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Science is the source of inspiration for the artworks of Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand. Their scientific collaborators are also fascinated by art. A portrait of interactions merges the borders of disciplines from the perspective of the intriguing and the inquisitive.

The journey will lead us to “Obviously Unthinkable,” a public event at the artists’ studio, where pioneering theoretical physicist Tommaso Calarco shares his insights into macroscopic quantum phenomena at the nexus of quantum computing and art. Afterwards, Domnitch and Gelfand reveal their ion trap installation, Hilbert Hotel, created in collaboration with Calarco and the Quantum Flagship.

We then enter the laboratory of Florian Schreck, Professor of Experimental Quantum Physics at the University of Amsterdam who is working on quantum sensors and simulators as well as an atomic clock based on ultracold strontium gases. These gases are cooled down and trapped by laser beams. Domnitch and Gelfand explain how they are collaborating with Schreck in order trap liquid crystal droplets with vortex laser beams.
Our next destination is the lab of Guillaume Schweicher, Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Université Libre, Brussels. Schweicher is developing customized liquid crystal polymers to enhance the responsiveness of trapped droplets to twisted light beams. Together with Schweicher and Schreck the artist duo embarks on a journey into the eye of the optical vortex.

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Dmitry Gelfand (NL) and Evelina Domnitch (BY, NL): Dmitry Gelfand (b. 1974, St. Petersburg, Russia) and Evelina Domnitch (b. 1972, Minsk, Belarus) create sensory immersion environments that merge physics, chemistry and computer science with uncanny philosophical practices. Current findings, particularly regarding wave phenomena, are employed by the artists to investigate questions of perception and perpetuity. Such investigations are salient because the scientific picture of the world, which serves as the basis for contemporary thought, still cannot encompass the unrecordable workings of consciousness. Having dismissed the use of recording and fixative media, Domnitch and Gelfand’’s installations exist as ever-transforming phenomena offered for observation. Because these rarely seen phenomena take place directly in front of the observer without being intermediated, they often serve to vastly extend the observer’’s sensory envelope. The immediacy of this experience allows the observer to transcend the illusory distinction between scientific discovery and perceptual expansion.

Credits

Artists: Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand, Konstantin Guz
With the participation of Guillaume Schweicher and Florian Schreck, Tommaso Calarco and Robert Spreeuw.
This project is part of STUDIOTOPIA residency hosted by Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.