#quantum ghost

‘Scuse me, just gonna drop this here, heheheh.

Quantum Ghost

Ok, this idea is one I’ve had for a while, ever since I bought the game Starbound and started playing it.  If you don’t know what Starbound is, it’s an RPG/Sandbox game with a similar style to Terraria, and involves heavy amounts of space exploration, dungeons, etc., in a huge, randomly generated universe.  You can either follow the plot, or you can just fly off and do your own things, like exploring, colony building, dungeon crawling, whatever.  I’ve been low-key addicted to this game ever since I got it (I’ve put in like almost 150 hours at this point), and so, one day, as I was re-reading Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony, this idea just sort of exploded into being.

(Spoilers ahead for those who have not read Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony!)

So here’s the basic gist of the idea: as Artemis, Holly, No. 1, Qwan, and Qweffor/Abbott are pulling Hybras out of Limbo, a malicious presence interferes with the time-tunnel, throwing off the group’s concentration.  As a result, when Hybras materializes on Earth, a third of the island and a lot of the demons on said third of the island are missing, they’ve arrived seven years into the future instead of just three, and, most importantly, Artemis is nowhere to be found.  The reason for this is that Artemis has been trapped mostly outside the time-stream, in a sort of Limbo of his own - he has become a “quantum ghost”.  He is unable to interact with the timestream, and almost entirely unable to be detected by anybody who might be looking for him.  He only materializes to any extent during history-changing events, and even then he usually cannot be detected unless there are large quantities of silver around, which there rarely are.  All he can do is watch time advance without him.

Fast forward several thousand years.  Over the centuries, human technology has advanced, human governments have merged into a singular planetary government, contact has been made with six alien races (the Florans, Hylotl, Avians, Apex, Glitch, and Novakids from Starbound), the human government and the fairies have been made aware of each other and have a tenative alliance that the public is unaware of and, most importantly of all, time travel experiments have been attempted, and failed when, unknownst to the scientists, their test subjects were quantum ghosted by unforeseen interference by silver.  A group of scientists from the Terrane Protectorate (an organization featured briefly in the Starbound game) begins searching for the reasons why the experiments failed, and in the process find out about the quantum ghosts and anchor them back to reality with silver - and amongst these ghosts is Artemis, who is now marooned far in the future of an Earth that’s very, VERY different from the one he knew.

That’s the basic idea of this crossover.  Here’re some other details I’ve worked out, as well:

When Artemis is re-anchored to reality, he has lost a lot of his fine motor skills, and has to re-learn how to move like a human being and not flop around helplessly like a fish out of water.  He is also unable to understand the language his rescuers speak at first, and has to learn that as well.  He’s understandably grumpy about all this.

One of the other former Quantum Ghosts, an Avian named Xui, mother-hens Artemis like crazy (almost literally, considering the Avians are bird-people), and gets antsy and worried when he’s out of her line of sight.

Once he’s recovered, Artemis ends up applying to become a member of the Terrane Protectorate, and spends several years on this Earth that’s become his new abode up until a certain event from the very beginning of the Starbound game ends up with him stranded in the cosmos.

Basically the plot of the crossover after that point follows the plot of the game, with some added details and some angst involved because, c’mon, Artemis has literally lost everyone he ever knew, even HE can’t stay 100% chill in the face of that.  

Plus after a time there will be some fairy things that happen, because fairies have sort of colonized some planets out there in the great wide frontier of space, so *shrugs*

So far, I have spoken at length about the theory behind my multimedia report but with this blog post I want to temporarily break from knowledge practises and talk about the artefact’s aesthetic inspirations. Reflecting upon my proposal, I stated that I would “explore enactments of quantum mechanics through the stereoscopic lens of virtual reality.” VR allows for immersive affordances that traditional media simply cannot such as 360-degrees of view and user control.

In discussion with Rachel Falconer, she spoke of how this lack of agency and critical distance from me as director seemed to be a diverging path from my performance practise. This invoked ideas of Death of the Author and other dualities which has really helped to situate myself within this research. But upon Helen’s request I took a break from writing and attended an exhibition for more hands-on inspiration. 

This was a solo exhibition at Gasworks Vauxhall by Libita Clayton entitled Quantum Ghost. The piece consisted of three elements, an immersive sound installation, large scale photograms and live performances. As a critique on the ghosts of colonialism, Clayton traces the memory of her ancestors through photograms of raw materials associated with mining. A tunnel-like structure houses a multi-channel audio installation consisting of field recordings collaged together with artist musicians such as Jol Thomson. I loved the installation’s sonic archive of “subterranean energy” so attended the exhibition’s closing performance but unfortunately it was too busy.

Another visual inspiration for my artefact comes from the film Quantum Fluctuations by Markos Kay which was nominated for the Starts Prize at last year’s Ars Electronica. These virtual experiments with particle systems use computers to simulate the hidden complexity of the quantum world and uncover its scientific beauty.

Returning to theory, in class we looked at critical fabulation and how to work with archives in a speculative way. This reimagining of silenced history made me recall Libita Clayton’s approach for the Quantum Ghost exhibition. To theorize upon our stories of research we looked to the writings of Saidiya Hartman, Daniela Rosner, Jill Bennet and Chris Salter. Salter’s book Alien Agency seemed particularly interesting to me, so may be worth revisiting at some stage. Finally, we ended with a class exercise to help us think speculatively and improve our writing styles.   

References • http://www.publicseminar.org/2018/05/five-theses-on-virtual-reality-and-sociality/ • Barthes, R. (1968). The Death of the Author. 1st ed. University Handout. • https://www.gasworks.org.uk/exhibitions/libita-clayton-2019-01-24/ • http://www.jol-t.com/ • https://vimeo.com/166185297 • Salter, Chris, 2015. Alien Agency: Experimental Encounters with Art in the Making, Mit Press.

Image from Quantum Ghost by: Libita Clayton https://www.gasworks.org.uk/exhibitions/libita-clayton-2019-01-24/ 

Image from Quantum Ghost by: Libita Clayton https://www.gasworks.org.uk/exhibitions/libita-clayton-2019-01-24/