QPUNK

Quaesthetics

Every technology comes with an aesthetic. Ancient writing materials have an earthy crafty tone, with an acoustic soundtrack. Minoan palaces and Roman aqueducts give majestic and prosperous, on a background of orchestral music. Medieval alchemy reminds of occult symbolism and resonates mystery on a bed of ambient soundscapes. The industrial revolution and analogue machines gave rise to the SteamPunk genre with avant-garde embellishments. The nuclear and space age is viewed from the lens of retro propaganda artworks, with radio static filling the air of a coldwarish Sunday morning. The digital age brings glitch and polygonal 3D rendering, early internet art, plastic gadgets and dark rooms with screen saver lit screens, and CyberPunk culture promising expansive freedom and promoting transhumanist values, all against a backdrop of technology-enhanced music genres from distorted guitars to spacey synths.

The most recent technological explosion was AI, specifically using generative models. Even though agents could achieve superhuman performance on hard boardgames and videogames, and later even hard scientific problems, the first models adopted by the general public were language models in the form of chatbots. Early AI art was all about how a model trained on large datasets generates strange, uncanny patterns, from hallucinations of dogs in the sky to abstract videos of forms fluidly merging into each other, ever defying full formation. Current AI art is synonymous with digital art, and the technology has matured enough so that it effectively and potentially encompasses any style desired in the hands of a skilled enough prompter artist.

The next cool kid on the block is Quantum Technology, which seems to have entered the mainstream discussion in the 2020s, even if the Quantum Theory is ~100 years old. As with any novel technology, tinkerers and experimental artists use it to create in new ways, interacting with a different medium and outputting artefacts that are most often identifiable with an emerging new aesthetic. In fact, the idea of Quantum Aesthetics dates back to the beginning of the millennium.

Quaesthetics has followed two main paths. The first one is about converting the outputs of quantum computations or other physical quantum processes into visuals, sounds, or videogame levels, any mapping one desires. The second one regards analogies from quantum theory and quantum foundations, ie drawing inspiration from physical and philosophical concepts defining or implied by quantum mechanics. The usual suspects are superposition, entanglement, and interference, each of which can be found separately in other corners of physics and computer science, but combined uniquely together in quantum theory. Quantum foundations, even among experts, is not a settled matter; it is still sparking intense philosophical discussions, and most importantly, requires and inspires deep contemplation. And, as quantum technology is still so early stages, and as quantum concepts have only recently entered common consciousness, it is an exciting time for the creation of a novel aesthetic.

Doom

Cultural movements, accompanied by artistic and aesthetic eras, are usually also correlated with a certain level of optimism or pessimism. Because technology implies power, and technology obtains an ethical substance when its application is chosen, and while the outcomes are always impossible to predict, the intent is what determines the moral decoration, at least in the early stages. But since the road to fiery place is paved with good intentions, we shall adopt the hypothesis that every technologyhas been, is, and will beused and abused.

For example, nuclear technology has had a rich history strongly entangled with geopolitics, and also of course early developments in quantum mechanics. Moral gametheoretic dillemas with a mutually assured destruction fixedpoint, paint a doomgloom picture of the worstcase scenario of nuclear holocaust. Meanwhile, the bestcase scenario is free, or at least cheap, energy for everyone, historical baggage and the fossil fuel lobbies aside.

Another example is AI, where indeed the best outcome is human empowerment, but as the histrory of the internet showed us, the worst outcome, is much easier to imagine, and somehow feels more realistic. One does not even need to wait until AI takes over and enslaves or destroys humanity, either by accident or on purpose, as much of scifi has warned. One may simply take a look at the current state of affairs, where AI is used indeed as a tool to expand scientific knowledge, for surveillance, influence and propaganda, for autonomous killer drones and cyberwarfare, and may also lead to unpredictable new phenomena that have a strong psychosis flavour.

Quantum technology follows a paradoxical trajectory. A main reason the quantum industry even exists is the military industrial complex, when it was evident that in principle quantum algorithms could exist to perform simulations of quantum many body systems like materials and chemicals, or to factor large integers allowing for breaking cryptographic protocols, tasks hard for calssical computers in the worst case. However, quantum technology keeps defying immediate application in the real world, not only due to the immense engineering feats required to build it, but also because the real-world advantage of quantum solutions is not clear from theory; one can attempt to quantify it in practice, but then we're back at how hard it is to make quantum technologies at scale. Ironically, armies were effectively the most openminded venture capitalists supporting bluesky research with not too many strings attached. Further, it is hard to imagine what the worstcase scenario of misuse of quantum technology might be, besides the obvious ones that are about enhancing the already existing illmotivated and malicious intents in the hearts of humans. But, arguably, the upside is clearer: geopolitical games are not based on mutually assured destruction, rather they are about showcasing higher quality scientific experiments that reveal more about our physical and computational universe.

Qulture

In parallel, while the technology is being slowly but steadily developed, the concepts of quantum mechanics are diffusing into culture much faster: uncertainty, participatory observers, contextuality, retrocausality, many worlds and parallel universes, hidden variables, universe as a simulation, and so on. These can be used to construct powerful analogies for expansive revolutionary thought.

Inspired by movements like HopePunk and SolarPunk that try to reclaim optimism, we define QPunk. The core of this movement is generative novelty, which specifically and importantly stems from the internals of Mind or Nature. Many of the values are not new, as they can be found in other domains. For example, cybernetics taught us that all is connected via feedback loops mediated via complex interactions in a networked system. This brings to mind quantum nonlocality and entanglement. Importantly, contrary to other popcultures, however, quantum is still untouched and untainted by history, and will resist for the foreseeable future. Recalling Chomsky's view that optimism is not naivete but a strategy, and the only choice that can lead to a better world, we appreciate Wheeler's participatory universe where the observer, as a physical system, actively contributes to the creation of the next timestep in the classical universe in which we live.

Embrace paradox.
Defiant indeterminacy.
Uncertainty is freedom.
Entanglement is responsibility.
Curiosity is rebellion.
Observation is participation.
Action affects outcome.
Measurement as Praxis.

The main reason QPunk is timely is the framework it provides for attempting to grasp an everchanging illdefined reality where noone knows what is going on, going beyond relativism and postmodernism, rather cometimes claiming that this is the nature of reality itself. At the same time, in an absurdist fashion, it urges for participation and action. It does not provide any definite doom scenario, which is opens the door for refreshing and much needed optimism amidst apparent informationtherotic chaos. Different interpretations of quantum theory, even if ontologically mutually incompatible, still have valuable philosophical lessons to provide and value systems to consider, pushing through the end of history. To quote Graeber, "The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently". Quantum is one of the last domains that can spark cultural shifts and lead to reclaiming of power.