Phantom Realities

A quantum state holds several possibilities in superposition. Mathematics gives form to this invisible multiplicity. Yet that form is not singular. Change the language of description, and the same state appears as another reality.

Phantom Realities passes contemporary quantum computation through the visual language of wasan, making visible the parallel worlds latent within mathematics as an invisible structure. States transformed by quantum algorithms are calculated as trajectories on the Bloch sphere and projected onto a two-dimensional plane. The trajectories are redrawn through wasan’s enri and the tangent-circle constructions found in sangaku. This is not an illustration of quantum mechanics. It is an attempt to record the movement of quantum states in the mathematical visual language cultivated by another culture of calculation.

Standardised mathematics has made it possible to share knowledge across places and cultures. At the same time, it has institutionalised one way of describing the world as universal and pushed other ways of seeing outside its frame. In Edo-period wasan, problems and solutions were drawn as geometric forms on sangaku and offered at shrines and temples. Mathematics was not only abstract notation; it was also an act bound to beauty, play, and faith. This work passes the trajectories of contemporary quantum states through that visual system. From the same mathematical object, another world comes into view.

Printed in pigment on washi, the image is layered with translucent acrylic and suspended away from the wall. Blue, red, yellow, and white evoke the abstraction and machine aesthetics of European modernism while also connecting to the visual memory of post-war Japanese robot animation. The same colours and forms have carried dreams of different futures in different cultures. Their times and worlds overlap on the surface of the work.

Phantom Realities does not merge different mathematical and cultural traditions into a single style. It neither restores the past nor predicts an unseen future. It holds different languages of description in superposition and gives form to what appears between them. Floating there are phantoms of realities that might once have been—and might still be.