DGOP x Quantum x Jesse Sky
Particle Wave Machine (2025)
Particle Wave Machine is an immersive installation exploring quantum mechanics, probability, and human consciousness through projected particle systems and sculptural space. Inspired by concepts like superposition and diverging paths, the work invites viewers to reflect on the countless possibilities and unseen forces that shape human experience. Commissioned by Doing Good on Purpose and created in collaboration with University of Colorado Boulder Department of Physics, the installation transforms complex scientific ideas into a poetic, sensory experience about choice, perception, and the paths we create.
In The Words of Jesse Sky
In an attempt to provoke a felt experience of quantum mechanics, I offer a portal into a realm of probability. Think about your life, when you wake up in the morning, and the ever-present horizon of experience that could become your day. As your day flows toward you, could you even estimate the number of decisions you make and how fast you make them? What to eat, who to see, what to do, where to go? We surf our consciousness down our own probability waves and call the result experience. As we are surfing we are turning, slashing, carving our unique and special path. It is special because it is the divine path that we each choose out of trillions of alternate and diverging paths every second.
In Quantum, the silent space before a path is determined is called superposition. The Greeks named a god for this, Kairos! And then, when some consciousness comes along, gets close and touches it, it collapses, I believe, in accordance with the nature of the observing consciousness and the universe then goes through the process of rendering a happening, a sliver of experience.
This artwork projects a probability surface. Picture the particles as discrete possible paths that could be experienced. Notice that many are so densely packed that they become indistinguishable. I would say that these bright areas represent paths that you might think would happen for you in a day; Brush your teeth, go to work, pay the bill, be adult, blah blah blah.
Although all of us are blessed with a divine consciousness capable of bending reality to its will, so many choose unconsciousness and simply follow a path ascribed by some person, ideal, philosophy, religion, habit.
And then there are those I love. The wild particles on the outer rim, streaking their own path across the silent darkness, exploring what’s undiscovered, pushing the envelope of the manifold for everyone. We are the imaginal cells. We build butterflies from caterpillar goo. If you are one, we need you too. Now is the time.