piano partner are both working on quantum concepts alongside their job teaching in Belgrade. It started with their impression of the physical phenomenon known as Bose-Einstein-condensation. This happens in a rarefied gas of bosons (subatomic particles) that is cooled to almost absolute zero (-273.15 degrees Celsius).
Dit jaar is Pavlovic de Kavli Artist in Residence – een contract van drie maanden voor een kunstenaar van naam die tussen onderzoekers en in laboratoria verkeert met de opdracht zijn/haar indrukken vorm te geven in een kunstwerk. Pavlovic kwam niet onvoorbereid, want hij werkt al een jaar of tien aan de verklanking van quantumfysica. Samen met zijn pianopartner werken ze naast hun onderwijsbaan in Belgrado aan quantumconcepten. Dat begon met hun impressie van het de Bose-Einstein-condensatie. Dat fysische verschijnsel treedt op in een ijl gas van bosonen (subatomaire deeltjes) dat wordt gekoeld tot vlakbij het absolute nulpunt (-273.15 graad Celsius).
The musicians processed data from an experiment, upscaling it to audible frequencies. A piano soon proved too limited for their ideas and they developed a portable hybrid piano as an add-on that creates connections between the keyboard and electronic sounds.
What else does Pavlovic hope to add to that in Delft? “I want to go beyond quantum music. I can work with highly talented scientists here. I’m hearing about so many new things, I can hardly sleep from all the ideas. And there’s a whole other branch of quantum: bionanoscience. I see neural networks between cells as inspiration for my compositions. I’m just loving this challenging environment.”
© OIST – Image created by Lee O’Riordan, an OIST graduate student