“Ontological indeterminacy, a radical openness, an infinity of possibilities, is at the core of mattering.” (Barad, 2012) The quantum field theory (a theory that combines the insights of electromagnetism, special relativity and quantum mechanics) pushes our classical understanding of the world we live in. When the building blocks of every existence act in mysterious ways: both as particles and waves, entangled through thousands of miles - our reality is a reality of endless possibilities. But how should we then understand ourselves, nature, technology and things - and the relation between them?

American-British physicist Dana Zohar stresses that we are both “individuals with a distinct and separate identity and co-creative partners in defining relationships with others” (Zohar 2013). We can no longer understand things as separate and independent elements. Even what we call inanimate things, Ian Hodder states, "have charges, weights. They are attracted to each other or repulse each other.” (Hodder 2012) Even particles seem to have a life on their own: “an electron is not just "itself" but includes a "cloud" of an indeterminate number of virtual particles. (...) So even the smallest bits of matter is an enormous multitude. Each "individual" is made up of all possible histories of virtual intra-actions with all Others” (Barad, 2012).

Karen Barad describes the quantum vacuum, or the void, as a “spectral realm with a ghostly existence” (Barad 2012). Barad argues that in the void “exists” quantum fluctuations, which scientists describe as virtual particles. Virtuality she defines as the “indeterminacy of being/nonbeing, a ghostly non/existence” So the void is not empty, but there isn't anything in there either. Virtual particles are “ghostly non/existences that teeter on the edge of an infinitely thin blade between being and nonbeing”(Ibid)

The term "virtual particles" though is, according to particle physicist Michael Kachelriess only a term to communicate, it´s fiction and not observable by definition.  

Barad, Karen: “What Is the Measure of Nothingness? Infinity, Virtuality, Justice” in 100 Notes- 100 Thoughts, Documenta und Museum Fridericianum Veranstaltungs-GmbH 2012

"Matter feels, converses, suffers, desires,

yearns and remembers” Interview with Karen Barad in Science, Technology, and the Humanities: A New Synthesis, 2009

Genz, Henning: Nothingness - The Science of Empty Space, Perseus Books Publishing 1999

Hodder, Ian: Entangled - An Archeology of the Relationships between Human and Things, John Wiley and Sons, 2012

Zohar, Danah: “The Quantum Self” in Art and Common Space, Kunstakademiet i Trondheim, NTNU, Trondheim 2013

Darkness is related to our desire of returning to our primary state as inanimate beings. 

The first interview was with Rasmus Jaksland, PhD fellow in Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies. He works on a project titled "The Prospects of Naturalized Metaphysics", where he investigates the role of science - physics in particularly - in metaphysics, and attempt to assess to what degree metaphysics should be informed by and founded in science. 

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The interview was based on his article "Entanglement as the world-making Relation" in which he draws on theories of quantum mechanics and minimalist ontology. 

"Conference" (working title) is an upcoming sound installation based on recorded interviews with researchers from different disciplines at NTNU (Norwegian University of Science & Technology, Trondheim). I will interview researchers within physics, chemistry, philosophy, biology, computer science, linguistics, psychology and anthropology. The aim is to examine how I, as an artist, can contribute to "a theory of everything" and how (or if) art can function as the nonverbal communication that interconnects the disciplines and perhaps raises new questions, impossible to ask within the specific field. By deconstructing the recorded interviews, in the sound editing, I will point out specific statements, remove them from their context, and combine them with statements or questions from the other researchers. Thereby, my aim is to create a fictive conversation, or discussion, between researchers that never met. 

The problem with interdisciplinary projects, I think, is the fact that there is no common language for communication between the different fields. But to reach new groundbreaking worldviews, and to make the right political and environmental choices, we need to reconsider the concept of Nature - and we need to do that together. We need to examine nature, ourselves, technology etc, with an open and naïve approach, where nothing is certain or finite. Therefore I hope that the fictive conversation - and the unification of distant statements, normally not combined, will foster new questions, or at least some tensions for rethinking.

It is worth noting that I have no background in natural sciences - only a newly discovered curiosity - but maybe this naïvity, or lack of knowledge, is actually to the project´s benefit.