Multiverse

Multiverse
video/mp4
640 × 480
00:51

The media art installation Multiverse by Paul Thomas and Kevin Raxworthy is based on research developed from Richard Feynman’s 1979 video lectures where his presentation of diagrams on the blackboard visualises the probability of photons reflecting from the surface of a mirror(Trust 1979). In Feynman’s diagram he revels how all points on the surface of the mirror receive and reflect light based on the speculative spin of the photon that is not visible to the viewer. The diagram reveals that photons do not merely encode all the information about an object but are also independent of an observer. The media art work Multiverse is based upon using a captured individuals portrait as being analogous to the spin of one photon at one frequency. The concept for Multiverse uses a data image of a 7 nanometer scan of a silver substrate from the Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) that acts as a filter for a live camera feed image of the viewer’s portrait. Each viewer’s real-time reflected analogous portrait is mathematically mapped to photon’s spin to display the portrait back to the viewer showing all of their representation not just the ones closest to the angle of incidence.
The computer generates nearly two thousand simulations of the viewer’s spinning portraits that are equivalent to Feynman’s ‘summing’ the angles of probability. The mathematics is processed to react to the ‘probability amplitude’ represented as an arrow in Feynman’s diagram of the photons directional paths across the screen of the metaphorical mirror.

http://www.leoalmanac.org/atomism-residual-images-within-silver-lea-magazine-article/