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Peta‘s playful and illusory mixed-media artworks offer visual and visceral experiences of difficult quantum questions raised by an exploration of the nature of light including entwined dualities, superposition, entanglements, interference patterns, indeterminate boundaries and the intrinsic interconnectedness of all things.

In science, the fundamental question of whether light is a particle or a wave, or indeed both, has perplexed physicists for centuries. The two-slit experiments to solve this have raised more even questions and revealed that both light and matter at the subatomic realm are bizarre and paradoxical. These experiments demonstrated the fundamentally dual nature of light, that it is both a particle and a wave. For Jacobs, particle/wave duality is a recurring motif explored in many different ways.

Quantum discoveries transcend the phenomenal world and raise philosophical considerations about the very nature of reality itself, uncovering notions of interconnectedness, wholeness, and infinity. For instance, the inseparability of the observer and the observed has led some physicists to conclude that the act of observation creates reality. In response, Jacobs’ artworks invite active engagement, rewarding the viewer’s bodily movement with playful views of shifting shapes, colours, and experiences of superpositions of dual opposites. Her works challenge fixed perspectives, encouraging the exploration of possibilities that exist beyond binary thinking.

Jacobs draws inspiration by physicist, David Bohm, whose theories of implicate and explicate orders and the holomovement move beyond dualistic thinking and separation of mind and matter to reveal underlying universal interconnectedness, wholeness and infinity.

Utilising optical materials commonly found in scientific laboratories, such as half-silvered mirrors, prisms, dichroic beam-splitters, and diffraction gratings, Jacobs delves into profound quantum concepts. These materials, pivotal to the two-slit experiment, unveil light’s enigmatic properties. When integrated into her artworks, these materials present multiple visual experiences simultaneously. As viewers traverse the space, elements undergo colour and shape transformations, appearing and vanishing in unexpected ways.

Through “Beyond Duality and Other Quantum Questions,” Jacobs invites viewers to embrace the paradoxes of quantum physics and transcend their perceptual boundaries. By doing so, she paves the way for novel thought processes and visual perceptions.

Peta Jacobs

Dr. Peta Jacobs is a textile mixed media artist, based in Bristol. Her PhD and ongoing research are inspired by the question posed by László Moholy-Nagy in Light Vision (1917): “Are space, time, and material one with Light?”

Jacobs work explores the paradox of immaterial substance, drawing from both quantum physics and Eastern mystical experience. Through her practice, she challenges certainty and perception, presenting shifting views that evolve with the viewer’s perspective.